Polymer scientist helps develop new technique for large-scale energy
storage

Date:
August 19, 2021
Source:
University of Akron
Summary:
Electric vehicles require power to be available anywhere
and anytime without delay to recharge, but solar and wind are
intermittent energy sources that are not available on demand. And
the electricity they do generate needs to be stored for later use
and not go to waste. New research reveals a more stable way to
store this important energy.



FULL STORY ==========================================================================
The sale of electric vehicles (EV's) has grown exponentially in the past
few years as is the need for renewable energy sources to power them,
such as solar and wind. There were nearly 1.8 million registered electric vehicles in the U.S. as of 2020, which is more than three times as many
in 2016, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).


========================================================================== Electric vehicles require power to be available anywhere and anytime
without delay to recharge, but solar and wind are intermittent energy
sources that are not available on demand. And the electricity they do
generate needs to be stored for later use and not go to waste. That's
where Dr. Yu Zhu, a professor in The University of Akron's School of
Polymer Science and Polymer Engineering, and his research team come in,
by developing a more stable way to store this important energy.

Just as the gas station today, electricity power stations need a
storage system to keep the electricity for EV constantly charging. Low
cost, scalable redox flow batteries (RFB) are among the most suitable technology for such a system; however, current RFBs use high-cost and environmentally hazardous active materials (electrolytes). Recently, water-soluble organic materials have been proposed as future electrolytes
in the RFBs (namely aqueous organic RFBs, or AORFBs). Organic-based electrolytes can be obtained from renewable sources and manufactured
with very low cost. However, the lack of stable water-soluble organic electrolyte materials, particularly the positive electrolyte (catholyte),
is a major hurdle of AORFBs.

Zhu's research group, in collaboration with scientists in Pacific
Northwestern National Laboratory led by Dr. Wei Wang, successfully
developed the most stable catholyte (positive electrolyte) to date in
AORFBs and demonstrated cells that kept more than 90% of capacity over
6,000 cycles, projecting more than 16 years of uninterrupted service
in a pace of one cycle per day. Their research was recently published
in Nature Energyand included contributions from Zhu's doctoral students
Xiang Li and Yun-Yu Lai.

"Development of high-performance RFBs will enrich the category of
electricity energy storage systems and complement the shortcoming of intermittent renewable energy sources, therefore largely improving the usability of electricity powered facilities, such as vehicles," says
Zhu. "To significantly improve the performance of aqueous organic RFBs,
the urgency of developing new catholyte is crucial." In the Nature Energy paper, the team not only demonstrated a state of art catholyte in AORFBs,
but also provided a brand-new strategy to design water soluble catholyte
to enhance their solubility (energy density) in water.

Instead of attaching a hydrophilic functional group to improve the
solubility of the molecules, the researchers change the symmetry of
molecules, which results in a dramatic enhancement of solubility. With
the new design strategy, the team plans to design new materials they
can further mature the RFBs.

A patent application has been submitted based on the technology developed
in this research. The scalability of the materials will be further studied
in Akron PolyEnergy Inc., a spin-out company from UA co-founded by Zhu
that focuses on the development of materials in energy storage devices including lithium-ion batteries and flow batteries.

========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by University_of_Akron. Note: Content
may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Xiang Li, Peiyuan Gao, Yun-Yu Lai, J. David Bazak, Aaron Hollas,
Heng-Yi
Lin, Vijayakumar Murugesan, Shuyuan Zhang, Chung-Fu Cheng, Wei-Yao
Tung, Yueh-Ting Lai, Ruozhu Feng, Jin Wang, Chien-Lung Wang,
Wei Wang, Yu Zhu.

Symmetry-breaking design of an organic iron complex catholyte for a
long cyclability aqueous organic redox flow battery. Nature Energy,
2021; DOI: 10.1038/s41560-021-00879-6 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/08/210819125243.htm

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