Renewable energy is ramping up quickly; in 2022, wind and solar power accounted for 12 percent of global energy output according to climate think tank Ember. But for these intermittent renewable energy sources to reach their full potential, they need be paired with grid-scale batteries that can store the energy to continue delivering power when the sun isn’t shining and the breeze isn’t blowing.
Such batteries are on the horizon. Materials engineers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are developing an inexpensive, safe and sustainable grid-scale device called an aqueous organic redox flow battery (AORFB). In research published August 3, 2023 in the journal Nature Energy, they demonstrate a platform to design and synthesize molecules for the cathode (positive) side of the battery. That’s a big step forward in making AORFBs commercially viable.
“A battery is only as good as its weakest link. You need both sides of a battery, the anode and the cathode, to be high performance,” says Patrick Sullivan, who earned his PhD in materials chemistry from UW-Madison in May, 2023 and is now CEO of Flux XII, a spinoff company he co-founded to advance commercial-scale flow batteries. “What this paper is about is developing a library of molecules with extra high capacity and stability for the flow battery cathode, which has been especially problematic for AORFB systems.”
Read more here: https://engineering.wisc.edu/news/for-the-sustainable-grid-of-the-future-the-right-battery-chemistry-matters