The past few decades have shown a rapid and continuous exhaustion of the available energy resources which may lead to serious energy global crises. Researchers have been focusing on developing new and renewable energy resources to meet the increasing fuel demand and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. A surge of research effort is also being directed towards replacing fossil fuel based vehicles with hybrid and electric alternatives. Energy storage is now seen as a critical element in future "smart grid and electric vehicle" applications. Electrochemical energy storage systems offer the best combination of efficiency, cost and flexibility, with redox flow battery systems currently leading the way in this aspect. In this work, a panoramic overview is presented for the various redox flow battery systems and their hybrid alternatives. Relevant published work is reported and critically discussed. A comprehensive study of the available technologies is conducted in terms of technical aspects as well as economic and environmental consequences. Some of the flow battery limitations and technical challenges are also discussed and a range of further research opportunities are presented. Of the flow battery technologies that have been investigated, the all-vanadium redox flow battery has received the most attention and has shown most promise in various pre-commercial to commercial stationary applications to date, while new developments in hybrid redox fuel cells are promising to lead the way for future applications in mechanically and electrically "refuelable" electric vehicles.

Increasing applications of ionic liquids and their analogues, namely Deep Eutectic Solvents (DESs), requires further investigation into the effect of moisture content on the physico-chemical characteristics of these fluids. Although it is common practice to synthesize these fluids in a moisture-controlled environment, as moisture is generally considered to have an impact on their properties, there are no systematic studies on this. We herein examine the effects of water on Reline, a Type-III DES composed of urea and choline chloride. Experiments were performed to obtain the physical properties of aqueous Reline solution. We observed moderate changes in density, speed of sound, refractive index, and pH with increasing water fraction; however, the change in viscosity and conductivity was strong and exponential. In addition, molecular dynamics simulations were performed to analyze the intermolecular interactions of Reline and aqueous Reline solutions. The simulations primarily present the significance of urea-anion interaction to explain the low melting point of the DES. In the presence of water, the anion is preferentially hydrated as compared to urea or the cation. More interestingly, simulations help to classify the effects of water into different regimes. At low water fractions (<5%) the urea-urea interactions are enhanced, as is revealed through the hydrogen bond analysis. Beyond 25% water fractions, the components of Reline are individually hydrated and have high diffusivity, which is further reflected in the change in transport properties. The results presented herein provide valuable information on aqueous Reline solutions both in terms of experimental data and molecular insights, which in turn, we believe, might assist in developing further applications of Reline and other related DESs.

New ionic liquids analogues, that is, deep eutectic solvents (DESs), have been successfully synthesized. These DESs have been synthesized by the reaction of phosphonium-based salts with different hydrogen bond donors. Many of these DESs have melting temperatures lower than 100 °C. Preliminary laboratory results showed that these DESs can be used in different applications, for example, electrochemical processes, separation of sugars, and so forth. Melting temperature, density, viscosity, pH, conductivity, and dissolved oxygen content of the novel phosphonium-based DESs were measured as a function of temperature. It was found that the type of the salt and hydrogen bond donor and the mole ratio of both compounds have a paramount effect on the studied properties.

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