Abstract
Aqueous redox flow battery (RFB) is one of the most promising technologies for grid-scale energy storage systems. Polysulfides are particularly attractive active materials owing to their low cost and high capacity, but the low energy efficiency and low operating current density limit their practical applications. Here we report an active and durable molecule catalyst, riboflavin sodium phosphate (FMN-Na), to transform sluggish polysulfide reduction reactions to fast redox reactions of FMN-Na via homogeneous catalysis. The FMN-Na catalyst substantially reduces the overpotential of a polysulfide–ferrocyanide RFB (S-Fe RFB) from more than 800 mV to 241 mV at 30 mA cm−2. A catalysed S-Fe flow cell was demonstrated for 2,000 cycles at 40 mA cm−2 with a low decay rate of 0.00004% per cycle (0.0017% per day). A catalysed polysulfide–iodide RFB operated for 1,300 cycles under 40 mA cm−2 without capacity decay. This work addresses the bottleneck of polysulfide-based RFBs for long-duration energy storage applications.
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Acknowledgements
The work described in this paper was supported by Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region under grant nos. N_CUHK435/18 (received by Y.-C.L.), RFS2223-4S03 (received by Y.-C.L.) and C1002-21GF (received by Y.-C.L. and J.F.). Y.-C.L. acknowledges the support from Xplorer Prize by New Cornerstone Science Foundation.
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J.L. and Y.-C.L. conceived the projects, analysed the data and wrote the manuscript. J.L. conducted the electrochemical measurements and material characterizations. Y.Y., Y.S. and K.L.L. assisted with the electrochemical measurements. Y.Z. and J.F. conducted the theoretical calculation.
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J.L. and Y.-C.L. are inventors of a patent application (US Patent application number 17/705,171) on the molecular catalysts described herein. The other authors declare no competing interests.
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Lei, J., Zhang, Y., Yao, Y. et al. An active and durable molecular catalyst for aqueous polysulfide-based redox flow batteries. Nat Energy 8, 1355–1364 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-023-01370-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-023-01370-0