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Electrochemical performance of 5 kW all-vanadium redox flow battery stack with a flow frame of multi-distribution channels

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Abstract

In this paper, a flow frame with multi-distribution channels is designed. The electrolyte flow distribution in the graphite felt electrode is simulated to be uniform at some degree with the tool of a commercial computational fluid dynamics (CFD) package of Star-CCM+. A 5 kW-class vanadium redox flow battery (VRB) stack composed of 40 single cells is assembled. The electrochemical performance of the VRB stack is investigated. Under the applied current density of 60 mA cm−2 during the charge and discharge processes, the current and energy efficiencies are delivered to be 93.9 and 80.8 %, respectively. A higher average output power of 7.2 kW can be achieved at the current density of 80 mA cm−2 with a lower energy efficiency of 78.4 %. The studies of kW-class VRB stack can be beneficial to the development of large-scale energy storage.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by Hunan Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (2015JJ3074), Science and Technology project of Changsha (KL403147-11) and postdoctoral fund of Hunan Agricultural University (129263).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Science, Hunan Agricultural University, Changsha, 410128, China

    Xiongwei Wu, Xinhai Yuan, Jun Liu, Qi Deng, Qingming Zhou, Wenxin Zhou & Yuping Wu

  2. Hunan Province Yinfeng New Energy Co., LTD, Changsha, 410013, China

    Xiongwei Wu, Zhian Wang, Yongqing Hu, Xingrong Yin & Yuping Wu

  3. College of Energy, Nanjing Tech University, Nanjing, 211816, China

    Yuping Wu

Authors
  1. Xiongwei Wu
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  2. Xinhai Yuan
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  3. Zhian Wang
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  4. Jun Liu
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  5. Yongqing Hu
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  6. Qi Deng
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  7. Xingrong Yin
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  8. Qingming Zhou
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  9. Wenxin Zhou
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  10. Yuping Wu
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Jun Liu, Wenxin Zhou or Yuping Wu.

Additional information

Contribution to Symposium A: “Advances in Energy Storage Systems: Lithium Batteries, Supercapacitors and Beyond”, during ICMAT 2015, June 28 - July 3, Singapore.

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Wu, X., Yuan, X., Wang, Z. et al. Electrochemical performance of 5 kW all-vanadium redox flow battery stack with a flow frame of multi-distribution channels. J Solid State Electrochem 21, 429–435 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10008-016-3361-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10008-016-3361-x

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