IIT Madras develops viable alternative to conventional Li-ion...


Posted on 10 Sep 2020

Tags: Innovation Reporter's Desk

 

Researchers have successfully researched upon an alternative to conventional lithium-ion and lead-acid batteries for industrial usage, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IIT-M) told media. With the Government of India aiming to increase power generation from non-fossil fuels such as solar and wind this is a vital breakthrough.

Researchers at IIT-M said that the study into vanadium redox flow battery stack development opens up possibilities for the indigenous fabrication of flow battery stacks by MSME units for domestic and grid-level energy storage applications.

“Researchers designed, fabricated, and executed indigenous kW-scale vanadium redox flow battery for application in energy storage which can be integrated into renewable sources such as solar and wind energy,” Sreenivas Jayanti, Department of Chemical Engineering, IIT-M was quoted as having said in National Chronicle.

Jayanti added that the team of researchers developed operating protocols and design criteria for flow battery stack of power rating up to 10 kW using the prototype of a practical size that can be directly employed in industrial-scale stacks for grid-level storage.

Researchers talked about the advantages of flow batteries and also revealed that the number of times electrolytes can be charged or discharged was very high.