The 22nd National Electrochemical Conference was grandly held in Haikou, Hainan from November 5th to 8th, 2024. The theme of this year's conference is Electrochemistry for Promoting Carbon Neutrality and High-Quality Development. As the largest and most extensive academic gathering and high-level academic exchange platform in China's electrochemical field, the National Electrochemical Conference is held every two years, aiming to delve into fundamental scientific issues, applied technical problems, and cutting-edge dynamics in the development of electrochemical science and technology. It seeks to thoroughly discuss the essence, methods, approaches, and trends, comprehensively showcasing the latest research progress and achievements in China's electrochemical field. The conference has set up more than 20 themes, including electrochemistry of nanomaterials, lithium-ion batteries, flow batteries, organic and multivalent metal ion batteries, fuel cells, electrocatalysis, lithium-sulfur batteries, etc.

Our company's Chief Scientist, Dr. Xie Wei, was invited to attend and delivered a keynote report titled Material Solutions for Efficiency Enhancement and Cost Reduction in Flow Batteries at the Flow Battery sub-forum. He believes that under the dual drive of policy and market, flow batteries have entered a new stage of development with GW-level capacity. Flow batteries have prominent advantages in long-term energy storage and huge development potential. However, during the process of entering the market, their high upfront cost and long investment payback period have limited their industrialization development to some extent.

Electrodes are the most critical components determining the current density and energy efficiency of batteries, and ZH Energy Storage has developed proprietary catalyst-loaded electrodes. In terms of technology and process for loading catalyst particles on graphite felt electrodes, the use of high-reaction-activity catalytic substances attached to the surface of graphite felt electrodes can increase the efficiency of vanadium batteries by 3-5 percentage points and improve the utilization rate of electrolytes by 5%. From the perspective of improving efficiency and reducing costs, the EPC cost of a full vanadium flow battery system can also be reduced by about 5%.