Your Research Partner
End-to-end customer support, ranging from research services to field testing
Expertise in a wide range of research areas
- Custom made electrolyte development
- Physical and chemical characterization of electrolytes
- Stability and shelf life studies
- Construction material evaluation
- Corrosion analysis
- Scale up, blending and mass production
Choose ICL as your development partner with custom research services
Academic Innovation
Identify and support breakthrough innovations in preliminary stages
Development Support
Custom research services, from troubleshooting to full joint development
Field Applications
Support rollout of system from lab to field installations
Case Study - 1
ICL developed high temperature BCA
To reach optimal energy efficiency, battery manufactures are struggling to keep the battery working at room temperature conditions, wasting a significant amount of the stored energy on HVAC.
ICL developed a number of innovative complexing agents that are designed to work at elevated temperatures of up to 55°C, keeping other properties constant as they were at 35°C. The main chemical and physical characteristics that had been evaluated were the amount of free non-complexed bromine in the electrolyte, its ionic conductivity and the complexed bromine viscosity.
BCA17 has a similar viscosity as BCA13
Ionic conductivity of the electrolyte was improved for two of the new BCAs.
At elevated temperatures, the increase in concentration of the non-complexed bromine in the aqueous phase is causing the system to become unbalanced, decreasing performance and energy efficiency.
Case Study - 2
ICL developed BCA for high energy density HBr/Br2 rechargeable battery system
HBr/Br2 redox couple is a high-power, low cost technology in comparison to other rechargeable energy storage systems. Bromine is highly soluble in aqueous hydrobromic acid, requiring the addition of BCAs to the electrolyte solution to reduce its volatility, decrease diffusion rate through the Pt based catalyzed proton exchange membrane and to avoid the corrosiveness of the bromine exposed cell material.
ICL developed a proprietary BCA to support HBr/Br2 rechargeable battery systems.
The conductivities of the electrolyte solution with BCA are very high and follow the trend of the HBr values implementing the potential advantages of HBr/Br2 system by operating at its maximum potential.
The availability of the Br2 in the aqueous phase continues to remain constant, despite the increase of its overall concentration as SOC is increased. This Br2 equilibrium throughout the whole SOC range, allowed for expanded range use of the electrolyte solution and its safe electrochemical operation even at very high concentrated HBr/Br2 values.
Even at 90% SOC, when the Br2 concentration is 3 times high than HBr very little vapor pressure is observed due to the presence of ICL BCA in the solution.
Case Study - 3
ICL supports Redflow deployment in the Photon Farmer Project
The Photon Farmer, a dairy farm located in Vierakker in the eastern Netherlands, set out to test the revolutionary Zinc bromine flow batteries on a 57.5-hectare, sustainable and highly automated farm.
The goal of the project was to create a completely grid independent farm, deploying innovative energy storage technologies while exploring the best business models for storage of locally produced renewable energy.
The Photon Farmer has obtained financial backing from the European Union, and partnered with ICL and Redflow to deploy systems in the field. The Photon Farmer is the first project in its region to test the Redflow ZBM2 intelligent battery management system, and to profit by it.
Case Study-4
ICL supports innovative research at Princeton University, demonstrating a minimal architecture zinc-bromine battery
ICL partnered with Prof. Dan Steingart from the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Princeton University, supporting academic research in Bromine based chemistry in the field of energy storage.
The research project demonstrates a minimal-architecture zinc–bromine battery that eliminates the expensive components in traditional systems. The result is a single-chamber, membrane-free design that operates stably with >90% coulombic and >60% energy efficiencies for over 1000 cycles, equal to over 8,000 hours of operation. It can achieve nearly 9 Wh/L with a cost of <$100 per kWh at-scale.
Link:
http://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlehtml/2017/EE/C6EE02782B
The cell is assembled in a completely discharged state, the electrolyte is clear and no metallic Zn is present.
Charge state: Metallic Zinc dentrites and Bromine are presented
Discharge state: The electrolyte is clear and no metallic Zn is present.
Case Study 1
ICL developed high temperature BCA
Case Study 2
ICL developed BCA for high energy density HBr/Br2 rechargeable battery system
Case Study 3
ICL supports Redflow deployment in the Photon Farmer Project
Case Study 4
ICL supports innovative research at Princeton University, demonstrating a minimal architecture zinc-bromine battery
Innovation Program
Working on a breakthrough bromine based energy storage project? ICL is proud to partner with new researchers, working together to advance the field of energy storage.
Working on a breakthrough bromine based energy storage project? ICL is proud to partner with new researchers, working together to advance the field of energy storage.
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