Amirreza Khataee

Tenure-Track Assistant Professor at the Department of Chemical Engineering, KTH Royal Institute of Technology

I am currently working at the Division of Applied Electrochemistry, where I actively research Redox Flow Battery systems (RFBs). I have been working on RFBs since 2015, when I started my Ph.D. program at Aarhus University, Denmark.

RFBs are particularly suited for stationary systems. Their unique advantage is decoupling power and energy, resulting in great flexibility in design and operation, excellent scalability, and moderate maintenance costs. Therefore, integrating renewable energies with RFBs has outstanding potential for the sustainable generation of electrical power.

Over the past years, I have investigated the application of low-cost organic redox species in redox flow batteries. The idea was to develop organic-based RFBs with lower capital costs, competitive cell potential, and energy density compared to the benchmark all-vanadium RFBs. Besides, I have studied the performance of non-fluorinated and hydrocarbon-based ion exchange membranes as an alternative to costly fluorinated Nafion.

At the Division of Applied Electrochemistry, we investigate the application of sustainable materials such as green and low-cost electrolytes. In a joint project with the Chemical Engineering Department of Lund University (Prof. Christian Hulteberg), we are developing lignin-based electrolytes for RFBs. Lignin is extremely low-cost, soluble in water, and has a high phenol content in its structure. Also, in collaboration with the Department of Chemistry at Lund University (Prof. Patric Jannasch), we investigate the application of non-fluorinated and hydrocarbon-based ion exchange membranes for all-Vanadium RFB systems.

Hybrid hydrogen-Manganese RFB is another system we are investigating. One activity is the electrochemical characterization of manganese electrolytes using different additives and solvents. Besides, we study the performance of various membranes and electtodes for this system.

More importantly, we study how to optimize the RFB performance based on sustainable materials. We believe sustainable RFBs seem more competitive with current lithium-ion batteries and will likely remain more competitive in the future.