Study on architecture design of electroactive sites on Vanadium Redox Flow Battery (V-RFB)

¹ Faculty of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Universiti Malaysia Pahang, 26600 Pekan, Pahang, MYS
² Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Universiti Malaysia Pahang, 26600 Pekan, Pahang, MYS
³ School of Chemical Sciences and Food Technology, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia 43600 Bangi, Selangor, MYS
⁴ Department of Materials, University of Oxford Oxford OX1 3PH, UK

Abstract

Numerous researches have been conducted to look for better design of cell architecture of redox flow battery. This effort is to improve the performance of the battery with respect to further improves of mass transport and flow distribution of electroactive electrolytes within the cell. This paper evaluates pressure drop and flow distribution of the electroactive electrolyte in three different electrode configurations of vanadium redox flow battery (V-RFB) cell, namely square-, rhombus- and circular-cell designs. The fluid flow of the above-mentioned three electrode design configurations are evaluated under three different cases i.e. no flow (plain) field, parallel flow field and serpentine flow field using numerically designed three-dimensional model in Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software. The cell exhibits different characteristics under different cases, which the circular cell design shows promising results for test-rig development with low pressure drop and better flow distribution of electroactive electrolytes within the cell. Suggestion for further work is highlighted.