Publications

Carbon-enhanced VRLA batteries

Enos, David E.; Hund, Thomas D.

The addition of certain forms of carbon to the negative plate in valve regulated lead acid (VRLA) batteries has been demonstrated to increase the cycle life of such batteries by an order of magnitude or more under high-rate, partial-state-of-charge operation. Such performance will provide a significant impact, and in some cases it will be an enabling feature for applications including hybrid electric vehicles, utility ancillary regulation services, wind farm energy smoothing, and solar photovoltaic energy smoothing. There is a critical need to understnd how the carbon interacts with the negative plate and achieves the aforementioned benefits at a fundamental level. Such an understanding will not only enable the performance of such batteries to be optimzied, but also to explore the feasibility of applying this technology to other battery chemistries. In partnership with the East Penn Manufacturing, Sandia will investigate the electrochemical function of the carbon and possibly identify improvements to its anti-sulfation properties. Shiomi, et al. (1997) discovered that the addition of carbon to the negative active material (NAM) substantially reduced PbSO{sub 4} accumulation in high rate, partial state of charge (HRPSoC) cycling applications. This improved performance with a minimal cost. Cycling applications that were uneconomical for traditional VRLA batteries are viable for the carbon enhanced VRLA. The overall goal of this work is to quantitatively define the role that carbon plays in the electrochemistry of a VRLA battery.