The U.S. Department of Energy has awarded researchers from the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis a $500,000 grant to integrate high-performance redox flow batteries in power plants to increase efficiency, reduce emissions and improve grid stability by storing excess electricity when demand is low and dispatching it when demand is high.
The research team will be scaling up a titanium-cerium redox flow battery, developed in the lab of Vijay Ramani, the Roma B. & Raymond H. Wittcoff Distinguished University Professor in energy, environmental and chemical engineering. Ramani will collaborate with co-principal investigators Benjamin Kumfer, research assistant professor; and Shrihari Sankarasubramanian, research scientist. The team is partnering with local utility Ameren Missouri and electrochemical technology firm Giner Inc.
The two-year grant is part of the National Energy Technology Laboratory’s Energy Storage for Fossil Fuel Energy Systems program, which funds non-carbon capture, maturing energy storage technologies that have the potential to be integrated to large-scale power plants.
