Thermally Regenerable Redox Flow Battery
Irene Facchinetti, Elkid Cobani, Doriano Brogioli, Fabio La Mantia, Riccardo Ruffο
Abstract
Abstract The efficient production of energy from low‐temperature heat sources (below 100 °C) would open the doors to the exploitation of a huge amount of heat sources such as solar, geothermal, and industrial waste heat. Thermal regenerable redox‐flow batteries (TRBs) are flow batteries that store energy in concentration cells that can be recharged by distillation at temperature <100 °C, exploiting low‐temperature heat sources. Using a single membrane cell setup and a suitable redox couple (LiBr/Br 2 ), a TRB has been developed that is able to store a maximum volumetric energy of 25.5 Wh dm −3 , which can be delivered at a power density of 8 W m −2 . After discharging 30 % of the volumetric energy, a total heat‐to‐electrical energy conversion efficiency of 4 % is calculated, the highest value reported so far in harvesting of low‐temperature heat.