Carbon Additives for Improved Lead Acid Battery Performance
Mentor 1
Benjamin Church
Location
Union Wisconsin Room
Start Date
28-4-2017 1:30 PM
End Date
28-4-2017 4:00 PM
Description
Lead Acid Batteries currently feature poor Dynamic Charge Acceptance (DCA) properties which prevents itsusein start-stop and regenerative braking applications. The addition of carbon additives to the electrode retards PbSO4 crystal growth.Initialexperiments have indicated thatadditions of carbon nanotubes to the negative electrode of the lead-acid battery can improve theDCA properties andthe operating voltage range. Many electrode additions examined previously would improve one or the other performance metric while carbon nanotubes appear to improve both. No tests with graphene have been performed although we hypothesize that a similar "dual benefit" will be observed with graphene as well due to certain similarities with the nanotubes. The intent is to provide experimental data to quantify the performance benefit of each material addition (e.g. charge acceptance gain per unit mass of additive). Economic performance (cost per unit of performance improvement) will also be determined to assist with assessing the viability of each material as a real-world additive in batteries.
Carbon Additives for Improved Lead Acid Battery Performance
Union Wisconsin Room
Lead Acid Batteries currently feature poor Dynamic Charge Acceptance (DCA) properties which prevents itsusein start-stop and regenerative braking applications. The addition of carbon additives to the electrode retards PbSO4 crystal growth.Initialexperiments have indicated thatadditions of carbon nanotubes to the negative electrode of the lead-acid battery can improve theDCA properties andthe operating voltage range. Many electrode additions examined previously would improve one or the other performance metric while carbon nanotubes appear to improve both. No tests with graphene have been performed although we hypothesize that a similar "dual benefit" will be observed with graphene as well due to certain similarities with the nanotubes. The intent is to provide experimental data to quantify the performance benefit of each material addition (e.g. charge acceptance gain per unit mass of additive). Economic performance (cost per unit of performance improvement) will also be determined to assist with assessing the viability of each material as a real-world additive in batteries.
