RE: Alfa - help26 Feb 2019 10:11
Using V2O5 to make a polymer that is conductive.
In cells (batteries to the layman) that involve liquids and solutions, you can think of them as being 2 reactions that need to be kept physically apart.
The simplest of these is the Daniel cell, but the same principle applies to VRFBs and Lithium technologies, where you have one beaker with a zinc electrode in a solution of zinc sulfate, the other beaker has a copper electrode in a solution of copper sulfate (https://files.askiitians.com/cdn1/images/201492-11501864-6535-lemonlab_2.jpg).
The zinc oxidises and releases electrons that travel through the attached wire (this is the 'flow of electricity') to the copper electrode and releases positive zinc ions into the solution. The copper electrode now has 'spare' electrons on it, which attract copper ions from the solution and they are converted into copper atoms.
The problem is that the zinc solution now has more positive ions than negative and the copper solution more negative ions than positive so the reaction stops immediately.
The salt bridge is a way of balancing out he shortage of ions, by providing positive and negative ions. The cell now works, until either you run ot of zinc metal or copper ions, or, more likely the salt bridge runs out of ions.
To overcome this what we really need is something to allow ions to flow (the negatively charges sulfate ions) from one beaker to another.
The solution (enter Mr Daniel) was to use a porous ceramic pot (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_battery#/media/File:Daniel_cell.png), this allowed ions to diffuse through the ceramic.
The ceramic is not perfect and has limitations, such as being brittle etc. This lead to the development of polymers that would allow the ions to move through but are flexible. Again these have their problems so there is constant research to try to improve the conductivity etc of the polymers.
The gist of the article is to improve conducive polymers!
If it is a good development, then it is likely to be Incorporated into lithium cells....... which means vanadium becomes an integral part of lithium batteries ............... winner winner!
Due to the acidic nature of the VRFB solutions I dont think it would be of use to VRFB and the V2O5 dissolves in the acid, reducing the polymer conductivity.
Hope it helps and I have not insulted anyone's intelligence :-)
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