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Extending the Lifespan of Soluble Lead Flow Batteries with a Sodium Acetate Additive

Latest updated: May 29, 2020

Authors: Lin, Y. T., Kuo, W. C., Lee, C. Y., Tan, H. L., Chen, H. Y., Chan, H. W., Lai, Y. H., Pan, K. R. Extending the Lifespan of Soluble Lead Flow Batteries with a Sodium Acetate Additive. DOI: J. Vis. Exp. (143), e58484, doi:10.3791/58484 (2019).

 

Abstract

In this report, we present a method for the construction of a soluble lead flow battery (SLFB) with an extended cycle life. By supplying an adequate amount of sodium acetate (NaOAc) to the electrolyte, a cycle life extension of over 50% is demonstrated for SLFBs via long-term galvanostatic charge/discharge experiments. A higher quality of the PbO2 electrodeposit at the positive electrode is quantitatively validated for NaOAc-added electrolyte by throwing index (TI) measurements. Images acquired by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) also exhibit more integrated PbO2 surface morphology when the SLFB is operated with the NaOAc-added electrolyte. This work indicates that electrolyte modification can be a plausible route to economically enable SLFBs for large-scale energy storage.

 

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