Category: News

Several CENELEST members took part in this year’s Smart Energy Conference and Exhibition in Sydney/Australia. In addition to presentations, numerous companies were represented as exhibitors at the two-day event. CENELEST participated as an exhibitor with its own booth. During the two days countless discussions were held and numerous new contacts from the international and national Australian sector of energy storage were established.

CENELEST attended the ninth International Flow Battery Forum (IFBF) in Lausanne/Switzerland this July. Chris had a lecture about CENELEST and scientific results of the cooperation which will be reported separately later on. Jens N. participated in the discussion on standards for vanadium flow battery electrolyte and presented the current state of developments in the field of international standardization in the IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission).

Maria gave an extremely interesting lecture on the situation of the Australian energy market. As always at this worldwide most important event in the field of redox flow batteries, old acquaintances were met again, new acquaintances were met and many discussions about energy storage were held.

We published an open access article about a Vanadium Oxygen Fuel Cell (VOFC) utilising up to 3.6 mol/L high concentration vanadium electrolyte. Compared to Vanadium Redox Flow Batteries, VOFCs allow much higher theoretical energy density by the replacement of the positive electrolyte with an oxygen (air) electrode. The replacement allows the usage of higher concentrated vanadium electrolytes which further increases the theoretical energy density. We present here a VOFC with 3.6 M vanadium solution, which has a theoretical maximum energy density of 146 Wh/L.

Vanadium Oxygen Fuel Cell Utilising High Concentration Electrolyte
M. Risbud, C. Menictas, M. Skyllas-Kazacos, J. Noack, Batteries 2019, 5(1), 24 (OPEN ACCESS)

In July 2018 we have made an industry visit to one of the largest vanadium flow batteries with 15 MW / 60 MWh. The Battery is owned by Hokkaido Electric Power Corp. near Chitose on Hokkaido Island in Japan and built by Sumitomo Corp. The purpose of the battery is to stabilize the grid with frequency regulation but also with peak shift.

Flow Batteries are a core compentence of CENELEST. We have always joined the International Flow Battery Forum since its founding and are glad to join this very important conference also this year together with Chris, Maria and Jens N. This year Chris will give a talk about the results of Vanadium/Oxygen fuel cell development. More info: http://www.flowbatteryforum.com/