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The effect of additive supporting electrolytes on transport and electrochemical properties of deep eutectic solvent (DES) applied in non-aqueous redox flow batteries

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Abstract

Although the utilization of deep eutectic solvents (DES) as non-aqueous electrolyte of redox flow batteries has received enormous attention, its properties like high viscosity and low conductivity always remain a matter of concern, due to their negative effect on final battery power performance. Herein, the introduction of two types of additive supporting electrolytes (one: a mixture of dimethyl carbonate (DMC) and ethylene carbonate (EC) and the other: ethyl acetate (EA)) remarkably decreasing the viscosity and impedance of the DES with iron ions is reported, especially for DMC+EC. In addition, the cyclic voltammetry results show that the reversibility of Fe(III)/Fe(II) redox couple, and the reaction kinetics are improved after adding DMC+EC, while EA has little effect on improving the electrochemical performance. From Raman spectroscopy, it is found that a distinct characteristic peak occurs at 895 cm−1 for DMC+EC mixture, whereas the intensity of this peak is weak for EA. It is highly probable that the appearance of this characteristic peak serves to improve the electrochemical properties of DES.

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Funding

The work described in this paper was fully supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51676092), a grant from the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (No. 2015M571685, No. 2019M661749), Six-Talent-Peaks Project in Jiangsu Province (2016-XNY-015), High-Tech Research Key Laboratory of Zhenjiang City (No. SS2018002), and the Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions (PAPD), China.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Energy Research, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, 212013, China

    Ping Lu, Liyu Qin, Prabhuraj Balakrishnan, Qiang Ma, Huaneng Su & Qian Xu

  2. School of Energy and Power Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, 710049, China

    Weiwei Yang

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  1. Ping Lu
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  2. Liyu Qin
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  3. Prabhuraj Balakrishnan
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Correspondence to Weiwei Yang or Qian Xu.

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Lu, P., Qin, L., Balakrishnan, P. et al. The effect of additive supporting electrolytes on transport and electrochemical properties of deep eutectic solvent (DES) applied in non-aqueous redox flow batteries. Ionics 26, 5029–5036 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11581-020-03652-z

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