[Featured Stock] Kosen Surges as Commercialization of Next-Generation Redox Flow Battery with ‘2800-Hour Operation’ Approaches

Domestic researchers have succeeded in developing a technology that significantly improves the performance of the Vanadium Redox Flow Battery (VRFB), boosting KOSEN's stock. Recently, KOSEN acquired shares in XRBi, a company specializing in vanadium redox flow batteries.

As of 10:16 AM on the 6th, KOSEN is trading at 3,080 KRW, up 8.07% from the previous day.

On this day, the Korea Basic Science Institute (KBSI) announced that Dr. Youngjoo Lee's research team at the Seoul Western Center, in collaboration with Professor Kyutae Lee's team from the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Seoul National University, developed a VRFB membrane technology that remains stable for over 2,800 hours without concerns of self-discharge and shows more than 30% higher charge-discharge efficiency compared to existing membranes.

Recently, aqueous batteries using non-flammable water as the electrolyte have emerged as strong candidates to replace lithium-ion batteries. In particular, VRFBs, which address both fire risks and lifespan issues, are currently the closest to industrialization in terms of research and development.

Applying the new membrane technology from this research resulted in a VRFB self-discharge time maintained for over 2,800 hours. This is about 14 times longer than the 200 hours observed in VRFBs using conventional Nafion membranes.

Additionally, the Coulombic efficiency was maintained at 98.8% after 100 charge-discharge cycles, and the battery capacity improved by more than 30% compared to VRFBs with Nafion membranes.

Meanwhile, XRBi has successfully filed patents for new technologies related to expandable secondary redox batteries that complement the shortcomings of existing VRFBs.

Vanadium batteries are called the next-generation "dream batteries" for energy storage devices as they pose no explosion risk and have 10 to 20 times more charge-discharge cycles than conventional lithium batteries, making them a promising alternative to lithium-ion batteries.

KOSEN acquired a 28% stake in XRBi last September.

According to SkyQuest Technology, the global vanadium battery market is expected to grow at an average annual rate of 21.8%, reaching $1,391.89 billion (approximately 1,828 trillion KRW) by 2030.