The company CMBlu touts its organic flow batteries as environmentally friendly stationary storage for renewable energy, which is also supposed to be cost-effective and easily scalable. Organic flow technology is said to combine the high energy density of solid-state batteries with the arbitrary scalability of capacity and performance of flow batteries, and does not require the use of rare raw materials. The material used - lignin - can be obtained as a byproduct from paper mills. It is filled into two separate tanks and combined in a special facility for a biochemical reaction. According to the company, the material is organic, non-flammable, non-explosive and can withstand more than 10,000 charging cycles. The battery system is designed as a multi-cell stack and is primarily suitable for stationary storage applications. Its modularity allows it to be easily scaled into the gigawatt range. We review these announcements with Prof. Birgit Esser from the University of Ulm.
