Numerical Study of Fluid Flow in Different Manifold Configurations for Vanadium Redox Flow Battery

Abstract

© 2017 IEEE. The overall performance of a vanadium redox flow battery depends significantly on flow rates in the individual cells. Thus, the flow distribution in the flow splitting system, the manifold, has to be uniform throughout all its outlets. In this paper, fluid flow in different manifold configurations are numerically investigated using 3-D Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations to evaluate the uniformity of the flow distribution and the pressure drop in each design. The cases are simulated with five inlet flow rates, and the performance of the different manifolds are assessed. The most effective design will then be fabricated and further validated with experiments.