The Effect of Electrolyte Composition on the Performance of a Single‐Cell Iron–Chromium Flow Battery

Abstract

Flow batteries are promising for large‐scale energy storage in intermittent renewable energy technologies. While the iron–chromium redox flow battery (ICRFB) is a low‐cost flow battery, it has a lower storage capacity and a higher capacity decay rate than the all‐vanadium RFB. Herein, the effect of electrolyte composition (active species and supporting electrolyte concentrations), Fe/Cr molar ratio, and supporting electrolyte type (HCl and H2SO4) on the performance (current efficiency (CE), voltage efficiency (VE), energy efficiency, discharge capacity, and capacity decay) of an ICRFB is investigated. The storage capacity of the optimum electrolyte (1.3 m FeCl2, 1.4 m CrCl3, 5.0 mm Bi2O3 in 1.0 m HCl) is 40% higher (from 17.5 to 24.4 Ah L−1), while the capacity decay rate is tenfold lower (from 3.0 to 0.3% h−1) than the performance of the previously used 1.0 m FeCl2, 1.0 m CrCl3 in 3.0 m HCl. At the optimum Fe and Cr concentrations and ratio in 0.5 m HCl, a near constant CE (92.3%), VE (78.7%), and EE (72.6%) are obtained over 50 cycles. The significantly higher capacity decay when using 1.0 m H2SO4 (1.6% h−1) compared to 1.0 m HCl (0.3% h−1) confirms that HCl is the more suitable supporting electrolyte.

Keywords

• capacity decay
• efficiency
• electrolyte compositions
• iron–chromium redox flow batteries
• single cell performance
• storage capacity