Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore and VFT have launched a joint laboratory backed by S$15 million (about RMB 78.4 million) over four years, dedicated to next-generation vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB) research.

The lab's stated goals are threefold: safer systems, greater durability, and better cost-effectiveness. Those attributes matter because flow batteries are being positioned to absorb growing volumes of renewable generation and to support future grid stability as variable wind and solar take a larger share of the power mix.

Why vanadium flow batteries attract R&D money

Vanadium flow batteries store energy in liquid electrolytes held in external tanks, which allows power capacity and energy capacity to be scaled independently — a structural advantage for multi-hour applications where lithium-ion economics become harder to justify. The technology's known weak points are capital cost, electrolyte production and long-term membrane durability, which is precisely where a four-year, university-industry programme can move the needle.

A busy research front

The Singapore lab is one of several parallel efforts aimed at the same bottlenecks. In August, Korea's KAIST announced a new electrolyte production route that cuts the time needed to make the key V3.5+ electrolyte by 67% compared with conventional processes while eliminating harmful residual impurities — a manufacturing-side advance that complements cell- and stack-level work.

Academic work on membranes is also intensifying. A 2026 study in the Chemical Engineering Journal developed rigid microporous SP/PBM blend membranes designed to improve proton selectivity and oxidation stability, targeting the long-standing trade-off between ion selectivity and conductivity that constrains flow battery membrane life. Related papers tracked by citation databases include polybenzimidazole membranes, covalent triazine framework crosslinked microporous membranes and PBI-COF hybrid membranes aimed at ultra-high cycle stability.

What to watch

Joint labs of this type typically feed three outputs into commercial supply chains: electrolyte formulations, membrane chemistry and stack design. For the wider LDES market, the practical test will be whether results translate into lower levelised cost of storage for six-hour-plus applications, where vanadium flow is now competing directly with lithium-ion, thermal storage and iron-air concepts.

This article was assisted by AI analysis. Please refer to the original source for official information.