Sonnenschein Company

The sealed gel technology was developed a number of years ago by the Sonnenschein Company in West Germany. Simply stated, a gel cell is a lead-acid battery that uses a thick chemotropic gelled electrolyte that is the consistency of candle wax once it sets up and is pressurized and sealed using special valves. It uses a recombination technique to replace the oxygen and hydrogen normally lost in a wet-cell battery, and it is maintenance free and nonspillable [7,28]. 

Sonnenschein was the first company to introduce gel battery technology to the market successfully. They started in 1958 with rather small batteries for flashlights. Since that time, this technology has steadily replaced the conventional, flooded lead-acid battery in various applications [38,71,72]. Phosphoric acid addition for cycling was first introduced in 1965. Larger gel batteries with tubular positive plates were developed for stationary applications in 1978. More recently, gel batteries have been produced for starter and traction applications, and thick, flat positive plates were added for telecommunications applications. 

In 1957, Otto Jache from Sonnenschein introduced the gel electrolyte and patented the sealed lead—acid battery [18]. In this battery construction, the oxygen evolved at the positive plates passes through cracks in the gel and reaches the negative plates, where it is reduced and thus restores the lost water and suppresses hydrogen evolution. The German company Sonnenschein started mass production of gel-sealed lead—acid stationary batteries. 

We thank The Dow Chemical Company for supporting this research. We are indebted to Drs. D. Latham, B. Obi, A. Shafi, M. Sonnenschein, A. Birch, H. Gruenbauer, H. Lakrout, C. Leibig (Dow), M. Elwell (Huntsman) and D. J. Read (Leeds) for helpful discussions. 

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