{"id":670374,"date":"2025-05-20T19:38:14","date_gmt":"2025-05-20T16:38:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/water-based-flow-battery-could-break-solar-storage-barrier-for-homeowners\/"},"modified":"2025-05-20T19:38:14","modified_gmt":"2025-05-20T16:38:14","slug":"water-based-flow-battery-could-break-solar-storage-barrier-for-homeowners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/water-based-flow-battery-could-break-solar-storage-barrier-for-homeowners\/","title":{"rendered":"Water-based flow battery could break solar storage barrier for homeowners"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n Credit: Angewandte Chemie International Edition<\/i> (2025). DOI: 10.1002\/anie.202505383
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Engineers have developed a water-based battery that could help Australian households store rooftop solar energy more safely, cheaply and efficiently than ever before.<\/p>\n

Their next-generation “flow battery” opens the door to compact, high-performance battery systems for homes and is expected to be much cheaper than current $10,000 lithium-ion systems.<\/p>\n

Flow batteries have been around for decades but have traditionally been used in large-scale energy storage due to their large size and slow charge speeds.<\/p>\n

Wanqiao Liang, first author of the study published<\/a> in Angewandte Chemie International Edition<\/i> and Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Materials Science<\/a> and Engineering, said the team’s new membrane design fixes the speed problem, making it ideal for households and a promising key player in the energy transition market.<\/p>\n

“We’ve taken a safe, affordable chemistry and made it fast enough to capture rooftop solar in real time,” Liang said.<\/p>\n

“We’ve engineered a membrane that finally makes organic flow batteries competitive for residential and mid-scale storage. It opens the door to systems that are not only cheaper, but also safer and simpler to scale.”<\/p>\n

While some companies already produce flow batteries, Monash’s design stands out for its combination of safety, low cost and high-speed performance\u2014a balance few systems around the world have achieved.<\/p>\n

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\n Wanqiao Liang. Credit: Monash University
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“The key was improving ion selectivity; letting the good ions through quickly while keeping unwanted ones out. Our new membrane achieves this balance, allowing fast, stable operation even at high current densities,” Liang said.<\/p>\n

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“We outperformed the industry-standard Nafion membrane in both speed and stability\u2014running 600 high-current cycles with virtually no capacity loss\u2014that’s a major leap forward for this kind of battery.”<\/p>\n

Liang said a careful balance was crucial to making these batteries work for rooftop solar at home.<\/p>\n

“This is the kind of battery you’d want in your garage. It’s non-toxic, non-flammable, and made from abundant materials, all while keeping up with solar power on a sunny day.”<\/p>\n

The team is now 3D printing prototype systems and testing them under real-world conditions.<\/p>\n

“If the prototypes keep performing the way we expect, this could be on the market in a few years’ time,” Liang said.<\/p>\n

Flow batteries store energy in liquids rather than solid materials like those found in lithium-ion batteries, making them cheaper to manufacture, safer to operate and easier to scale.<\/p>\n

“We’ve developed a new type of membrane inside the battery that guides the flow of materials better\u2014kind of like adding lanes to a highway. That means faster charging, longer battery life and better performance overall,” Liang said.<\/p>\n

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More information:<\/strong>
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tWanqiao Liang et al, Flow Battery with Remarkably Stable Performance at High Current Density: Development of A Nonfluorinated Separator with Concurrent Rejection and Conductivity, Angewandte Chemie International Edition<\/i> (2025). DOI: 10.1002\/anie.202505383<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\n Provided by
\n Monash University
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\n Citation<\/strong>:
\n Water-based flow battery could break solar storage barrier for homeowners (2025, May 20)
\n retrieved 20 May 2025
\n from https:\/\/techxplore.com\/news<\/a>\/2025-05-based-battery-solar-storage-barrier.html\n <\/p>\n

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