The transition towards a renewable energy model is unavoidable owing to the effects of climate change. These energies present the problem of intermittency. Our group is trying to develop cost-effective redox flow batteries to storage electrical energy at the grid-scale.

My research focuses first on elucidating reaction mechanisms of new aqueous organic flow battery electrolytes to discover reversible systems of fast charge transfer kinetics at electrodes, then I test the most promising electrolytes in flow cells. The increase of cell voltage is important for boosting the power density of batteries. Therefore, I am also testing acid-base redox flow batteries with bipolar membranes, where the positive and negative electrodes of the device operate at alkaline and acidic conditions, respectively. This configuration adds the potential arising from the pH difference across the membrane to the voltage offered by the redox couples.