A novel flow battery: A lead acid battery based on an electrolyte with soluble lead(II) Part VIII. The cycling of a 10cm×10cm flow cell

Abstract

A novel flow battery: A lead acid battery based on an electrolyte with soluble lead(II) Part VIII. The cycling of a 10 cm × 10 cm flow cell a b s t r a c tThe design of a 10 cm × 10 cm flow cell for the soluble lead acid flow battery is described. A number of extended charge/discharge cycling experiments are presented to demonstrate the capability of the battery to cycle over lengthy periods and to identify the problems that limit the number of cycles that can be achieved. A charge efficiency below 100%, leading to a build up of deposits on both electrodes and a consequent drop in the concentration of Pb 2+ in the electrolyte are found to limit cycle life.

Developing Electrolyte for a Soluble Lead Redox Flow Battery by Reprocessing Spent Lead Acid Battery Electrodes

“…There was no difference in the voltage efficiency, although the recovered electrolyte returned charge and energy efficiencies 4% and 2% respectively lower than the standard electrolyte. This is a relatively small variation and within deviations typically observed in the literature [17]. The similarity in performance between the recovered and standard electrolytes is encouraging and further characterisation of the recovered electrolyte within an operational flow cell is ongoing.…”

“…Each electrolyte comprised 0.9 mol·dm − ³ Pb 2+ in 0.7 mol·dm − ³ MSA. The flow cell has been described previously [17] and comprised a parallel plate reactor with electrode surface areas of 10 cm 2 . The electrolyte was maintained at room temperature and pumped through the cell at a rate of 0.44 dm 3 ·s −1 using a Watson Marlow 505S peristaltic pump.…”

“…Unlike the vanadium and the zinc bromine redox flow batteries, the soluble lead flow battery (SLFB) uses comparatively cheap and non-corrosive materials in redox flow technology. The SLFB is a well-researched technology [10,[16][17][18] that uses electrolyte made from methanesulfonic acid (MSA) and Pb 2+ in the form of lead methanesulfonate. The electrochemistry is based on two redox couples; Pb/Pb 2+ and PbO 2 /Pb 2+ [10].…”

A novel flow battery: A lead acid battery based on an electrolyte with soluble lead(II). Part IX: Electrode and electrolyte conditioning with hydrogen peroxide

“…The soluble lead acid flow battery [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9] has been developed on the laboratory scale with a view to large scale energy storage. It differs from the traditional lead acid battery in that it employs a methanesulfonic acid electrolyte in which lead(II) is highly soluble so that the overall cell reaction is:…”

“…A previous paper in this series [8] has described charge cycling of the battery. Under certain conditions, a unit cell can be operated through more than 50 charge/discharge cycles.…”