> Liu estimates that the tubular design should cut the cost of flow-battery power modules by roughly half. Plus, all the components in the cell are off the shelf, and scaling up the reactor cell design should be easy, since it is based on a commonly used design in the chemical industry.
So if this research pans out it sounds like very close. This isn’t a new concept and it’s mature so the probability of continuing savings is less than traditional battery technologies (eg there’s new kinds of batteries coming out that are cheaper and more energy dense than lithium ion). However, at grid scale this may have additional advantages beyond pure cost that make it attractive still.
I can't imagine this is more mature then lithium ion batteries, or traditional batteries in general. They are everywhere in my apartment but afaik flow batteries are not used yet.
I agree, especially on the industrial design and manufacturing side. The concept has exited for ages, and I love decoupling power and energy density for all kinds of reasons (though I'm sure standard batteries are just tuned perfectly enough in large facilities that it's no big difference).
But the big cost reductions don't happen because an idea is mature, they occur because they're being produced at large enough scale that lots of people have spent time and energy on all of the thousand tiny things that individually reduce the cost. The stuff in this article is borderline just industrial design and they're talking a 3x change in footprint?
There has to be lots of other low hanging fruit... we're still improving lithium battery electrodes and each improvement really does improve them. The same will be true for flow batteries if they ever get made at enough scale.
So if this research pans out it sounds like very close. This isn’t a new concept and it’s mature so the probability of continuing savings is less than traditional battery technologies (eg there’s new kinds of batteries coming out that are cheaper and more energy dense than lithium ion). However, at grid scale this may have additional advantages beyond pure cost that make it attractive still.