Credit: (Animation by Sara Levine | Pacific Northwest National Laboratory)
Flow batteries provide long-lasting, rechargeable energy storage, particularly for grid reliability. Unlike solid-state batteries, flow batteries store energy in liquid electrolyte, shown here in yellow and blue. Researchers at PNNL developed a cheap and effective new flow battery that uses a simple sugar derivative called β-cyclodextrin (pink) to speed up the chemical reaction that converts energy stored in chemical bonds (purple to orange), releasing energy (electrons) to power an external circuit. A parallel reversible process (red-green) in the positive catholyte solution balances the positive and negative charges during charge and discharge.