Flowing zinc battery retains 81% capacity after 5,500 cycles in tests 61%
By Neetika Walter72%
7/17/2026, 11:53:07 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 18 faulty reasoning types, including Confirmation Bias, Appeal to Authority, and Framing Effect, with Optimism Bias as the most egregious example at 42.5% saturation with 211 hits. Analysis detected 899 faulty-reasoning hits from 497 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 56.7% and a BS Rank of 61% (6,763 of 17,001 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 60.20% of the article peer group.
Researchers in China have developed a flowing zinc slurry battery that operated continuously for 5,128 hours, offering a new approach to long-duration energy storage for renewable power systems.
The battery replaces the conventional fixed zinc electrode with a flowing slurry of zinc nanoparticles suspended in a conductive liquid.
By allowing the active material to circulate continuously, the design overcomes long-standing challenges that have limited zinc-based flow batteries.
Developed by researchers at Fudan University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the battery is designed to store excess electricity generated by solar panels and wind turbines, then release it when renewable generation falls.
In laboratory tests, the system achieved a Coulombic efficiency of 99.94%.
Zinc-manganese dioxide batteries built using the same architecture also retained 81.1% of their original capacity after 5,500 charge-discharge cycles, pointing to improved durability.
Rethinking zinc storage
Flow batteries typically store energy by pumping liquid electrolytes through an electrochemical cell.
Instead of relying on a solid zinc electrode, the new design turns zinc itself into a flowable energy carrier.
“Our work emerged from our long-standing interest in improving the reversibility of Zn metal electrodes through electrolyte and interface engineering,” senior author Fei Wang told Tech Xplore.
“During a visit to a Zn electrowinning plant, I was inspired by the industrial process in which Zn2+ is converted into metallic Zn and realized that this electron-gaining process could potentially be used directly for energy storage.”
The battery combines nanoscale zinc particles with a hollow carbon framework and a ligand-controlled electrolyte.
Together, these components help prevent zinc particles from clumping together while maintaining stable electrochemical reactions during repeated charging and discharging.
The researchers said the flowing architecture separates energy storage capacity from power delivery, making it easier to scale batteries for longer-duration applications without redesigning the electrochemical cell.
Built for renewables
Unlike conventional zinc batteries that rely on a stationary electrode, the slurry continuously circulates between a storage tank and the battery cell while zinc reversibly switches between its metallic and ionic forms.
“The major advantage of this design is that it transforms Zn from a static electrode into a dynamic energy carrier,” Wang said.
According to the researchers, integrating flow architecture with ligand-controlled interfacial chemistry addresses key challenges that have limited zinc slurry systems, including particle aggregation, unstable reactions and interface degradation.
The team believes the technology could eventually support large-scale storage of electricity generated by intermittent renewable sources such as solar and wind farms.
Increasing the volume of slurry stored in external tanks could also expand the battery’s energy capacity without significantly changing the core electrochemical system.
“Our future research will focus on translating the flowing Zn slurry concept from a laboratory-scale demonstration toward practical long-duration energy storage systems,” Wang said.
The researchers also plan to optimize the slurry chemistry, improve system integration, and explore whether similar flowable metal energy carriers can be developed beyond zinc-based systems.
The study was published in the journal Nature Energy.
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