A research team at the Institute of Metal Research of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has advanced “all-iron” flow battery technology.
In particular, a newly formulated electrolyte facilitates thousands of charge-discharge cycles. It provides a budget-friendly, high-endurance answer for the world’s massive energy storage needs.
The development solves the long-standing issues of material degradation and leakage (crossover) by re-engineering the iron complex at the molecular level.
The high price disparity between raw materials is a main driver of this innovation, with lithium currently trading at over 80 times the cost of iron. The massive price gap makes iron-based batteries a viable alternative to overcome the supply constraints that are stalling the global shift to green energy.
Experts hope that replacing expensive, supply-constrained lithium with earth-abundant iron will finally make grid-scale renewable energy storage financially viable, offering a cheap, scalable method to stabilize power supplies when solar and wind energy are unavailable.
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