Hi all,
Just a final reminder that this will be in half an hour (2:30 rather than
the usual 3:30).
Best,
Ian
On Wed, Feb 1, 2017 at 6:06 PM Ian Kivlichan <ian.kivlichan(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
Hi all,
Tomorrow Danny will talk at group meeting, at 2:30 PM this week rather
than the usual 3:30. See below for his title and abstract.
All the best,
Ian
-----------------
Title: Screening of Flow Battery Electrolytes—Successes and Current
Challenges
Abstract:
Redox flow batteries (RFBs) are potentially a solution for the
intermittency problem that accompanies solar and wind energy. Until
recently, most flow battery research focused on vanadium flow batteries.
Unfortunately, vanadium is both too expensive and too rare to be a global
solution. The discovery of new electrolytes that are inexpensive, stable,
and soluble is critical to further development of this technology.
I will discuss the new RFB electrolytes that resulted from the
collaboration between the Aziz, Gordon, and Aspuru-Guzik groups. We
assisted in discovery of electrolytes for use in acidic and basic pH RFBs
with a high-throughput virtual screening approach. For these pH ranges, the
screening has mostly focused on quinone derivatives. In general, there are
more stable candidates for the low reduction potential electrolyte (the
negolyte) than for the high potential electrolyte (the posolyte). Theory
has helped determine the sources of these instabilities in quinones and has
identified candidates that are less susceptible to decomposition.
More recently, the screening effort has moved towards identifying
electrolytes for neutral pH RFBs. In this regime, the most promising
negolyte candidates are functionalized bipyridines and the most promising
posolyte candidates are metal coordination compounds, particularly
ferrocene derivatives. Screening of the former is a relatively
straightforward effort, building from the quinone methodology. In contrast,
metal coordination complexes present additional challenges due to their new
types of bonding and electronic structure.
Finally, I will discuss some other ways that theory has assisted the
experimentalists in this collaboration.