Investigation of different acidic battolyser conditions for energy storage and hydrogen production

A purpose built battolyser, using the combined technologies of a battery and an electrolyser, has been developed for energy storage and hydrogen production at a lower cost than current electrolysis technology. Various acidic conditions and electrode materials were used to evaluate the performance of each battolyser configuration. Only low-cost, abundant, low toxicity and low environmental hazard materials were selected. Performance was evaluated by durability and degradations tests and the results demonstrated that a vanadium redox flow battery configuration could achieve high hydrogen yields, good efficiency, and electrical storage compared to an iron flow cell and sodium-ion manganese hybrid cell. Materials deposited on the electrodes after cycling were characterized using power x-ray diffraction.