A Novel Biomimetic Lung-Shaped Flow Field for All-Vanadium Redox Flow Battery

Abstract

The all-vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB) was regarded as one of the most potential technologies for large-scale energy storage due to its environmentally friendliness, safety and design flexibility. The flow field design and mass transfer performance in the porous electrodes were some of the main factors to influence the battery performance. A novel biomimetic lung-shaped flow field was designed, and the battery performance was compared with the serpentine flow field by numerical simulation analysis. The results showed that the charging voltage of the VRFB was reduced by about 5.34% when SOC = 0.9 compared with the serpentine flow field. On the other hand, the discharging voltage was promoted by about 9.77% when SOC = 0.1 compared with the serpentine flow field. The battery performance of the VRFB is obviously due to the enhancement of the mass transfer performance. The uniformity factor was promoted by 35.6% by the lung-shaped flow field when SOC = 0.1, which can reduce the polarization loss. The average concentration of the active ions was increased by about 18% by the lung-shaped biomimetic flow field, which was of significance to the electrochemical reaction. The design of the lung-shaped flow field can contribute to the application of the VRFB.