Modelling and simulation of thermal behaviour of vanadium redox flow battery

•Extended model can predict internal thermal dynamics of a battery stack.•There is a clear temperature gradient across the cells during standby period.•Edge cells respond more rapidly to environmental temperature variations.•System thermal behaviour varies dramatically with different membranes.

This paper extends previous thermal models of the vanadium redox flow battery to predict temperature profiles within multi-cell stacks. This involves modelling the thermal characteristics of the stack as a whole to modelling each individual cell. The study investigates the thermal behaviour for two different scenarios: during standby periods when the pumps are turned off, and in a residential power arbitrage scenario for two types of membranes. It was found that the temperature gradient across the cells is most significant during the standby case, with the simulation results showing completely different thermal behaviours between the two systems.