Physics-Guided Continual Learning for Predicting Emerging Aqueous Organic Redox Flow Battery Material Performance

Abstract: Aqueous organic redox flow batteries (AORFBs) have gained popularity in renewable energy storage due to their low cost, environmental friendliness and scalability. The rapid discovery of aqueous soluble organic (ASO) redox-active materials necessitates efficient machine learning surrogates for predicting battery performance. The physics-guided continual learning (PGCL) method proposed in this study can incrementally learn data from new ASO electrolytes while addressing catastrophic forgetting issues in conventional machine learning. Using a ASO anolyte database with a thousand potential materials generated by a 780 $\text{cm}^2$ interdigitated cell model, PGCL incorporates AORFB physics to optimize the continual learning task formation and training process. This achieves higher efficiency and robustness compared to the non-physics-guided continual learning while retaining previously learned battery material knowledge. The trained PGCL demonstrates its capability in assessing emerging ASO materials within the established parameter space when evaluated with the dihydroxyphenazine isomers.