Multiphysics Modeling of Solid Oxide Iron Air Battery with New Catalyst and Proton Conductor Oxide Support

Abstract

Long-duration energy storage (LDES) (10+ hours) is widely regarded as an enabling technology to deepen the penetration of renewable energy into the commercial utility market. However, the current storage technologies cannot achieve LDES’s duration requirement at a competitive cost. Therefore, new LDES technologies are highly sought after in recent years. Solid oxide iron air battery is a newly emerging battery based on oxide-ion chemistry and stores energy in energy-dense solid iron. Our recent results have shown that the battery in a laboratory size (f1”) delivers 12.5-hour storage per cycle for 20 cycles with high energy capacity and round-trip efficiency. This presentation focuses on the description of a high-fidelity 2D axis symmetrical multi-physics model to simulate the performance of a solid oxide iron air battery. The model battery system consists of an anode-supported solid oxide cell and energy storage unit (ESU) of iron bed with a proton conducting oxide BaZr0.4Ce0.4Y0.1Yb0.1O3 (BZC4YYb) based support and iridium as a catalyst. The Multiphysics model encompasses charge transfer, mass transport, and chemical redox kinetic cycle occurring across all components of the battery and is validated with experimental results. The kinetic JMA (Johnson-Mehl-Avrami) model is used for describing the oxidation and reduction kinetics of Fe-BZC4YYb-IrO2 ESU. The motivation for combing the Ir catalyst with proton conductor oxide support in ESU is to boost the sluggish FeOx reduction kinetics. Compared to the baseline ESU, i.e. Fe2O3/ZrO2, the newly developed BZC4YYb-IrO2 shows great catalytic activity toward FeOx reduction, thus allowing SOIAB to operate at 500-550oC with excellent capacity, stability, and high round trip efficiency. The presentation will also show the experimental data of improved reduction kinetic rate of Fe-BZC4YYb-IrO2 over the baseline Fe2O3/ZrO2.