Study On Preparation and Characterization of the Composite Bipolar Plate for Vanadium Redox Flow Battery

Study on Preparation and Characterization of  the Composite Bipolar Plate for Vanadium Redox Flow Battery

XIE Xiaofeng¹, WANG Wenpin²,WANG Jinhai¹, WANG Shubo¹, LV Yafei², MATHUR V. K³

1 Institute of Nuclear and New Energy Technology, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China

2 College of Material Science And Engineering, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing 100029,China

3.Department of Chemical Engineering, University of New Hampshire, NH 03824, USA

AbstractA composite bipolar plate for an all-vanadium redox flow battery has been prepared by using polypropylene (PP), polypropylene-maleic anhydride graft copolymer (g-PP) as polymer matrix and flake graphite as conductive filler and using a solution intercalation method. Four probes method, potentiodynamic experiments, potentiostatic experiments, cyclic voltammetry(CV) and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy(EIS) were used to investigate the conductivity, corrosion resistance and electrochemical performance of the bipolar plate. The results showed that g-PP made the graphite uniformly dispersed in the polymer, which significantly improved compatibility between the conductive filler and the polymer matrix. The conductivity of the composite bipolar plate was about 52.7 S·cm^-1. When the voltage was 1.2 V, the corrosion current was about 2.1×10^-3 A·cm^-2. The prepared bipolar plate could meet the requirements of an all - vanadium flow battery. 

Key words

Vanadium Redox Battery(VRB); electrochemical impedance spectroscopy bipolar plate; cyclic voltammetry

References

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 Acknowledgements

The work was funded by Tsinghua University Initiative Scientific Research Program (201010800623),State Key Laboratory for Automotive Safety and Energy(KF10132), State Key Lab of Power Systems(SKLD10KZ03).