Lin Dianchi, an all-media reporter from Southern Finance and Economics, reported from Shenzhen

Today, the first Guangming Science City Forum kicked off in Shenzhen. At the meeting, Zhao Tianshou, chair professor of the Southern University of Science and Technology and academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, shared the outlook of energy storage technology for carbon neutrality.

He said that achieving carbon neutrality requires the establishment of a new type of power system, which requires large-scale, high-security energy storage technologies of different durations.

Zhao Tianshou has long been committed to the research of heat and mass transfer theory and battery energy storage technology. The coupling theory of heat and mass transfer and electrochemical energy conversion in the battery energy storage system was established, and a new storage method for rechargeable and dischargeable liquid energy storage carriers was proposed.

Among them, the flow battery is the focus of its research in the past ten years. He said that the energy and power of traditional lithium batteries are gathered inside the battery, while the energy of flow batteries is gathered outside the battery, realizing the decoupling of energy and power. The advantages of flow batteries are high safety scalability and long battery life, which is three times that of traditional lithium-ion batteries.

"However, the reason why there is no large-scale application until now is that the cost remains high." Zhao Tianshou said.

He believes that the current flow battery is in the window period of industrialization.  "To reduce the cost of flow batteries, I think we need to start from two aspects. One is to reduce the materials required for the stack, and the other is to increase the utilization rate of the electrolyte. Even the most mature all-vanadium battery flow batteries are currently The electrolyte utilization rate is only 60%, which means that only 60% of the vanadium can play a role in the battery."

Zhao Tianshou said, "To achieve these two goals, the feasible way is to increase the current density, that is, the power density. This can not only reduce the cost but also improve the utilization rate of the electrolyte, which is also our goal."

Zhao Tianshou said, "I originally studied engineering thermophysics, and started to engage in electrochemical research 20 years ago. One of the achievements is to combine the knowledge of thermophysical and electrochemistry to solve the problem of flow batteries, including flow batteries. problems." Key technical issues.  "

"I proposed a new thermoelectrochemical coupling theory. Under the guidance of this theory, we broke through the key components of the flow battery and found electrode materials with improved electrode activity, high stability, and suitable for large-scale process production. " Zhao Tianshou said.

In addition, conventional electrode structures are mainly porous media supported by carbon fibers. The problem with it is that when the specific surface area increases, the electrical resistance increases simultaneously, reducing the cell's efficiency.

Zhao Tianshou mentioned, "We invented a new type of electrode with high specific surface area and low flow resistance, which greatly improved the efficiency and current density. At the same time, we used machine learning to design a new type of liquid flow path to find the battery flow path Having very little channel resistance while being able to distribute the liquid electrolyte evenly across the electrodes is another breakthrough."