Sometimes, to go big you first have to go small. That’s what researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have done with their latest innovation in energy storage. 

With a goal of speeding up the time to discovery of new grid energy storage technology, the team designed a compact, high-efficiency flow battery test system that requires an order of magnitude less starting material while delivering results equal to the standard lab-scale test systems. The new mini flow cell design and experimental validation are described in an article published in the Journal of The Electrochemical Society. The redesigned mini flow cell closely mimics the internal structure of a traditional flow cell, scaled down by a factor of five. Despite its smaller size, the mini flow cell exhibits performance comparable to its larger counterpart.

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