Advantages of vanadium flow battery compared with other chemical power sources

Compared with other chemical power sources, vanadium flow battery has obvious advantages. The main advantages are as follows:

1. High power

By increasing the number of single-chip batteries and electrode area, the power of vanadium flow battery can be increased. At present, the power of vanadium battery in commercial demonstration operation in the United States has reached 6 MW.

2. Large capacity

By arbitrarily increasing the volume of electrolyte, the power of vanadium battery can be increased arbitrarily, up to more than a few watt hours. By increasing the concentration of electrolyte, the power of vanadium battery can be doubled.

3. High efficiency

Because the electrode catalytic activity of vanadium flow battery is high, and the positive and negative active substances are stored in the positive and negative electrolyte storage tanks respectively, the self discharge consumption of positive and negative active substances is avoided. The charge discharge energy conversion efficiency of vanadium battery is more than 75%, which is much higher than that of lead-acid battery.

4. Long life

Since the positive and negative active substances of vanadium energy storage battery only exist in the positive and negative electrolyte respectively, there is no common phase change of other batteries during charging and discharging, it can be deeply discharged without damaging the battery, and the service life of the battery is long. At present, the vanadium battery module with the longest commercial demonstration operation time in Canada has been in normal operation for more than 9 years, with a charge discharge cycle life of more than 18000 times, which is much higher than 1000 times of fixed lead-acid battery.

5. Fast response

The vanadium flow battery stack is full of electrolyte and can be started instantly. During operation, the switching of charge and discharge state takes only 0.02 seconds and the response speed is 1 millisecond.

6. Instant charging

The vanadium flow battery can be charged instantaneously by changing the electrolyte.

7. High safety

Vanadium battery has no potential explosion or fire hazard, even if the positive and negative electrolyte are mixed, there is no danger, but the electrolyte temperature increases slightly.

8. Low cost

In addition to the ion-exchange membrane, vanadium energy storage battery components are mostly cheap carbon materials and engineering plastics. The materials are rich in sources and easy to recycle. There is no need for precious metals as electrode catalysts and the cost is low.

9. Vanadium flow battery has large site selection freedom, can be fully automatic closed operation, no pollution, simple maintenance and low operation cost.