Methylene Blue in a High-Performance Hydrogen-Organic Rechargeable Fuel Cell

Christopher G Cannon; Peter A A Klusener; Luke F Petit; Toby Wong; Anqi Wang; Qilei Song; Nigel P Brandon; Anthony R J Kucernak

doi:10.1021/acsaem.3c02515

Methylene Blue in a High-Performance Hydrogen-Organic Rechargeable Fuel Cell

ACS Appl Energy Mater. 2024 Mar 6;7(6):2080-2087. doi: 10.1021/acsaem.3c02515. eCollection 2024 Mar 25.

Authors

Christopher G Cannon¹, Peter A A Klusener², Luke F Petit³, Toby Wong³, Anqi Wang³, Qilei Song³, Nigel P Brandon⁴, Anthony R J Kucernak¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemistry, Imperial College London MSRH, White City, London W12 0BZ, U.K.
² Shell Global Solutions International B.V., Energy Transition Campus Amsterdam, Grasweg 31, 1031 HW Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
³ Department of Chemical Engineering, Imperial College London, South Kensington, London SW7 2AZ, U.K.
⁴ Department of Earth Science and Engineering, Imperial College London, South Kensington, London SW7 2AZ, U.K.

Abstract

A hydrogen-organic hybrid flow battery (FB) has been developed using methylene blue (MB) in an aqueous acid electrolyte with a theoretical positive electrolyte energy storage capacity of 65.4 A h L^-1. MB paired with the versatile H₂/H⁺ redox couple at the negative electrode forms the H₂-MB rechargeable fuel cell, with no loss in capacity (5 sig. figures) over 30 100% discharge cycles of galvanostatic cycling at 50 mA cm^-2, which shows excellent stability. A peak power density of 238 mW cm^-2 has also been demonstrated by utilizing 1.0 M MB electrolyte. This represents a type of scalable electrochemical energy storage system with favorable properties in terms of material cost, stability, crossover management, and energy and power density, overcoming many typical limitations of organic-based redox FBs.