Grid Think

You know I have been wrong before, but never so pleasantly surprised. I spent the last two months trying to copy VRFB........ well, not exactly. I wanted to make an Iron-Chromium Redox Flow Battery that was just as good as VRFB. That means its power density, efficiencies and performance should match closely with VRFB.  But as I have stated many times earlier, Fe-Cr batteries have a fundamental flaw, they can't operate at room temperature, which is the fundamental reason why they have not been commercialized yet. In my previous post I wrote about a paper that I had recently found, it added salt to the battery in order to enable it to operate  at room temperature. Let's understand how  The paper used salt to increase the kinetics of chromium at room temperature. This happened because the lithium (or in my case sodium) chloride increased the concentration of chloride ions in the electrolyte solution. This causes excessive Cl⁻ ions in the electrolyte solution and increased c...

In my previous posts I have written a lot about the trident of problems with Iron-Chromium Redox Flow Battery, which are -  Hydrogen Evolution Reaction Slow Chromium Kinetics High operating temperature for the battery Now if you ask an AI (Gemini in my case), one of the first answers it will give would be Bismuth as master solution to all 3. It stops Hydrogen evolution and makes chromium react faster, hence solving all the problems of the battery. It does that by  acting as a catalyst. It forces the Cr3+ to accept electron quickly and react faster, and it has a more positive electrode potential (+0.32 V), as compared to chromium (-0.41 V), this stops water from splitting into hydrogen. Source But first you need to understand how Bismuth is incorporated in the battery - The Mechanisms- In order to use bismuth or any other catalyst in a flow battery, you have 2 choices - Electrodeposition-   Dissolve bismuth chloride in the liquid electrolyte and when you apply voltage...