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Grid-scale corrosion-free Zn/Br flow batteries enabled by a multi-electron transfer reaction

Nature Energy volume 10, pages 1470–1481 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

Flow batteries are promising for renewable energy storage due to their safety and scalability. Zinc/bromine flow batteries (Zn/Br) are popular due to their high energy densities and inexpensive electrolytes. However, they have a poor service life and lead to environmental harm as a result of the generated corrosive and volatile Br2. Here we introduce a Br2 scavenger to the catholyte, reducing the Br2 concentration to an acceptable level (~7 mM). The scavenger, sodium sulfamate (SANa), reacts rapidly with Br2 to form a mild product, N-bromo sodium sulfamate (Br-SANa; Br+). Additionally, the two-electron transfer reaction of Br-SANa/Br− (Br+/Br−) increases the energy density. We have developed a Zn/Br flow battery, paired with a Zn anode, that outperforms traditional Zn/Br flow batteries in energy density (152 Wh l−1 versus 90 Wh l−1) and cycle life (>600 versus 30 cycles), using a sulfonated polyetheretherketone membrane. We assembled a 5-kW stack that operated stably for over 700 cycles (~1,400 h). Using this reaction, we have built a large-scale battery system.

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Fig. 1: Design principles of bromine electrolytes.
Fig. 2: Electrochemistry of Br2 in the presence of SANa.
Fig. 3: Single Zn/Br FB and scaled-up systems using our designed electrolytes outperform conventional systems.
Fig. 4: The ultralow-corrosion Zn/Br FB was more cost-effective than a traditional Zn/Br FB in most application modes.

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All relevant data are included in the paper and its Supplementary Information. Source data are provided with this paper.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported financially by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 22525081 to X.L., 22209179 to C.X. and 22478379 to C.X.), the International Partnership Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (121421KYSB20210028 to X.L.), the Science and Technology Major Project of Liaoning Province (grant no. 2024JH1/11700011 to C.X.), the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDA0400201 to X.L.), Liaoning Binhai Laboratory (no. LBLD 202401) and the Liaoning Provincial Natural Science Foundation (2023-MS-010 to C.X.). We thank A. L. Chun of Science Storylab for critically reading and editing the manuscript. We thank Y. Song and C. Yuan at the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics for their support in system assembly. We thank Z. Zhao at the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics for his support with SERS testing. We thank C. Mu at the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics for his support with theoretical calculations.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Energy Storage, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Dalian, China

    Yue Xu, Tianyu Li, Congxin Xie & Xianfeng Li

  2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Yue Xu

  3. Key Laboratory of Long-Duration and Large-Scale Energy Storage (Chinese Academy of Sciences), Beijing, China

    Yue Xu, Tianyu Li, Congxin Xie & Xianfeng Li

  4. Laboratory of Advanced Spectro-electrochemistry and Li-ion Batteries, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Dalian, China

    Zhangquan Peng

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Contributions

Y.X., C.X. and X.L. conceived the projects and designed the experiments. Y.X. and C.X. conducted the electrochemical tests and material characterizations. T.L. conducted the theoretical calculations. Y.X., C.X., Z.P. and X.L. co-wrote and revised the paper. C.X. and X.L. supervised the work and discussed the results.

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Correspondence to Congxin Xie or Xianfeng Li.

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Nature Energy thanks Yuan Chen and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Xu, Y., Li, T., Peng, Z. et al. Grid-scale corrosion-free Zn/Br flow batteries enabled by a multi-electron transfer reaction. Nat Energy 10, 1470–1481 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-025-01907-5

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