Research of Nanostructured Carbon Felt Materials as Electrodes of Vanadium Flow Batteries

Flowing vanadium batteries are gaining great popularity in the world and are already ahead of lead-acid batteries in terms of installed capacity, but are far behind lithium-ion batteries. The wide distribution of these systems is also constrained by the low power density, due to the fact that the electrocatalytic activity of electrode materials towards to vanadium ions is low, therefore, the polarization resistance at high current densities is significant. Therefore, in this research the modification method of felt electrodes to reduce the resistivity of a flow battery cell. The modification is carried out by thermal catalytic decomposition of propane/butane on the surface of a carbon fiber. The application of filamentous nanostructures has been shown to reduce the resistance of a flow-through rechargeable battery from 11 to 3.9 Ω cm2.