Development of the Lead—Acid Battery

The lead—acid battery was gradually deployed in various sectors of the industry and became an important means of electric energy production and storage. Thus, the first stage in the development of the lead—acid battery system and the technology for its manufacture was completed. 

Both the methods (Barton pot and ball-mill) produced partially oxidised lead oxide containing between 20% and 40% free lead. Hence, this oxide was called leady oxide . The production time of this oxide was reduced substantially, which gave a strong impetus to the development of the lead—acid battery industry after 1926. Nowadays, these two processes are still the dominating methods for leady oxide production. 

Challenges Calling for a New Stage in the Development of the Lead—Acid Battery... 

These innovations in battery design and technology are stiU in the process of development and testing. They are not yet commercially available. But it can be expected that they will mark the beginning of the third phase in the development of the lead—acid battery technology. 

USABC has set the goal so high that lead-acid batteries have been put out of the question for this application [29]. This led to an initiative by the lead-acid battery industry and their suppliers to set up the Advanced Lead-Acid Battery Consortium (ALABC) with the goal of fostering development of the lead-acid battery for use in electric vehicles, at least for an interim period until more powerful batteries with higher energy density will become available. Here a series of complex technical problems have to be solved [30]. Of course, such electric vehicle batteries have to be maintenance-free, that is, of sealed construction the resulting use of lead-calcium alloys and thus the premature capacity loss have already been touched on. 

Finally, one development results from returning to a basic idea from the dawn of the lead-acid battery, wherein the functions of support for the positive active material and of the separator are combined into one component the gauntlet separator [84] consisting of a coarsely porous, flexible support structure coated with micropo-rous polyethylene material for separation. The future has to show whether this approach will be able to meet all demands. 

European Advanced Lead-Acid Battery Consortium, Brite/Euram Project BE97-4085, The development of improved lead-acid batteries for electric vehicle service which are maintenance-free and fully recyclable. Final Report 1 January 1998 to 31 August 2001, Appendix IV, p. 50, Advanced Lead-Acid Battery Consortium, Research Triangle Park, NC, USA, 2001. 

Many of the improvements in lead acid batteries have been the result of lead product development aimed at improving the performance of the lead acid battery. Novel battery grid alloy materials have led to process changes which resulted in significant decreases in cost to produce the batteries. The process changes not only decreased production costs but also increased productivity and at the same time decreased worker exposure to lead. 

At open circuit, electrode reactions that charge the electrodes lead to a slow oxidation of the electrolyte with H2 evolution at the anode and O2 evolution at the cathode. These reactions represent an irreversible self-discharge. Once the electrolyte is introduced, the battery has a poor shelf life. Under development are acidic aqueous electrolytes in which Pb(II) is soluble rather than condensing into the solid PbS04. This development of the lead-acid cell promises a flow battery not requiring a separation membrane. The separation membrane of redox-flow batteries (see last section) remains a challenging problem for the aqueous redox-flow technology. 

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