The Consortium for Battery Innovation (CBI) is launching two new projects to improve charging efficiency, safety performance and cycle life of auxiliary lead batteries.
The CBI said the focus will be on new additive formulations to improve the charge recovery of lead batteries, and will apply to both negative and positive plates.
Begüm Bozkaya, CBI technical manager, told BEST the project team will investigate the impact of negative plate additives on specific auxiliary battery tests (e.g. charge recovery and pulse power characterisation). They will be on both 2V cells and commercial batteries. The project team involves experts from Moll Batterien, Fraunhofer ISC as well as Eckhard Karden.
Karden is Ford’s former technical R&D expert and “a driving force” behind the CBI work, she said.
The second project will examine the effects of metal silicates on pulse power and charge acceptance capabilities of lead batteries for BEV auxiliary applications. “The focus of this project will be the positive plate additives and how they can improve the performance of lead batteries related to auxiliary applications,” she said.
The project team includes Hammond Group, East Penn and the Bulgarian Academy of Science.
In pursuit of improving cycle life and total cost of ownership of ESS, industrial-sized lead battery electrodes were analysed by using neutron diffraction for the first time, she said. That provides diffraction information from inside the positive electrode in real operating conditions.
That project team, comprising Instituto de Nanociencia y Materiales de Aragón (INMA) and Exide Technologies, has already concluded its work. They were able to illustrate concentration maps of different structures in positive plates and 2D images, while the batteries were operating.
This method could be used to analyse charging behaviour of electrodes for lead battery performance improvement related to ESS, according to Bozkaya.
The CBI is aiming to develop opportunity charging methodology for motive power applications. The team working on that includes C&D Trojan and EAI. They are seeking to optimise multi-step current charging at the 2V cell level. It will be further tested for 8V batteries as well as 48V battery packs.
Other ongoing CBI work seeks to understand microscopic level processes during representative tests on auxiliary batteries. They use advanced characterisation techniques such as X-ray microscopy coupled with computer tomography. The idea is to understand how lead battery electrodes change during different charging conditions. The project is being carried out by University of North Texas, Ecobat and East Penn.
Bozkaya said: “Initial work indicates that the results will be key to future use of lead batteries in auxiliary and ESS applications.” She expects the projects to conclude next year.
A technical working group is developing a white paper on testing standards and 12V lead auxiliary batteries in EVs.
Photo: CBI’s Begüm Bozkaya on projects to improve charging efficiency, safety performance and cycle life. CBI
