Jake Iverson, Vice President of Business Development at Redox One and Nico Mans, Metallurgy Superintendent at Arxo Metals
Reduction-Oxidation (or Redox for short) Flow Battery technology has been around since the 1970s, when NASA started researching safe, non-flammable energy storage methods and developed the Iron-Chromium chemistry. 1975 marked the first Vandadium redox flow battery development in the School of Chemical Sciences and Engineering at the University of New South Wales in Australia.
This Flow Battery technology proved promising because of the way it used the same metal-based electrolyte solution on both positive and negative sides to exploit Vanadium’s ability to adopt four oxidative states. It also had the ability, then, to store energy for long periods, effectively delivering Long Duration Energy Storage (LDES) battery. The need for LDES at that time however, was low.
Supply & Demand
A challenge faced – and one that exists today – is that Vanadium is a hard-to-extract, scarce and expensive metal. It never really took off in the 1980’s because there wasn’t a need for such large-scale energy storage, because fossil fuel-generated energy was plentiful and cheap and nuclear energy was seen as the future – quite different to the scenario we are facing today after a decade of de-nuclearisation and mandates to remove fossil-fuel generation from the grid. Today, there is an urgent need for stored renewable energy to be dispatched at volume when it’s needed – overnight when solar PV cells aren’t producing power and when there’s no wind to power turbines and at a scale large enough to supply large industrial plants and residential areas.
Vanadium Flow Batteries have been the leading chemistry for flow batteries to date because of it’s higher redox potential , higher energy density, and higher capacity as compared to Iron-Chromium. The problem is that Vanadium is seen as a critical mineral in many industries and is subject to large price fluctuations due to geo-political issues since most of the supply comes from non-fraternisation countries.
Safer, Cheaper, Abundant, More Sustainable
Tharisa Minerals owns one of the largest Chrome producing mines in South Africa. As the parent company to Redox One, we have secure access to a multi-generational supply of Iron and Chromium. Our proprietary process converts the raw Ferrochrome ore in a sustainable manner within kilometres of the source at our sister company Arxo Metals, allowing us to have an unrivalled cost of energy storage. In fact, our electrolyte will be a 10th of the cost of Vanadium electrolyte, meaning our batteries will be potentially cheaper than just the cost of electrolyte in Vanadium systems!
Global demand for Long Duration Energy Storage (LDES) is skyrocketing – as renewable generation sources gain more share of our electricity grid, there’s a growing need to store this energy to meet off-peak demands. In fact, the capacity of global wind and solar generation is forecasted to top 1 000 GW by 2030 and, by 2040, it’s estimated the world will require 160 TWh of storage capacity per year.
Evolution Revolution
As with any product in any marketplace, demand is driven by need. The car became essential when people found it could take them from A to B faster than horse-drawn transport could. Latterly, the automotive industry has been transitioning to electrified propulsion to decrease tail-pipe emissions. Manufacturers invested heavily in building plants to produce electric vehicles, mining of the essential minerals to create batteries which could power them was ramped up, countries signed net-zero promises and legislation was enacted to make them more easily accessible. Making fundamental changes and investing heavily in green technology has catalysed innovation.
That’s why the time for Redox One Flow Batteries is now. Our technology is evolving, we’re delivering increasingly scaled demonstration batteries that give us comprehensive data and continue to affirm our case for the cost-effectiveness and sustainability of our Iron-Chromium electrolyte. We’re producing more green energy than ever before and this transition to renewables is only possible through massive storage infrastructure. Redox One is poised for this challenge with our Iron-Chromium Flow Batteries – true safe, reliable, cost-effective and sustainable energy storage for generations to come.