Alternative Designs to Harness Natural Convection in Flow Batteries

A. Ansari [1], S. Kumar [1],
[1] Department of Chemical Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, Karnataka, India
Published in 2016

The earlier work in our group has established that natural convection plays a dominant role in SLRFB. We used it to run a battery in which interestingly, the contents are agitated for brief spells when no current flows through it. The present work focuses on electrode configurations that harness the role of natural convection. In one such configuration, electrodes are positioned away from cell wall instead of keeping them flush with it, a practice followed in the previous configurations. Alternative designs implemented are able to increase the battery performance. Model and experiment are in good agreement. The efforts are underway to explore new designs, such as slotted or grid type electrodes, as length scale in vertical direction impacts natural convection significantly.