Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Non-aqueous redox flow batteries have shown promise for applications in grid energy storage. Increasing the efficiency of these batteries by developing the electrolyte chemistries is needed. Herein, we investigate the correlation between solvent properties and the electrochemical parameters of vanadium acetylacetonate V(acac)3. Using cyclic voltammetry (CV) and rotating disk electrode experiments (RDE), we show that trends in the performance of the V(acac)3 kinetics are directly related to solvent properties. We found strong relationships between the solvents polarity, viscosity, and donor number with the electrochemical behavior of V(acac)3 in terms of the electrochemical working widow, electron kinetics and stability towards cycling. Based on these finding, we also demonstrate how solvent selection can be improved with limited a priori knowledge.