Talk:Flow battery
Would love to find the time to compare to a generator using methane and oxygen for long term storage of energy, or compressed air, or night/day thermal difference.
the generator is more interesting if you can use the waste heat, and is not too difficult to adapt, although you wouldn't have nitrogen involved in the explosion so definitively a big changes there. Worked on a mining site in Northern Canada where they had 5 large (4-5 MW) gensets that provided both power and heating for the mine on a permafrost area (Raglan). Very Martian in many ways.
Aluminum air is interesting, in particular if we use the new carbon free process for aluminum production. Would take a lot of development though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium%E2%80%93air_battery
Carbon free aluminum may be a requirement for Mars anyway, in particular if much of the carbon goes into methane for vehicle fuel or into the Life support system.
