The Zinc/Bromine Flow Battery

Professor Tony Vassallo holds the Delta Electricity Chair in Sustainable Energy Development at the University of Sydney, in the School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering. He took up this position in October 2008. Prior to this, he held the position of Senior Principal Research Scientist with the Commonwealth Scientific & Industrial Research Organisation, followed by a period of consultancy to industry and government in the field of sustainable energy technology. Tony has over 90 fully refereed papers in international journals and 8 patents, 6 of which are US or other international patents. His published work has been cited over 3000 times, and has a h-index of 31. He is the leader of the $13M Future Grid Research Cluster and Chief Investigator of the ARC Linkage project “New High Performance Zinc Bromine Batteries with Novel Electrode/Electrolyte Systems”. He is a past President of the Australian Institute of Energy, leader of the Clean Energy Research Cluster in the Faculty ofEngineering and leader of the Energy Storage Research Network at the University of Sydney. Gobinath Pillai Rajarathnam is a Ph.D. candidate at the Centre for Sustainable Energy Development at the University of Sydney, in the School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering. His current research utilises electrochemical impedance spectroscopy and computational fluid dynamics to study and improve flow battery systems via novel materials and design. Prior to this, he worked internationally as a consulting engineer, carrying out probabilistic risk and safety studies for oil/gas and chemical industries. Gobinath has a B.Eng. (Hons. I) in Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering from Sydney University. His awards include the Sydney University Dean’s List of Excellence in Academic Performance in 2008, the Bruce Choy Prize for 4th Year Chemical Engineering (shared) in 2011 and the Australian Postgraduate Award in 2014.

Introduction.- Description of the Zn/Br RFB System.- Revisiting Zinc-Side Fundamental Electrochemistry.- Zinc Electrodeposition Morphology.- Bromine-Side Electrode Functionality.- Strategies to Study and Improve the Zn/Br RFB.- Conclusions.