Vanadium redox flow battery
Batería de flujo redox de vanadio
- Date
- 1985-1988 · confidence high
- Place
- Kensington, New South Wales, Australia
- Credited to
- Maria Skyllas-Kazacos (University of New South Wales)
- Field
- Matter & energy
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
A battery that stores energy in two tanks of vanadium electrolyte in different oxidation states, circulated through a cell. Capacity is increased by enlarging the tanks and it does not degrade over thousands of cycles.
There were precedents for flow batteries (NASA, Thaller, iron-chromium in the 1970s) and vanadium chemistry had been proposed earlier; the full all-vanadium system was developed by Skyllas-Kazacos.
What it led to
- long-duration stationary storage for renewables
- multi-megawatt installations in China and Japan
- other flow batteries (iron, zinc-bromine, organic)