A study on different flow channel shapes in a vanadium redox flow battery with serpentine flow field

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of the different flow channel shapes on battery performance, charge, mass and momentum transports in a vanadium redox flow battery with serpentine flow field during discharge process. In line with this purpose, the four different 2-D models having the four different flow channel shapes are developed. These flow channel shapes are rectangle, square, circle and trapezoid, respectively. The obtained results are shown that the best discharge capacity, electrode and electrolyte potential distributions are achieved in the model with the trapezoid channel shape since this channel shape provides a good electrolyte distribution due to having a deeper channel depth. Furthermore, it is brought out that there is a small difference in the concentration distributions of vanadium species (V2+ and VO2+) for all channel shapes and the near-uniform concentration distributions (V3+ and VO2+) for both porous electrodes are obtained with the model with trapezoid channel shape during discharge process.