Evaluation of cost, materials, and safety of flow battery technologies for large scale energy storage

Abstract

New technologies of flow batteries have been developed but the cost, materials, and safety of each of the technologies are still lacking evaluation such as zinc-based flow batteries, so in this work, the cost, materials, and safety of zinc-based flow batteries including zinc air flow battery, zinc iodine flow battery, zinc iron flow battery, zinc manganese dioxide flow battery and vanadium flow batteries are examined for 12 large scale energy storage applications. This work demonstrated that zinc air flow battery is the most cost-effective because of the lowest cost of investment cost and Levelized cost of storage (LCOS) in all applications. The investment cost of zinc air flow battery is 122.91-194.17 $/kW and 12.29-194.17 $/kWh and the LCOS of zinc air is between 0.1-5 $/kWh and 0.15-9.5 $/kW. The Zinc iodine, Zinc iron, and Vanadium flow battery are very competitive in the LCOS. Using the flow battery at high power and energy is more cost-effective than using at low power and energy. For the materials and safety evaluation, all zinc-based flow batteries are safe for operating in large-scale energy storage because of non-toxic and not flammable materials and chemicals, but electrolyte for the vanadium flow battery is toxic. For electrolyte management, the zinc air flow battery is easier management than other systems, so zinc air flow battery is the best appropriate for use in large scale energy storage.