Research Of The New Type Zinc-bromine Flow Battery And Related Critical Materials

Zinc-bromine redox flow battery which is a hotspot of energy research area is of low energy consumption, high energy efficiency, less pollution to the environment. The material costs of zinc-bromine redox flow battery is low; it can charge quickly; and the battery can be used thousands of times in deep discharge situation. And it can be used in power peaking, new energy vehicles, as well as an emergency power supply and other fields.This paper made a detailed presentation at electrochemical principle of zinc-bromine flow battery, main characteristics of zinc-bromine flow battery, the problems to be solved, applications of zinc-bromine flow battery, and future prospects of zinc-bromine flow battery. First of all, We prepared a key material of zinc-bromine flow battery, namely polyvinyl alcohol membrane, and also did some tests to the polyvinyl alcohol membrane, including water absorption test, swelling rate test, UV spectrum test, Infrared spectroscopy test and thermal stability test; we also assembled a small battery with the prepared polyvinyl alcohol membrane, and did some performance tests. The experiment results show that the performance of the polyvinyl alcohol membrane is relatively good, and can be used as new type materials of ion exchange membrane of zinc-bromine redox flow battery; additionally, with the critical material PTFE membrane which already has been prepared to be battery membrane,single cell and cell stack are assembled. We also prepared the electrolyte solutions of different concentrations, and tested the electrochemical properties of single cells of the electrolyte solution of different concentrations, to get a electrolyte concentration with better conductive properties, then we use this kind of electrolyte solution for performance testing of large cell stack; with the membrane which is prepared by ourselves, we assembled a kilowatt large cell stack and tested its performance, our experiment results show that the large cell stack we prepared is relatively good. The results of this paper laid the foundation for the development of large-scale energy storage battery.