Wood Products in Aqueous Organic Redox Flow Battery (Wood-AORFB)

To reduce CO2 emission and shift from nuclear to renewable energies, the Swedish electrical grid is fragilized and less efficient.

The swedish grid needs to be complemented with both large hydro pump storage system and distributed local stationary energy storage. In that context, redox flow battery (RFB) is a strong candidate.

Here we propose a research program in the establishment of a new type of RFB only based on sustainable organic materials as their atomic elements (O, C, N) are very abundant.

The liquid storage media is based on the biopolymer lignin as posolyte and redox polymer as negolyte, both combined with conducting polymers.

Those new redox polymer particles form a slurry with the electrolyte that possesses electronic and ionic conduction together with redox storage function.

The non-flammable, high-voltage, aqueous electrolyte (2.3V) and cellulose membrane enable us to fabricate a RFB that is environmentally friendly, cheap and with high energy density (100 Wh/L).