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Vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB) is one of the most promising technologies for grid-scale energy storage applications because of its numerous attractive features. In this study, metal-organic frameworks (MOF)-derived catalysts (MDC) are fabricated using carbonization techniques at different sintering temperatures. Zirconium-based MOF-derived catalyst annealed at 900 °C exhibits the best electrochemical activity toward VO2+/VO2+ redox couple among all samples. Furthermore, the charge-discharge test confirms that the energy efficiency (EE) of the VRFB assembled with MOF-derived catalyst modified graphite felt (MDC-GF-900) is 3.9% more efficient than the VRFB using the pristine graphite felt at 100 mA cm−2. Moreover, MDC-GF-900 reveals 31% and 107% higher capacity than the pristine GF at 80 and 100 mA cm−2, respectively. The excellent performance of MDC-GF-900 results from the existence of oxygen-containing groups active sites, graphite structure with high conductivity embedded with zirconium oxide, and high specific surface area, which are critical points for promoting the vanadium redox reactions. Because of these advantages, MDC-GF-900 also possesses superior stability performance, which shows no decline of EE even after 100 cycles at 100 mA cm−2.

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Recently, discovering high-performance electrocatalytic materials for vanadium redox flow batteries (VRFBs) has been one of the most crucial tasks. This paper details the successful fabrication of a low-cost platelike bismuth vanadate (BiVO 4 ) material through a simple one-step hydrothermal route, employed as an electrocatalyst to adorn graphite felt (GF) for use as the negative electrode in VRFBs. The experimental results show that BiVO 4 -3h exhibits the optimal electrocatalytic activity and reversibility for the vanadium redox couples among all samples. The energy efficiency of the VRFB cell assembled with BiVO 4decorated GF as the negative electrode is found to be 75.42% at 100 mA cm −2 , which is about 10.24% more efficient than that of the cell assembled with a heat-treated graphite felt (HT-GF) electrode. The possible reasons for the activity enhancement can be ascribed to the existence of oxygen vacancies in the BiVO 4 lattice structure and the relatively high surface area of BiVO 4 , which provide more active sites for facilitating the vanadium redox reactions. Furthermore, the BiVO 4 -GF electrode obstructs the competitive irreversible hydrogen evolution reaction on the negative side of the cell, and it also has better wettability. Impressively, BiVO 4 -GF as the negative electrode shows good stability over 100 cycles.