Guotai Junan released a research report that all-iron flow battery has the same intrinsic safety as all-vanadium flow battery and iron-chromium flow battery, and is suitable for large-scale electrochemical energy storage, and the active element of its electrolyte is iron, so the material cost can be greatly reduced. And almost non-toxic. The bank believes that the development of all-iron flow batteries will inject new impetus into the industrialization process of liquid flow energy storage technology, because the overall structure of the stack has not changed much, so the relevant enterprises of stack components will benefit, including stack materials, control systems, and so on. The target of benefit from the diaphragm link:$DONGYUE GROUP (00189.HK)$Recommended by PCS link$Jiangsu Goodwe Power Supply Technology Co.,Ltd. (688390.SH)$、$Kehua Data Co.,Ltd. (002335.SZ)$; EMS link to benefit the target:$Anhui Sinonet & Xinlong Science & Technology (002298.SZ)$。

Guotai Junan's main points are as follows:

It will take time for total vanadium to reduce the cost, and the iron-based liquid flow will hit the pain point.

The liquid flow energy storage technology represented by all-vanadium flow battery uses aqueous electrolyte, mild reaction and intrinsic safety at the principle level, and is suitable for large-scale electrochemical energy storage, but due to the low output and high price of vanadium raw materials, the cost problem leads to its lack of economy in the short term, which is a drag on the development speed of the whole industry. Although iron / chromium flow battery can significantly reduce the cost, its comprehensive performance is weakened to a certain extent due to the phenomenon of ion jumping up each other. All-iron flow battery contains only a single active element iron, which is not only low cost, but also does not occur ion jump each other, and the electrolyte is almost non-toxic, which effectively makes up for the shortcomings of vanadium and iron-chromium system, and opens up a new direction of liquid flow battery.

Overseas enterprises take the lead, and domestic teams actively explore.

In the past, all-iron flow battery was mainly based on laboratory basic research, which is generally considered to be far away from industrial application. In fact, the technology has entered the initial stage of commercial application abroad, the scale has reached 100 MW, and the energy storage time is more than 10 hours, which is typical of ESS Company in the United States. In 2021, ESS signed an agreement with SDenergy, owned by Softbank Corp., promising to supply it with 2 GWh of battery systems by 2026. Recently, ESS announced a partnership with SMUD, a non-profit power service provider owned by the sixth largest community in the United States, to supply 200 MW/2 GWh long-term energy storage solutions. ESS thinks it has a potential value of $8 billion in the global market by 2027. The industrialization of all-iron flow battery in China started relatively late. Juan Energy Storage, the first all-iron flow energy storage enterprise in China, has recently completed 10 million yuan angel wheel financing, which is mainly used in product pilot testing. set up electro-hydraulic, stack, electronic control and management platform full-chain independent R & D and design system.

Breakthroughs have been made in technological progress, and performance improvement is expected in the future.

The all-iron flow battery was born in the 1980s, and its weakness lies in the serious hydrogen evolution of negative electrode, hydrolysis of iron ion and precipitation of iron dendrite, which makes the performance unsatisfactory and difficult to be applied. In recent years, the performance of all-iron flow battery has been greatly improved. Recently, by introducing complexing agents and polar solvents, the team of the Institute of Metals of the Chinese Academy of Sciences cooperated to improve the reversibility of Fe/Fe2+ deposition-dissolution and inhibit hydrogen evolution, and initially realized the efficient, stable and long cycle operation of the all-iron flow battery. The battery achieved 99.3% current efficiency, 70% energy efficiency and 100% high capacity retention under 300 cycles, and the cycle life was increased by 11 times.

Risk Tips:The technological progress is too slow, the formation of the industrial chain is lagging, the threat of other energy storage technologies and so on.