Grid Think

Full disclosure, I haven't made the best flow battery cell stack. If you have been reading my blog, I haven't even designed it myself. I have been replicating the cell stack from a Youtuber named CAYREX , every battery enthusiast should check his channel out.  But I have been lazy, instead of reading books, research papers and patents on stack design and designing my own cell stack, I just took the STL files from Cayrex's Patreon page and got them 3d printed, but after months of battery testing and troubleshooting with someone else's stack. I'll be breaking down the difference between Industrial grade stacks and a DIY stack. The images I will show will be mainly of CAYREX's stack, but this is applicable for all DIY and lab scale stacks Problem 1- Screws This is a photo of flow battery cell stack from the internet - Image 1-   Source  This is a good stack but, its problem is that the screws are inside the stack housing. These will corrode very badly the moment th...

I'll be honest, I have a tendency to nerd out about stuff and not really take action on it, so every once in a while I push myself to BUILD the battery, because AI can "brainstorm" all day, but can't build a battery So after reading some research papers on Iron-Chromium battery, I decided to build one, but this time I wanted to get some visual result, something a 5 year old kid can recognize, I had to light up an LED, but a single of Iron-Chromium battery has voltage of 1 Volt. That doesn't do anything. So I had to build another cell stack to get 2 V, this easily lights up a Red LED  . Making the Stack So ordered the 3D printed parts from online shop, I already had Iron chloride from my all iron build, I ordered Chromium Chloride (very cheap, very easily available, order online). If you want to know how to build it you can see my previous post . Since I already had a leak proof cell, making another one was not really a problem I just used some RO fittings and join...

When I left the Iron Redox Flow Battery overnight connected to the AA battery, and switched on the pumps again in the morning, I immediately noticed brown liquid flowing through the pipe into the tank, so I asked AI what happened (novice here too !!😇), then I had to understand how exactly a battery works. So buck up, now we are going into depths of battery science, but first the basic- Current is how many electrons can you push in the circuit per second, voltage is how hard you can push them, current density is how many electrons can pass through battery electrode per unit area per second. The higher the current density; faster the battery charges, lower the current density; slower the battery charges. But remember, per unit area, so the total amount of current flowing in the battery is dependent on area of the electrode also. A good battery crams as many electrons possible as quickly as possible in a unit area of the electrode. For instance, when you connect a fast/turbo charger to y...

So, when looking for a cheaper alternative to Vanadium batteries, I stumbled upon all iron chemistry,  the absolute cheapest battery chemistry possible, using only iron, the most mined element from Earth's crust. The metal so cheap that its literally the basis of human civilization. No need to heat the battery, no need to check supply chains, Iron is so abundant that you can find it wherever humans are. I was convinced, Gemini gave me the broke college kid solution. So I ordered Iron chloride from the internet, you know how much lab grade 500g highest purity cost me ? Rs 800 ($8), that's pennies as compared to Vanadium. So before I give you step by step procedure of building you own Iron Redox Flow Battery we need to understand how it works. Working of Iron Redox Flow Battery Similar to Vanadium, Iron redox flow battery has iron on both sides, on both sides it is in Fe2+ state, when it charges on the positive side it converts Fe2+ to Fe3+ (loses 1 electron) and on the negative ...