Quinone redox flow battery company secures $2.6m for commercial pilot site
Californian company Quino Energy has secured a further $2.6 million from the US Department of Energy (DoE) to build a 200 kW/2 MWh project to demonstrate how its aqueous organic quinone redox flow batteries (QRFB) can be installed at former oil industry sites.
Quino said the mildly alkaline nature of quinone enables the company’s QRFB’s to be installed in carbon steel tanks commonly used in the oil industry. Most redox flow batteries (RFBs), including vanadium systems, are strongly acidic and cannot be used in such carbon steel tanks.
Announcing the latest DoE grant funding, for a company which has previously been backed by the government to help develop its module production line, Quino said some of the cash would be used to construct a separate, 3 kW/24 kWh installation at its San leandro base.
The latter project would be expected to be operational first with the commercial demonstrator expected to be commissioned “around” late June 2025, and operational in 2026.
Quino estimates two fully filled, 75,000m3 fuel storage tanks could house 3 GWh of QRFB energy storage capacity on a footprint three times smaller than that needed for the equivalent capacity of lithium ferro-phosphate (LFP) batteries.
The use of existing infrastructure, on sites optimized for chemical storage, means QRFB energy storage is 30% cheaper than LFP storage and 40% more affordable than vanadium redox flow battery technology, according to Quino.
The company added, the US Energy Information Administration (IEA) has estimated the nation could house 4 TWh of QRFB energy storage capacity in existing oil storage tanks.
The DoE funding was provided by the department’s Advanced Metals and Manufacturing Technologies Office under the Platform Technologies for Transformative Battery Manufacturing program.
