E-blood: High power aqueous redox flow cell for concurrent powering and cooling of electronic devices

Abstract

In personal computing devices and large-scale data centers, a liquid coolant such as water is often employed to keep the devices operating at a low and stable temperature. Simultaneous heat dissipation and power delivery can be achieved by replacing the liquid coolants with electrochemically active redox fluids and integrating a flow cell stack, as the “E-blood” concept proposed by IBM in 2011. Herein, we present a high power aqueous redox flow cell using cerium (Ce) sulfate as posolyte and polyoxometalate (POM) as negolyte. The POM-Ce single cell could achieve an operating voltage of 1.85 V and a power density of 1.40 W/cm2 with unprecedented cycling performance. The cell stack, composed of three single cells, could effortlessly power up a Raspberry Pi and significantly cool down the chip temperature from 51 to 29°C at full loading condition. This work is the first report demonstrating a functional E-blood system that concurrently powers and cools down an electronic device for real operation.