After years of making progress on an organic aqueous flow battery, Harvard University researchers ran into a problem: the organic anthraquinone molecules that powered their ground-breaking battery were slowly decomposing over time, reducing the long-term usefulness of the battery.
After years of making progress on an organic aqueous flow battery, Harvard University researchers ran into a problem: the organic anthraquinone molecules that powered their ground-breaking battery were slowly decomposing over time, reducing the long-term usefulness of the battery.
Now, the researchers — led by Michael Aziz, the Gene and Tracy Sykes Professor of Materials and Energy Technologies at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and Roy Gordon, the Thomas Dudley Cabot Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Materials Science — have figured out not only how the molecules decompose, but also how to mitigate and even reverse the decomposition.
The death-defying molecule, named DHAQ in their paper but dubbed the “zombie quinone” in the lab, is among the cheapest to produce at large scale. The team’s rejuvenation method cuts the capacity fade rate of the battery at least a factor of 40, while enabling the battery to be composed entirely of low-cost chemicals.
Read more at Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
