DIY experimental Redox Flow Battery kit
The guys at Flow Battery Research Collective have been designing a Redox Flow Battery development kit that you can build yourself using a 3d printer and a few tools. It's a desktop size flow battery that you can use to either do your own research, e.g. on different electrolytes or just to replicate their experimental findings.
Redox Flow Batteries have the potential to become grid scale or home electric energy storage solutions that are way better for the environment than current lithium based batteries. They can often scale power and capacity independently and allow for repairs.
The FBRC project wants to spread the knowledge on RFBs and help kickstart a global community that develops sustainable energy storage technology in an ope source fashion.
Beware that the project is still in its infancy and sourcing the materials can be a bit of a challenge. Be sure to ask around in the forums for help!
https://fbrc.dev/Open linkView original on lemmy.world
11 replies
I learned about this project when they got an NLnet grant last year and have been following the main dev on Mastodon. Very interesting project 👍
I'm building one and am super excited. Unfortunately I need to waid for some more parts to start experimenting.
Please share your experience. It still seems a bit too experimental right now for me to spend time on, but I hope that will change next year.
This is where I document my build. I'm updating frequently at the moment.
Very cool, thanks for sharing.
Thanks for sharing this! I've been passively following the flow battery tech for a while but had not ran across this project before.
Quite interested to see if I can get the experimental version working to some capacity. Hopefully the chemicals are not too difficult to purchase in small quantities.
For DIY flow batteries, the most accesible electrolytes are usually iron sulfate and potassium ferricyanide - both are relatively safe and can be ordered from science supply shops without special permits (unlike vanadium compounds used in commercial systems).
You can get them in the size of 500g or 1kg. I'd be happy to share from my stash if you live in EU.
That is very generous of you to offer. Sadly, I am not in the EU, otherwise I would certainly take you up on it.
I've started working to source the hardware components and it definitely seems to be tricky to find some items at a reasonable price or at all. You'll probably see me on the forums soon also trying to verify if I have suitable substitutes.
Amazing! I'm happy to hear I could recruit someone on Lemmy :)
This looks pretty cool - I will want to look into this later.
Anyone familiar with this CERN license for open source hardware?