Collen Leng, 2014, Mechanical Engineering

Collen Leng ’14

Renewable energy cannot provide us with reliable power unless we can store the energy from its intermittent sources. The vanadium redox flow battery is a promising technology; however, its efficiency is low, and the battery components are expensive. To address this, I worked with another Princeton undergraduate to create and test two vanadium battery designs. The first design replicates the one that researchers and industries currently use. The second design originates from our research group and is radically different. Using the Pro/ENGINEER software, I designed the two batteries, and then we built and tested them. Having started this project from scratch, we spent many weeks researching, designing, constructing a battery cell/vanadium solution system, and restructuring the system for better operation. The data that we collected from charge and discharge tests show that our second design is significantly more efficient. However, we will need to make more adjustments and conduct more tests to better understand why our design has higher efficiency. My work on the vanadium flow battery has given me a better understanding of the design and improvement of a promising energy storage option. This research topic further increased my interest in exploring deeper into the field of energy storage.