(743a) Towards Engineering Advanced Vanadium Flow Battery
AIChE Annual Meeting
2013
2013 AIChE Annual Meeting
Topical Conference: Innovations of Green Process Engineering for Sustainable Energy and Environment
Materials and Processes for Thermo-, Electro- and Photo-Chemical Energy Storage
Thursday, November 7, 2013 - 3:15pm to 3:37pm
Flow batteries were specifically invented by electric utilities in the 1960’s to store large amounts of electricity in a safe and practical way. The complexities and latent dangers of bulk electricity storage in confined spaces have become more evident in recent years with a series of thermal runaway events at multi-MW battery installations. It is precisely in these areas that the inherent control stability, charge uniformity, thermal consistency and flexible form factor of flow batteries is most compelling.
At small scale, flow batteries may appear complex compared with “a few lead-acid cells in series”. However, when extended life and significant scale is required, all batteries rapidly require a complex array of components to actively manage and maintain performance. In the case of flow batteries, these components are invariably simpler, cheaper, more reliable, and easier to control. Consequently, a thoughtful flow-battery system design can yield a significantly more compelling product than is possible with conventional static battery technologies.
This paper discusses system level and cost-effective engineering of a compact, resilient and serviceable bulk electricity storage system. The paper further introduces the UniEnergy Technologies (UET) containerized product.