Public Funding for RFC Power Limited

The objective of the PCB-Flow project is to reduce the high costs of redox flow batteries, making them more economically viable for use in supporting the integration of increased amounts of variable renewable energy required for the UK to meet its net-zero commitments. Flow batteries are a promising technology for addressing the unique energy demands created by the transition to a low carbon energy system, but adoption has been hindered to date by their high up-front capital costs. The two largest factors in the cost of a large commercial flow battery system are the electrolyte and the power stack. This project brings together two innovative technologies developed in the UK which directly address those high cost elements with the potential to significantly reduce the overall costs of this long duration energy storage solution. This project represents the combination of two technologies developed in the UK and could lead to a UK based manufacturing capacity for low cost flow batteries, driving down the cost of long duration energy storage, increasing the flexibility and resilience of the UK's energy systems to crises like those posed by the current COVID-19 pandemic, and ultimately helping the UK meet its decarbonisation and climate change objectives.

no public description

The objectives of the LoCoLyte project are to reduce the high costs of the electrolyte in redox flow batteries, making them more economically viable for use in developing countries where the electricity grid is weak and un-reliable. Flow batteries have been identified as a promising technology for addressing the unique energy demands in weak grids, but adoption has been hindered to date by their high up-front capital costs. The largest factor in the cost of a large commercial flow battery system is the electrolyte, as these typically consist of vanadium redox couples. This feasibility project aims to demonstrate a high-performance, low-cost, durable Manganese-hydrogen flow battery (MHFB). This storage technology has the potential to provide many hours of high quality power from the kW to MW-scale. A key advantage of this approach over other flow battery chemistries is that it increases power density through use of the hydrogen couple, and utilises a very low cost manganese redox couple. RFC Power has developed a novel electrolyte based on manganese which is estimated to be a tenth of the cost of a vanadium electrolyte in terms of $/kWh of energy stored. In combination this offering will significantly reduce the up-front system cost, which is a major barrier to the widespread adoption of current commercial flow battery technology and is particularly relevant in developing economies.

Ever increasing energy demands and decarbonisation efforts require substantial incorporation of renewable energy sources such as solar and wind. Their intermittency necessitates addition of significant capacity of energy storage capabilities for proper and uninterrupted grid operation that will result in saving of more than hundred billions dollars to the global world economy. Having extremely long cycle life and being completely site-independent, redox flow batteries and especially commercialised all-vanadium systems are excellent candidates to address energy. Nonetheless, uncertainty in cost of vanadium compounds of the electrolyte are hampering widespread development of all-vanadium redox flow systems. The new technology, developed at Imperial College and on route to commercialisation by RFC Power, has completely replaced the vanadium electrolyte while retaining all the advantages of flow batteries. The technology is based on hydrogen and very abundant and cheap manganese making it 70% cheaper than existing all-vanadium flow systems. This hybrid Manganese Hydrogen Flow Battery (MHFB) has demonstrated exceptional performance running for more than two hundred cycles with 76% roundtrip efficiency and capable of delivering more than 0.8 W/cm2 peak power. The HYAPEREST project will focus on integrating of this MHFB system with patent-pending solid-state hydrogen storage developed by H2GO Power.