A new battery architecture under development at the University of Kansas may help tip the economics of renewable energy by making it cheaper to store excess wind and solar power than rely on gas or coal. The battery, known as a hydrogen-bromine flow cell, is being developed under the leadership of Trung Van Nguyen, a professor of petroleum & chemical engineering at the University of Kansas.
Since beginning work in 2101, Nguyen has overseen breakthrough work on key components of hydrogen-bromine battery design. Among his more notable accomplishments, Nguyen developed at KU. A battery’s electrode is where the electrical current enters or leaves the battery when it’s discharged. To be maximally efficient, an electrode needs a lot of surface area. Nguyen’s team has developed a higher-surface-area carbon electrode by growing carbon nanotubes directly on the carbon fibers of a porous electrode.
A key issue remaining before a hydrogen-bromide battery can be marketed successfully is the development of an effective catalyst to accelerate the reactions on the hydrogen side of the battery and provide higher output while surviving the extreme corrosiveness in the system. Now, with funding from an NSF sub-award through a private company called Proton OnSite, Nguyen is verging on solving this last barrier.
“I think we’re on the verge of a real breakthrough,” he said. “We need a durable catalyst, something that has the same activity as the best catalyst out there, but that can survive this environment. Our previous material didn’t have sufficient surface area to give enough power output. But I’ve been able to continue to work on this rhodium sulfide catalyst. I think we’ve figured out a way to increase surface area. We now have a better way, and we may publish that in three to six months — we have some minor issues to resolve, but I think we’ll have a suitable material for the hydrogen reaction in this system.”
For further details, read the full story on the KU website.