CFDSimulationandExperimentontheFlowFieldsof.PDF

2010 The Second China Energy Scientist Forum ? CFD Simulation and Experiment on the Flow Fields of Electrolyte for All Vanadium Redox Flow Battery Chen Jin-qing1, Lv Hong-ling1, Wang Bao-guo2, Li Qing-song1 1. State Key Laboratory of Heavy oil, China University of Petroleum, Qingdao, China 266555 2. Department of Chemical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China 100084 1. jqchen@upc.edu.cn, 2. honglinglv@upc.edu.cn Abstract：The electrolyte flow states of all vanadium redox flow battery (VRB) have direct effect on the battery performance and life. To reveal the electrolyte distribution in the battery, the computation fluid dynamics (CFD) method was used to simulate the flow field and a battery cold-flow model experiment was carried out to confirm the simulated results. The results show that the predicted information agreed well with the experimental results. The electrolyte has a concentrated distribution in the central region of parallel flow field. The dead band rate is 25.8%. The disturbed flow and vortex flow areas mainly appear in the inlet and outlet regions and the materials in these regions should improve the anti-corrosion performance. The square field has an advantage over the rectangle on the industrial scale to improve the electrolyte distribution. The higher flux of electrolyte is able to stabilize the distributions and to reduce the impact of flow irregularity to improve the battery performance. Keywords: all vanadium redox flow battery (VRB); computational fluid dynamics (CFD); flow field design; electrolyte distributions; cold-flow model experiment