Vanadium Flow Batteries

There’s a century-old battery technology that’s taking the grid-scale market by storm. Based on water, virtually fireproof, easy to recycle, and cheap at scale, flow batteries could be the wave of the future.
#gridstorage #batteries #chemistry

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Credits:
Executive Producer:
Matthew Radcliff

Producers:
Elaine Seward
Andrew Sobey
Darren Weaver

Writer:
George Zaidan

Host:
George Zaidan

Scientific Consultants:
Brianne Raccor, Ph.D.
Michelle Boucher, Ph.D.
Rhodri Jervis, Ph.D.

Executive in Charge for PBS: Maribel Lopez
Director of Programming for PBS: Gabrielle Ewing
Assistant Director of Programming for PBS: John Campbell

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[ACSReactions]

Periodic table grab bag of battery elements that are used for flow batteries: zinc-bromine (the oldest!), polysulfide-bromine, iron-chromium, titanium-iron, the list goes on….!

[ronkirk]

Fun fact: Vanadium is about as common as copper, nickel and zinc in the Earth's crust, but it is more expensive (at present) to refine the ore. I'm a retired engineer, so I really enjoyed your explanation of the chemistry involved.

[brettito]

"Betting their inherited wealth" shots fired. Spicy for a science channel!

[allthingsdestructive]

Im finishing my PhD on VRFBs. If anyone wants to know the drawbacks or advantages feel free to comment below and I'll answer them. Also, the anolyte should have been colored violet, not blue. Blue corresponds to V4+, not V2+.

[jeffreysoreff]

Also, since the anolyte and catholyte are liquids, rather than solid electrodes which can accumulate defects with each charge/discharge cycle, a lot of the mechanisms for the cells to wear out go away.

[arthurparry]

I love this guy. Wish he was my chemistry teacher in school.we would have had a lot of fun

[johnathancorgan]

I've been hearing about vanadium redox flow batteries since UNSW's original work in the early 2000s. It's exciting, to be sure, but it and other flow battery chemistries never seem to have taken off since. It would be really interesting to see a home-scale off-grid implementation of solar + flow battery designed for year-round use.

[mrmaple]

I would have liked to learn more about how it would be recharged, and at what scale it could be useful to a homeowner (if at all.)

[thryce]

watching this makes me regret not actually using my chemistry degree. thanks for putting out solid content

[AussieBobL]

A family member lives on a 42000 acre canola farm in pastoral Western Australia and they have just leased 250 of those acres to a Vanadium ore processing plant. I recently visited the farm and looked at the site which is part of the least profitable section of the farm. The ore is going to be trucked in from an iron ore mine which also contains Vanadium about 200 miles away. The reasons they are constructing the processing plant are
- abundant supplies of natural gas are available via a large pipe line about 10 miles away.
- Underground water not suitable for agriculture but good enough for ore processing is available locally
- the property is about 40 miles from a large port where processed vanadium can be trucked to and shipped out from
- depending on price the iron from the ore can also be sold.
- a railway line exists between the mine, runs right through the proposed processing site and onto the port and once the processing plant scales up can replace the trucks.
- concrete reinforcing rods (rebar) contain significant amounts of V which is what gives rebar its tensile strength. Rebar can be separated fro waste concrete and put through the processing plant to recover the V
Once the processing plant is running a large solar array and Vanadium flow battery will be set up to replace the use of gas. The railway could also be electrified and the distances to the port are not outside the range of electric trucks to bring farm produce to the port saving huge amounts of diesel fuel used in the process.

[philouzlouis]

Ahhh Green Chemistry ;o)

Very interesting to reread the past and basic principles of our ancestor chemists.
(As a reference to your Haber-Bosch video on N2 and H2 to make NH3 and my comment on it ;o))

PHZ
(PHILOU Zrealone from the Science Madness forum)

[AidanRatnage]

I feel like you are setting a bad example by not wearing goggles while working with Conc H2SO4.

[KouroshKhaje]

nice presentation. I like to add: more than 40% of the Vanadium-Vanadium Flow battery cost, is the Vanadium electrolyte and stack only contributes 20 to 30% max of the battery cost. Vanadium price is volatile due to the primary market which is the steel + catalyst industry. when energing technology arrives in the market the main problem is the source of material like Vanadium?
+ Because this electrolyte is water base ( aqueous ), in cold and hot climates performance has some issues ( in cold the battery needs heating support, and in hot conditions, the solubility shows some effect then the effect comes on battery performance and lower efficiency.)

[gregroberson]

I've never heard of this. So cool!

[smizmar]

I love it how the dart landed on Fe. This is one of my favorite alternative batteries technologies! If I'm not wrong, don't we basically use this in our bodies?

[nhlanhlasophaza]

Great video thanks a lot. Tapping into my old school inorganic chemistry. Used to love this at varsity.

[Daniel-xvxm]

Thank you. That was a fantastic explanation of flow batteries

[is-gmhg]

Thanks for you time and efforts to creating this nice video. Keep it up!

[playgroundchooser]

0:57 Hold on, we're not going to let that brilliant little joke slide past... are we? 🤣🤣🤣🤣 Nothing better than taking a pop shot at trust fund "venture capitalists."

[KaushikAdhikari]

So flow batteries need an element having a lot of oxidation states. This means one cannot select just anything. Must choose from the d and f block elements