Modeling and Control of a Vanadium Redox Flow Battery

This book presents extensive work on the modeling and control aspects of the emerging field of vanadium redox flow batteries. After providing a detailed literature review, it describes a comprehensive model that defines the main phenomena associated with vanadium redox flow batteries, covering electrochemical, thermal, hydraulic, and voltage aspects. Phenomena and models are described in a concise manner using a set of differential equations that share common parameters and states. Various electrochemical models based on conservation principles and operating condition assumptions are described, and used for estimating the state of charge and state of health. Different methodologies for accurately estimating these indicators through offline optimization problems and online observers are presented. In turn, the results obtained from real experimental setups are presented and validated, providing a better understanding of the components, design, and operation of vanadium redox flow batteries. 

Alejandro Clemente received the B.Eng. degree in industrial and automatic electronic engineering, the M.Sc. degree in robotics and automatic control and the Ph.D. in automatic control from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) in 2018, 2020 and 2023, respectively. He is currently a post-doctoral researcher at the Catalonia Institute of Energy Research (IREC), Barcelona, Spain. In this center, he is developing studies in the field of modeling and control of electrochemical systems, being focused in the development of battery management systems in different National and European projects. Since 2020 he is part-time Associate Professor at the UPC, teaching classes in the B.Eng. degree in industrial engineering and the M.Sc. degree in robotics and automatic control.