Modeling Of Vanadium Redox Flow Battery (VRFB) And Comparative Experimental Studies Under Different Electrode Thicknesses,Flow Channels And Temperatures

Climate change has proven to be one of the critical environment issues of recent decade.The concerns of greenhouse gases have a strong detrimental impact on the climate change and environment.In the world,most of the greenhouse gases produced by human being are the result of burning fossil fuels.With the world’s population rising by 0.9%per year on average,the energy demanding will keep on increasing.To prevent a worst impact scenario for the greenhouse gases on environment,it is inevitable to shift from the power production using fossil fuels to renewable energy power generation sources.In this global world fight against the pollution,the research on energy storage system(ESS)has become a key element to harness the intermittent energy from the renewable energy sources;among several ESS in development,vanadium redox flow battery(VRFB)immerges as one of the adequate solutions to improve the renewable energy sector.VRFB is a rechargeable battery with a unique architecture that allows the battery’s power and capacity to be sized independently.The computational and experimental tools were used to achieve the main goal of this comparative investigation on the performance of VRFB operating under different temperature.Based on the analysis of the VRFB using three different electrode thicknesses(70%,50%,and 30%),a computational 2-D model developed in COMSOL Multiphysics were used to study the effect of polarization under various temperatures condition.After a charge/discharge experimental study on three different flow channels(serpentine flow channel,injector flow channel,conventional flow channel)performances.It is determined that temperature has an impact on the static stability,physicochemical and electrochemical properties of the electrolyte’s species.By changing the thickness of the electrode and flow fields in the battery cell,ohmic and polarization resistances of VRFB decrease,in return increase the charge/discharge capacity of the battery according to the operating temperature.Finally,this investigation opens an understanding on crucial rule that the temperature,flow fields and electrode thickness play in the VRFB application.Other parameters including current density ranging from 10 mA/cm2 to 20 mA/cm2 and flow rate ranging from 10 ml/min to 60 ml/min were also investigated;and by using these parameters to investigate on the voltage efficiency(VE),coulombic efficiency(CE)and energy efficiency(EE),we were able to evaluate the charge/discharge performance of the battery.