Lead-carbon battery maker Axion Power International has filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in the US.
The chairman and CEO of the Pennsylvania-based firm, Richard Bogan (pictured), said the decision had been taken after pursuing “unsuccessful endeavours”— and failing to clinch a deal with one China’s largest lead-acid battery manufacturers, Fengfan Co.
Axion’s “multi-year work with its potential partner in China, Fengfan, has proven to be extremely disappointing”, Bogan said in a US Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
Axion had also made “detailed, specific and concerted efforts” over three years to sell its PbC intellectual property, merge the company with another entity or “establish a significant joint venture”, Bogan said.
The company’s “hybrid” patented PbC battery uses the standard lead-acid battery positive electrode with a super capacitor negative electrode made of activated carbon.
Axion said the specific type of activated carbon used has “an extremely high surface area and has been specifically formulated for use in electrochemical applications”.
During charge and discharge, the positive electrode undergoes the same chemical reaction that occurs in a conventional lead acid battery. However, in the PbC battery, Axion replaced the lead negative electrode with an activated carbon electrode “that does not undergo a chemical reaction at all”. Instead, the high-surface-area, activated carbon electrode stores the protons from the acid in a layer on the surface of the electrode, Axion said.
Bogan joined the Axion board in 2015— just months after senior managers at the firm took “significant” salary deferrals to conserve cash as the company executed a new strategy.
