Textile waste as carbon source for redox flow battery electrodes

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Redox flow batteries are robust, flexible and potentially very cheap energy storage devices that are becoming increasingly relevant for long-duration energy storage applications. While there has been much work on the development of redox couples tailored to use in flow batteries, the tailoring of the carbon electrodes remain under-researched, being largely borrowed from fuel cells. This PhD project will explore the use of textile waste as carbon source for redox flow battery electrodes, including cotton, acrylic and polyester. The structure, elemental composition and electrochemical activity of these materials after thermal treatment (carbonisation) and functionalisation will be studied, with opportunities to optimise thermal treatment methodology, the effect of material origin and pre-treatment, as well as the structure of the fabric before and after carbonization.