Vanadium-Redox-Flow-Battery
All-Vanadium-Redox-Flow-Battery (Stefan Rümmler / Mark Hartmann)
A very interesting and important field of research in terms of renewable energies and for the next generation is energy storage. The all vanadium redox flow battery is a good alternative to store huge quantities of energy, because the amount depends only on the construction of the system (fig. 1), especially the size of the storage tanks gives the limit. Vanadium solutions in these tanks were pumped towards the reaction chamber. During the charge mode the vanadyl ion will be oxidized to VO2+ and the V3+ reduced to V2+. If you discharge the battery, you will observe the back reactions. In our group we investigate new carbon material concerning the catalytic activity of the oxidation of the vanadyl ion and the back reaction. Therefore cyclic voltammograms of this half-cell reaction will be recorded. Additionally the material will be functionalized in several ways and its structure clarified with TGA-MS, XPS and Raman spectroscopy. Furthermore we construct a complete redox flow test bed to investigate the redox processes in the reaction chamber in conjunction with pump systems and the electric control unit. With this test bed we want to focus attention on real-life conditions and stress tests.