• Carbon letters
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• 제28권
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• pp.105-110
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• 2018

Owing to their scalability, flexible operation, and long cycle life, vanadium redox flow batteries (VRFBs) have gained immense attention over the past few years. However, the VRFBs suffer from significant polarization, which decreases their cell efficiency. The activation polarization occurring during vanadium redox reactions greatly affects the overall performance of VRFBs. Therefore, it is imperative to develop electrodes with numerous catalytic sites and a long cycle life. In this study, we synthesized heteroatom-rich carbon-based freestanding papers (H-CFPs) by a facile dispersion and filtration process. The H-CFPs exhibited high specific surface area (${\sim}820m^2g^{-1}$) along with a number of redox-active heteroatoms (such as oxygen and nitrogen) and showed high catalytic activity for vanadium redox reactions. The H-CFP electrodes showed excellent electrochemical performance. They showed low anodic and cathodic peak potential separation (${\Delta}E_p$) values of ~120 mV (positive electrolyte) and ~124 mV (negative electrolyte) in cyclic voltammetry conducted at a scan rate of $5mV\;s^{-1}$. Hence, the H-CFP-based VRFBs showed significantly reduced polarization.

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• 제32권2호
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• pp.571-575
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• 2011

Graphite-based electrodes were prepared using synthetic graphite (MCMB 1028) or natural graphite (NG) powder using a dimensionally stable anode (DSA) as a substrate. Their electrochemical properties were investigated in vanadiumbased electrolytes to determine how to increase the durability and improve the energy efficiency of redox flow batteries. Cyclic voltammetry (CV) was performed in the voltage range of -0.7 V to 1.6 V vs. SCE at various scan rates to analyze the vanadium redox reaction. The graphite-based electrodes showed a fast redox reaction and good reversibility in a highly concentrated acidic electrolyte. The increased electrochemical activity of the NG-based electrode for the $V^{4+}/V^{5+}$ redox reaction can be attributed to the increased surface concentration of functional groups from the addition of conductive material that served as a catalyst. Therefore, it is expected that this electrode can be used to increase the power density and energy density of redox flow batteries.

• Journal of Electrochemical Science and Technology
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• 제14권2호
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• pp.152-161
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• 2023

Vanadium redox flow batteries (VRFBs) have been considered one of promising power sources for large scale energy storage systems (ESS) because of their excellent cycle performance and good safety. However, VRFBs still have a few challenging issues, such as poor Coulombic efficiency due to vanadium crossover between catholyte and anolyte, although recent efforts have shown promise in electrochemical performance. Herein, the vanadium complexes with various glyme ligands have been examined as active materials to suppress vanadium crossover between catholyte and anolyte, thus improving the Coulombic efficiency of VRFBs. The conventional Nafion membrane has a channel size of ca. 10 Å, whereas vanadium cation species are small compared to the Nafion membrane channel. For this reason, vanadium cations can permeate through the Nafion membrane, resulting in significant vanadium crossover during cycling, although the Nafion membrane is a kind of ion-selective membrane. In this regard, various glyme additives, such as 1,2-dimethoxyethane (monoglyme), diethylene glycol dimethyl ether (diglyme), and tetraethylene glycol dimethyl ether (tetraglyme) have been examined as complexing agents for vanadium cations to increase the size of vanadium-ligand complexes in electrolytes. Since the size of vanadium-glyme complexes is proportional to the chain length of glymes, the vanadium permeability of the Nafion membrane decreases with increasing the chain length of glymes. As a result, the vanadium complexes with tetraglyme shows the excellent electrochemical performance of VRFBs, such as stable capacity retention (90.4% after 100 cycles) and high Coulombic efficiency (98.2% over 100 cycles).

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• 제53권5호
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• pp.638-645
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• 2015

Vanadium redox flow batteries (VRFBs) have been investigated for their potential utility as large energy storage systems due to their advantageous performances in terms of long cycle life, high energy efficiency, low cost, and flexible design. Carbon materials are typically used as electrodes in redox reactions and as a liquid electrolyte support. The activities, surface areas, and surface morphologies of porous carbon materials must be optimized to increase the redox flow battery performance. Here, to reduce the resistance in VRFBs, surface-modified carbon felt electrodes were fabricated, and their structural, morphological, and chemical properties were characterized. The surface-modified carbon felt electrode improved the cycling energy efficiencies in the VRFBs, from 65% to 73%, due to the improved wettability with electrolyte. From the results of impedances analysis with proposed fitting model, the electrolyte-coupled polarization in VRFB dramatically decreased upon modification of carbon felt electrode surface. It is also demonstrated that the compressibility of carbon felt electrodes was important to the VRFB polarization, which are concerned with mass transfer polarization. The impedance analysis will be helpful for obtaining better and longer-lived VRFB performances.

• 대한기계학회논문집B
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• 제40권12호
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• pp.777-784
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• 2016

바나듐 전해질 산화-환원 흐름전지(vanadium redox flow batteries, VRFBs)는 간헐적 에너지 저장 시스템의 에너지 저장장치로 사용된다. VRFBs는 재료 및 동작조건에 따라 성능의 차이를 보이며, 각 성능특성에 따른 VRFBs개발이 요구된다. 본 연구에 사용된 단위셀은 반응면적 $25cm^2$이며, 전해액은 0.6의 충전상태를 나타낸다. 방전전류밀도를 0에서 $520mA/cm^2$ 까지 변화시키면서 동시에 전해질 유량도 5mL/min에서 60mL/min까지 변화시켰다. 동일한 입구 전해액 상태에 따른 방전 성능 평가를 위해 4개의 탱크를 사용한 비순환 시스템을 구축하였다. 본 논문은 유량 및 전류밀도의 변화에 대한 단자전압을 측정하였으며, $25cm^2$ 반응면적을 가지는 바나듐계 산화-환원 유동전지 시스템의 최대전류밀도에 대한 실험식을 도출하였다.

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• 제33권11호
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• pp.3589-3592
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• 2012

Carbon composite bipolar plates with various carbon black contents were prepared by a compression molding method. The electrical conductivity and electrochemical stability of the bipolar plates have been evaluated. It is found that the electrical conductivity increases with increasing carbon black contents up to 15 wt %. When the carbon black contents are greater than 15 wt %, the electrical conductivity decreases because of a poor compatibility between epoxy resin and carbon black, and a weakening of compaction in the carbon composite bipolar plate. Based on the results, it could be concluded that there are optimum carbon black contents when preparing the carbon composite bipolar plate. Corrosion tests show that the carbon composite bipolar plate with 15 wt % carbon black exhibits better electrochemical stability than a graphite bipolar plate under a highly acidic condition. When the optimized carbon composite bipolar plate is applied to vanadium redox flow cells, the performance of flow cells with the carbon composite bipolar plate is comparable to that of flow cells with the graphite bipolar plate.

• 전기화학회지
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• 제16권4호
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• pp.204-210
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• 2013

Thin pore-filled cation and anion-exchange membranes (PFCEM and PFAEMs, $t_m=25-30{\mu}m$) were prepared using a porous polymeric substrate for efficient all-vanadium redox flow battery (VRB). The electrochemical and charge-discharge performances of the membranes have been systematically investigated and compared with those of commercially available ion-exchange membranes. The pore-filled membranes were shown to have higher permselectivity as well as lower electrical resistances than those of the commercial membranes. In addition, the VRBs employing the pore-filled membranes exhibited the respectable charge-discharge performances, showing the energy efficiencies (EE) of 82.4% and 84.9% for the PFCEM and PFAEM, respectively (cf. EE = 87.2% for Nafion 1135). The results demonstrated that the pore-filled ion-exchange membranes could be successfully used in VRBs as an efficient separator by replacing expensive Nafion membrane.

• 한국수소및신에너지학회논문집
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• 제32권4호
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• pp.256-262
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• 2021

A carbon felt electrode was prepared using ozone and ammonia sequential treatment and applied as an electrode for a vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB). The physical and electrochemical analyses demonstrate that the oxygen groups facilitate nitrogen doping in the carbon felt. Carbon felt (J5O3+NH3), which was subjected to ammonia heat treatment after ozone treatment, showed higher oxygen and nitrogen contents than carbon felt (J5NH3+O3), which was subjected to ammonia heat treatment first and then ozone treatment. From the charging/discharging of VRFB, the J5O3+NH3 carbon felt electrode showed 14.4 Ah/L discharge capacity at a current density of 150 mA /cm², which was 15% and 33% higher than that of J5NH3+O3 and non-activated carbon felt (J5), respectively. These results show that ozone and ammonia sequential treatment is an effective carbon felt activation method to increase the performance of the vanadium redox flow battery.

• 한국전기전자재료학회논문지
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• 제31권1호
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• pp.61-67
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• 2018

High-power lithium batteries are suitable for equipment with high power output needs, such as for ESS's initial start-up. However, their management cost is increased by the installation of air-conditioning to minimize the risk of explosion due to internal temperature rise and also by a restriction on the number of charge/discharge cycles. High-capacity flow batteries, on the other hand, have many advantages. They can be used for over 20 years due to their low management costs, resulting from no risk of explosion and a high number of charge/discharge cycles. In this paper, we propose an ESS based on hybrid batteries that uses a lithium iron phosphate battery (LiFePO) at the initial startup and a vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB) from the end of the transient period, with a bi-directional PCS to operate two batteries with different DC voltage levels and using an efficient energy management control algorithm.

• 한국표면공학회지
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• 제54권4호
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• pp.164-170
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• 2021

Vanadium redox flow batteries (VRFB) have emerged as large-scale energy storage systems (ESS) due to their advantages such as low cross-contamination, long life, and flexible design. However, Hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) in the negative half-cell causes a harmful influence on the performance of the VRFB by consuming current. Moreover, HER hinders V²⁺/V³⁺ redox reaction between electrode and electrolyte by forming a bubble. To address the HER problem, carbon nanotube/graphite felt electrode (CNT/GF) with oxygen functional groups was synthesized through the hydrothermal method in the H₂SO₄ + HNO₃ (3:1) mixed acid solution. These oxygen functional groups on the CNT/GF succeed in suppressing the HER and improving charge transfer for V²⁺/V³⁺ redox reaction. As a result, the oxygen functional group applied electrode exhibited a low overpotential of 0.395 V for V²⁺/V³⁺ redox reaction. Hence, this work could offer a new strategy to design and synthesize effective electrodes for HER suppression and improving the energy density of VRFB.