Abstract
Solving sustainability grand challenges can be optimally approached through unique innovative approaches to material design and application integration. Membranes play a critical role in redox flow batteries’ cycling performance, optimizing blockage of redox active species while promoting transfer of charge balancing ions. Leading membrane designs are costly, demonstrating opportunity for pathways towards membrane cost reduction through unique material re-design. Here, we have been exploring repurposing commercially available engineered plastics for application for higher value energy storage applications – a strategy towards upcycling. We report the use of aromatic based polymers towards novel membrane design with tunable mesoporous architecture and interconnected nano-sized ion-conducting channels tailored to aqueous redox flow battery (RFB) systems. We fabricate a porous membrane scaffold through a phase inversion technique which is then post-functionalized to give it charge bearing capabilities, demonstrating a good balance between conductivity and perm-selectivity. First generation membrane designs demonstrate notably low area-specific resistance (ASR) in both acidic and alkaline electrolytes. These membranes also demonstrate lower permeance of the redox active species when compared to leading membranes such as NafionTM and when tested in an alkaline system. Moreover, when tested in a cycling flow battery, the membranes can deliver notable capacity retention and power density. In addition, a technoeconomic analysis of these membranes also demonstrates a significant cost decrease when compared to leading RFB membranes. This work suggests exciting opportunities for upcycling non-sustainable plastic waste utilizing a tunable technique to target structure-property-processing of polymers towards mesoporous membranes for energy conversion and storage applications.
Published Version
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