Performance improvements for the all-copper redox flow battery: Membranes, electrodes, and electrolytes

The ever-increasing demand for renewable energy storage has led to the development of many energy storage systems, such as redox flow batteries (RFBs), including vanadium, iron-chromium, and the copper redox flow battery (CuRFB). A multitude of materials and electrolytes have been investigated to improve the performance of the CuRFB using an in-house manufactured cell. Using carbon ink coatings for the negative electrode and modern ion exchange membranes (IEMs), this version of the CuRFB was improved to current efficiencies above 95% with high voltage efficiencies of up to 81%, thereby improving energy efficiency by nearly 9% over the previous state of the art at 20 mA cm-2. Additionally, the operating time of the CuRFB was significantly extended over 210 h of operation (50 cycles), 32% of the capacity remaining, without maintenance. Finally, stability of the new system with modern IEMs was proven by operation for over 1200 h operation, with over 300 charge and discharge cycles performed.(c) 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).