Public Research Seminar by Sustainable Energy and Environment Thrust, HKUST(GZ) - Investigations on Energy Storage and Conversion Systems
Supporting the below United Nations Sustainable Development Goals:支持以下聯合國可持續發展目標：支持以下联合国可持续发展目标：
Redox flow batteries (RFBs) have emerged as a promising technology for energy storage, particularly for durations exceeding 4 hours, due to their exceptional features such as site independence, high scalability, efficiency, and long lifespan. In recent years, there has been a surge in megawatt projects under construction, and the vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB) has entered the early stages of marketization, indicating its potential to play a significant role in the field of long-duration energy storage (LDES). However, the VRFB still faces the challenge of relatively high capital costs, and reducing these costs is crucial for increasing its market share, which can be achieved through an increase in power density.
In this talk, I will first introduce the research I carried out during my PhD studies to advance the power density of VRFBs through electrode structure design. We utilized electrospinning as the bottom-up electrode fabrication method, aiming to increase its hydraulic permeability and specific surface area simultaneously. Our homemade electrodes enable high-performance redox flow batteries that achieve an energy density of around 80% at 400 mA cm-2. I also adopted multi-scale modeling methods to gain insight into the underlying mechanisms of mass transport coupling electrochemistry.
In addition to introducing my work on electrodes, I will discuss recent research on flow field modeling and design. I am also currently working on fuel cells, mainly to tackle the issue of water flooding in high-power PEMFCs through gas diffusion layer structure design.
Finally, I will outline my plan to continue researching different energy storage and conversion systems to advance their practical applications.
Sun Jing is a visiting scholar in the Department of Mechanical and Energy Engineering at the Southern University of Science and Technology (SUStech). She earned her bachelor's and master's degrees in Thermal Energy and Power Engineering from the University of Science and Technology Beijing (USTB) in 2014 and 2017, respectively, and her Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 2021. Her research focuses on the bottom-up fabrication of electrodes, flow field design, and multi-scale modeling in the field of redox flow batteries. She has also explored other electrochemical energy storage and conversion systems, including fuel cells, aqueous zinc batteries, and solid-state lithium batteries. Sun Jing has 16 articles published in high-impact journals as first, co-first, and co-corresponding authors, including Energy Storage Materials, PNAS, Science Bulletin, Small Methods, Journal of Energy Chemistry, Applied Energy, and Journal of Power Sources. She has contributed to over 40 publications, and her research has received over 1000 citations, resulting in an H-index of 20. In addition, she serves as the managing editor of the International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer.
For inquiries, please contact Miss Suggi WU (+86-20-88332966, suggilswu@hkust-gz.edu.cn)