Effect of Phosphate Additive for Thermal Stability in a Vanadium Redox Flow Battery

Organic/inorganic materials are investigated as additives to improve the stability of a vanadium electrolyte for a vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB) at operating temperatures of 25 °C and 40 °C. Among these materials, the most effective additive is chosen based on the thermal stability and electrochemical performance with a long inhibition time. Through precipitation time and electrochemical measurements, the results show that the best inhibition effect is achieved by adding sodium pyrophosphate dibasic (SPD, H₂Na₂O₇P₂) as an additive at a considerably high H₂SO₄ concentration (3M) electrolyte, indicating an improved redox reversibility and electrochemical activity. Nonflow cell assembled with the SPD additive exhibits larger discharge capacity retentions of 40% than a blank solution with the retentions of 2% at 600 cycles at 40 °C. In the case of flow cell, the capacity retention on the SPD additive shows 55.4%, which is 5.3% higher than the blank solution at 40 °C and 180 cycles. The morphology of the precipitation is investigated by SEM, which exhibits more severe V₂O₅ precipitation amount on the carbon felt electrode used in the blank electrolyte at 40 °C, which causes larger capacity losses compared to cells assembled with the SPD additive electrolyte.