An Aqueous Redox Flow Battery Using CO2 as an Active Material with a Homogeneous Ir Catalyst

Abstract

For the application of CO₂ as an energy storage material, a H₂ storage system has been proposed based on the interconversion of CO₂ and formic acid (or formate). However, energy losses are inevitable in the conversion of electrical energy to H₂ as chemical energy (≈70 % electrical efficiency) and H₂ to electrical energy (≈40 % electrical efficiency). To overcome these significant energy losses, we developed a system based on the interconversion of CO₂ and formate for the direct storage and generation of electricity. In this paper, we report an aqueous redox flow battery system using homogeneous Ir catalysts with CO₂ -formate redox pair. The system exhibited a maximum discharge capacity of 10.5 mAh (1.5 Ah L^-1 ), capacity decay of 0.2 % per cycle, and total turnover number of 2550 after 50 cycles. During charging-discharging, in situ fluorescence X-ray absorption fine structure spectroscopy based on an online setup indicated that the active species was in a high valence state of Ir^IV .

Keywords: CO2; Formate; Iridium; Redox Flow Battery; XAFS.