Storage battery development

The lead—acid battery is one of the most successful electrochemical systems and the most successful storage battery developed. In 1988 total battery sales, excluding Eastern European central economy countries, were more than 17 biUion (1). Lead—acid battery sales accounted for about 57% of that figure. About 80% of the lead [7439-92-1] (qv), Pb, consumption in the United States was for batteries in that year. 

Granular silica. In the early 1990s, Japan Storage Battery developed a VRLA battery in which the add was immobilized by closely packed granular silica that was filled between and around the plates [51 53]. The silica consists of fine primary particles and of coarser secondary particles formed by agglomerates of the primary particles. While the fine primary particles immobilize the add, the interstices... 

Reduction of charge time and of battery sensitivity to booster charging constitutes one of the important problems in storage batteries development. 

Figure 21-17 The lead storage battery, developed in 1859, Is the oldest type of rechargeable battery. This is also called a lead-acid battery. Although not shown, the cathodes are all connected in series, as...

Specifications for sulfuric acid vary rather widely. Exceptions include the federal specifications for "Sulfuric Acid, Technical" and "Sulfuric Acid, Electrolyte (for storage batteries)" and the Food Chemicals Codex specification for sulfuric acid, frequentiy called food-grade acid (although industrywide, "food-grade" is nonspecific). Very Httie has been done to estabUsh industry-wide analytical standards in the United States, except for development of the ASTM analytical methods, designated as E223-88 and summarized in Table 12. 

K. R. BuUock, "The Development and AppHcations of Storage Batteries—Historical Perspectives and Future Prospects," in Proceedings, 7th Australian Electrochemistry Conference, 1988. 

Zinc—bromine storage batteries (qv) are under development as load-leveling devices in electric utilities (64). Photovoltaic batteries have been made of selenium or boron doped with bromine. Graphite fibers and certain polymers can be made electrically conductive by being doped with bromine. Bromine is used in quartz—haUde light bulbs. Bromine is used to etch aluminum, copper, and semi-conductors. Bromine and its salts are known to recover gold and other precious metals from their ores. Bromine can be used to desulfurize fine coal (see Coal conversion processes). Table 5 shows estimates of the primary uses of bromine. 

Alternatives to coal and hydrocarbon fuels as a source of power have been sought with increasing determination over the past three decades. One possibility is the Hydrogen Economy (p, 40), Another possibility, particularly for secondary, mobile sources of power, is the use of storage batteries. Indeed, electric vehicles were developed simultaneously with the first intemal-combustion-cngined vehicles, the first being made in 1888. In those days, over a century ago, electric vehicles were popular and sold well compared with the then noisy, inconvenient and rather unreliable peU ol-engined vehicles. In 1899 an electric car held the world land-speed record at 105 km per hour. In the early years of this century, taxis in New York, Boston and Berlin were mainly electric there were over 20000 electi ic vehicles in the USA and some 10000 cars and commercial vehicles in London. Even today (silent) battery-powered milk delivery vehicles are still operated in the UK. These use the traditional lead-sulfuric acid battery (p. 371), but this is extremely heavy and rather expensive. 

Though sodium-sulfur batteries have been under development for many years, major problems still exists with material stability. It is likely that the first commercial uses of this batteiy will not be for electric vehicles. Sodium-sulfur storage batteries may be more well-suited for hybrid electric vehicles or as part of a distributed energy resources system to provide power ill remote areas or to help meet municipal peak power requirements. 

The historical development of the separator and of the lead-acid storage battery are inseparably tied together. When referring to lead-acid batteries today one primarily thinks of starter batteries or forklift traction batteries, but the original applications were quite different. 

The development of stable, effectively ion-separating membranes for rechargeable alkaline batteries remains a persistent challenge, in which the separator can provide decisive contributions to the advancement of storage batteries of high power and energy density. 

E. J. Casey (Defense Research Establishment, Ottawa) reviewed the selection of anodes and electrolytes for high-energy density storage batteries. The present state of development of batteries by using light metal anodes in nonaqueous, molten salt and solid electrolytes was reviewed, and suggestions were made on the feasibility of novel systems. 

Lithium hydroxide is used as an electrolyte in certain alkahne storage batteries and in the production of lithium soaps. Other uses of this compound include its catalytic applications in esterification reactions in the production of alkyd resins in photographic developer solutions and as a starting material to prepare other lithium salts. 

Much of the recent research in solid state chemistry is related to the ionic conductivity properties of solids, and new electrochemical cells and devices are being developed that contain solid, instead of liquid, electrolytes. Solid-state batteries are potentially useful because they can perform over a wide temperature range, they have a long shelf life, it is possible to make them very small, and they are spill-proof We use batteries all the time—to start cars, in toys, watches, cardiac pacemakers, and so on. Increasingly we need lightweight, small but powerful batteries for a variety of uses such as computer memory chips, laptop computers, and mobile phones. Once a primary battery has discharged, the reaction cannot be reversed and it has to be thrown away, so there is also interest in solid electrolytes in the production of secondary or storage batteries, which are reversible because once the chemical reaction has taken place the reactant concentrations can be... 

Aluminium-air cells were first developed for portable applications such as mooring lights, and for recharging nickel-cadmium and lead-acid storage batteries. They have been fabricated in many unusual designs, e.g. the concentric rope battery which has an aluminium core surrounded by a separator and then the oxygen cathode. The rope may be several hundred metres long and can provide 0.03 W/m for a period of 6 months on immersion in the sea. 

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