Coming Full Circle - Back to Iron-Chromium

After 3 months of troubleshooting, researching on All iron hybrid redox flow battery patents, research paper, white papers and ESS Inc videos, I gave up on Iron chemistry, but not entirely, Iron is still dirt cheap, it is still universally available.

The effort to result ratio did not make sense for all iron battery, you fight iron needles (or dendrites), hydrogen evolution, make complex systems to manage both, laser weld you stack to make it leak proof. After all this, you will get a battery that wastes half of the energy it consumes.

So I honestly, thought, there has got to be a better way, a better chemistry that still uses dirt cheap Iron, but does not have needles or GOD-AWFUL efficiency. Who's manufacturing is not rocket science, something much closer to Vanadium, because, well let's be honest, Vanadium is amazing, despite being out of budget.
To my surprise, it wasn't a novel chemistry, rather an old one, which I had thought to be problematic.

So I found a research paper, link here. This clearly shows that the efficiency of Iron Chromium Redox Flow battery (78%) is very close to Vanadium Redox Flow Battery (82%), that's very close. At a lower cost

But wait, isn't this the battery that had to be heated to run, yes, but here is a thing I had learnt after talking to VRFB manufacturers - all batteries generate heat when charged with massive amounts of electricity. Lithium-Ion, Sodium-Ion, even Vanadium, yes Vanadium is fire safe but its efficiency and performance goes down with increasing temperature. So Delectrik and other VRFB manufacturers have to use heat sinks to control temperature of the battery. 

If I have to do temperature control of the battery, why not just cheaper chemistry, but let's be very clear, Iron - Chromium still gives Hydrogen,  but not dendrites, because it is completely liquid based battery, like Vanadium.

So my current chemistry is choice- Iron-Chromium Redox Flow Battery, the middle sibling of the high performing yet expensive Vanadium and Dirt cheap iron with its own complex issues.

So now I am fighting the issues of Iron-Chromium while being tension free of the supply chain and cost of raw materials. 

More details about Iron-Chromium in the next post.

None of this is AI generated, so feel free to fact check me and looking forward to your views and help. 

Mayank Jately

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