Carbon Enhanced Lead Acid Battery

[SubLGT]

Looks like the old lead acid battery is getting a second lease on life, driven by the trend towards wide spread adoption of start/stop and regenerative braking. A conventional maintenance free lead acid battery will not survive long in this scenario. I am guessing this type of battery might also work better in a conventional vehicle that is a short tripper and always has an undercharged battery.

http://alabc.org
http://www.alabc.org/research-areas
http://www.alabc.org/publications/lc-technology-has-the-obvious-been-overlooked

"Exide Technologies and Axion Power International received $34.3 million for production of lead-acid batteries using lead-carbon electrodes.

East Penn Manufacturing received $32.5 million for the production of the UltraBattery, a lead-acid battery with a carbon super capacitor."


http://www.navigantresearch.com/research/advanced-lead-acid-batteries

http://ecst.ecsdl.org/content/41/13/45.abstract
"The Beneficial Role of Carbon in the Negative Plate of Advanced Lead-Carbon Batteries"

http://ecst.ecsdl.org/content/41/13/3.short
"Partial State-of-Charge Duty: A Challenge but Not a Show-Stopper for Lead-Acid Batteries!"

 

[cat843]

Funny, Exide is the only manufacturer still using the older lead compound for its flooded cell batteries.

 

[SubLGT]

Exide is selling, in the aftermarket, a carbon (graphite) enhanced AGM lead acid battery, called Exide Edge.

http://www.exide.com/Media/files/Downloa...on%20spread.pdf

 

[Carbon]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_double-layer_capacitor says
Quote:
EDLCs are used in some concept vehicles, to keep batteries within resistive heating limits and extend battery life.[40][41] An "ultrabattery" combines a supercapacitor and a battery in one unit, creating an electric vehicle battery that lasts longer, costs less and is more powerful than current plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs).

 

[SubLGT]

http://www.altenergystocks.com/archives/...erformance.html

".......The last decade has been an exciting time in the lead-acid battery industry as manufacturers respond to changing market dynamics. The first major technology transition was increased reliance on maintenance-free AGM batteries that are more robust and abuse tolerant than first-generation flooded batteries. The second major technology transition is the integration of varying amounts of carbon to reduce charging times and increase cycle-life. In a presentation at last September's Asian Battery Conference, the Advanced Lead Acid Battery Consortium offered an exhaustive technical analysis on the use of carbon in lead-acid batteries and the approaches the principal manufacturers are taking.

The simplest, cheapest and most direct approach is adding fine carbon powders to the sponge lead pastes used in the negative electrodes of first- and second-generation lead-acid batteries. Extensive testing over the last decade has shown that changing the paste formulation to include up to 6% carbon by weight (±30% by volume) offers excellent cycleability and power while significantly reducing charging times. Johnson Controls (JCI), Exide Technologies (XIDE) and several other companies are already using carbon paste additives in enhanced versions of their flooded and AGM batteries with notable success. Others will follow. While carbon enhanced batteries have slightly lower specific energy than their predecessors, their 100 to 200 percent increase in cycle-life reduces the cost of energy storage by 30 to 50 percent.

A more complex approach is the Ultrabattery from CSIRO, Furukawa Battery and East Penn Manufacturing. It divides each negative electrode into two parts, a lead half and a carbon half. The end result is superior cyclability and power with even shorter charging times. The Ultrabattery is being tested in a variety of stationary and micro-hybrid applications and shows significant promise, including the potential to reduce the cost of energy storage by 50 to 70 percent.

The third and most sophisticated approach is the PbC battery from Axion Power International (AXPW.OB) that replaces the lead-based negative electrodes used in conventional batteries with a carbon electrode assembly. The resulting device is an "asymmetric lead-carbon capacitor" that offers the energy storage of a battery and the power and cycleability of a capacitor in a single hybrid device. The PbC has the lowest specific energy of all the emerging lead-carbon technologies, but it offers the cycleability and charge acceptance of the best lithium-ion batteries at a fraction of the cost. The PbC has been extensively tested for stationary, railroad, micro-hybrid and military applications and shows great promise, including the potential to slash the cost of energy storage by 80 percent or more.................."