“Flow batteries can, in theory, be easily scaled up to ­megawatt-hours by increasing the size of the tanks. They can also have longer lifetimes and be safer than lithium ion. They remain costly, though, with a capital cost of around US $800 per kilowatt-hour, more than twice that of lithium-ion batteries. “But they can be much cheaper, and our work accelerates this process,” says Nian Liu, a chemical and biomolecular engineering professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology.”

Improvements in the design efficiency could reduce that price and footprint by half initially and further as additional research progresses.

Another important element is that the electrolytes could be made easier to recycle which would bring down cost.

>in theory

Yawn. Another day, another battery design that promises to be the future. Call me when there's a real product on an assembly line.

Title: Holds promise

Sub: technology

Lots of things don’t pan out but I am happy they’re being pursued because progress is important. It’s not like they said “climate crisis solved.”

Batteries have gotten better every year that you've been alive.

Yeah, okay, science-bro, wake me up once your thing-of-the-week hits the market.

[deleted]

You mean like this one already available for several years now? https://redflow.com/

The paper referenced in the article used zinc iodide, but specifically stated it would be compatible with zinc bromide and other electrolyte chemistries.

I think that suggests that if scalable and practical, the improvements potentially highlighted in this article could be applied to the flow through segment of the company you mentioned.

(Note, I’m not a chemist, so please correct me if I misunderstood anything- the article was linked in OP’s story, and I compared to the website you provided).

So it said "electrodes" when it meant "electrolyte". Not a big deal.

[deleted]

Oh, if you're objecting to that part, that's solely because you truncated their sentence:

> Unlike lithium-ion batteries, which store energy in solid electrodes, flow batteries store chemical energy in liquid electrolytes that sit in tanks.

Oh shit was really tired whoops