Nickel-Iron Battery/Research Development: Difference between revisions
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Did some googling around and making notes, here is what I found : | Did some googling around and making notes, here is what I found : | ||
- | -apparently their efficiency goes *up* with time over about 2 years 80% as mentioned in the forum, unknown exactly why would be nice to know | ||
-see the docs from the manufacturer's of the modern batteries seems like efficiency is reasonably high actually, was not able to determine if the charging efficiency is nearly equal to the round trip efficiency, so the graphs might paint an overly rosy picture, but I think it is pretty close | -see the docs from the manufacturer's of the modern batteries seems like efficiency is reasonably high actually, was not able to determine if the charging efficiency is nearly equal to the round trip efficiency, so the graphs might paint an overly rosy picture, but I think it is pretty close | ||
http://www.changhongbatteries.com/Ni-Fe_battery_for_Solar_&_wind_appliances_p53_m2.2.1.html | http://www.changhongbatteries.com/Ni-Fe_battery_for_Solar_&_wind_appliances_p53_m2.2.1.html | ||
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[54] PROCESS FOR PRODUCING BATTERY ELECTRODES BY ELECTROCHEMICAL REDUCTION | [54] PROCESS FOR PRODUCING BATTERY ELECTRODES BY ELECTROCHEMICAL REDUCTION | ||
I hit the motherlode this time: | |||
http://edison.rutgers.edu/battpats.htm | |||
All (purportedly) of Edison's battery related patents, and it looks as though a large fraction of them relate to nickel iron directly or indirectly, from production of raw materials to the geometry of the electrodes. I started going through them but my computer is too slow. Most of them appear to be highly relevant; because he did not have high grade commodity materials to work with, this appears to be nearly an instruction book on making batteries from relatively low grade materials, although it might not be as good as a modern commercial one that remains to be seen, especially with a modest redesign combining the modern information above (and there is more like it I'm sure). | |||
[[Category: Research]] | [[Category: Research]] | ||
[[Category: Notes]] | [[Category: Notes]] | ||
Revision as of 16:14, 17 May 2011
Did some googling around and making notes, here is what I found :
-apparently their efficiency goes *up* with time over about 2 years 80% as mentioned in the forum, unknown exactly why would be nice to know -see the docs from the manufacturer's of the modern batteries seems like efficiency is reasonably high actually, was not able to determine if the charging efficiency is nearly equal to the round trip efficiency, so the graphs might paint an overly rosy picture, but I think it is pretty close http://www.changhongbatteries.com/Ni-Fe_battery_for_Solar_&_wind_appliances_p53_m2.2.1.html
low quality taken from browser history: http://www.beutilityfree.com/content/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=106:Ni-FeFAQ&catid=42:Nickel-Iron%20Batteries http://www.green-trust.org/wordpress/2010/07/14/american-made-nickel-iron-nife-forever-batteries/ http://www.ironcorepower.com.au/page3.php http://www.varta-automotive.com/index.php?id=87 http://www.ehow.com/way_5993981_homemade-edison-cell.html http://ps-survival.com/PS/Batteries/NiMH/Iron-Nickel_Battery_2008.pdf http://www.electro-tech-online.com/renewable-energy/100471-building-good-working-capacity-ni-fe-battery.html http://www.incompliancemag.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=56:the-lost-almost-technology-of-the-edison-cell&catid=29:just-for-fun&Itemid=138
higher quality http://www.nickel-iron-battery.com/
http://fieldlines.com/board/index.php?topic=144379.0 says "combiner caps" catalytic caps are available http://sustainabledesignupdate.com/2010/02/green-battery-design/ says they have/had a team developing them I emailed them http://apptechdesign.org/contact-us/ as asking for any documentation they can send on their work
http://www.solarpowerforum.net/forumVB/off-grid/4509-nickel-iron-batteries-8.html on one page here includes list of manufacturers that currently make them
the product pages etc form blog post http://www.uni-regensburg.de/Fakultaeten/nat_Fak_IV/Organische_Chemie/Didaktik/Keusch/chembox_edison-e.htm more
Swedesh pat.Nos 8.558/1897, 10.177/1899, 11.132/1899, 11.487/1899 and German Patent No.110.210 /1899. US.Pat No.678.722/1901, 692.507/1902 and German patent No 157.290/1901 http://edison.rutgers.edu/patents/01488481.PDF didn't look at http://www.patents.com/us-4330603.html
may be other patents, companies that make them and search freepatentsonline using the advanced search function for assignee name may turn up more and more recent
This is good stuff, but it shouldn't be on the talk page, it should be in something like Nickel-Iron Batter/Research. - Mark Norton
Oh, I didn't know that page existed. It should be linked to from the nickel iron battery page. I think using "related pages" as done in wikipedia more often would be a good idea. I will do it now. Okay it has been moved and I will add the link in related page section. -gregor
more on nickel iron ChangHong searched on freepatents online nickel iron electrochemical cell[p] nickel iron battery[p] nickel-iron battery[p] nickel iron cell nickel iron secondary cell nickel iron AN/changhong nickel iron AN/varta (changhong website says tehir battery tech is made from varta nickel oxyhydroxide battery at this there are many on nickel zinc batteries too might be useful bu tmost were omitted from notes below nickel oxyhydroxide electrode nickel oxyhydroxide battery
a lot on nickel zinc but since the cathode material is the same might be useful but most were omitted form below since there are so many
went through the first pages of results, got surprisingly few given how old these are, the search hits were usually very low relevance by the end of the first page so didn't continue past there though there were some on nickel zinc
assingee changhong also the related patents thing on the patent webpages might be useful to find even more
maybe email the suppliers through alibaba to see who own the technology base and if they have any documentation
high quality http://www.freepatentsonline.com/3853624.html
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/0827297.htmlthis one number wa sobtained from http://www.beutilityfree.com/content/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=106:Ni-FeFAQ&catid=42:Nickel-Iron%20Batteries notice that older patens are not searchable by the contents of the text unfortunately so any other edison patents may not be findable through patent search
battery grade nickel hydroxide http://www.freepatentsonline.com/5788943.html http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7407521.html process to produce nickel hydroxide maybe not useful thogh http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7081319.html preparation of nickel oxyhydrozide with ozone suitable fo use n battery (ozone is easy to produce with high voltage electrodes) http://www.freepatentsonline.com/4064331.html iron electrodes for battereis unk[p]
lower quality:[p] http://www.freepatentsonline.com/0678722.html edison us patent fist one metioned in wikipedia also appears to be on nicad not nickel iron http://www.freepatentsonline.com/0692507.html second one mentioned appears to be on nicad batteries not nickel iron http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6193871.html forming nickel elecrtode http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6492062.html nickel zinc http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7691531.html nickel hy more nickel zinc tells about nickel oxydydroxide lelectrode though http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6991875.html nother nice=kel zinc http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6261720.html have no idea if this is useful, something about a nickel hydroxide electrode in alkaline battery though I think this is probably be applicable to nickel metal hydride only ther eare many on nickel hydroxide electrodes http://www.freepatentsonline.com/4207383.html iron electrode maybe not useful there also appears to be alot of patents of more generalized approaches to e.g. the mechanical structure of the lectrodes of a secondary flooded cell battery which may be useful , on recombining hydrogen and o2 produceed by overchargning etc. http://www.freepatentsonline.com/5200282.html electrode ratehr than plates if wanted high disshcarge currents m\aybe http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7435395.html on nickel zinc
emailed http://apptechdesign.org/contact-us/ again on may 15asking for documentation on nickel iron
more links http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K84PywMwjZg didn't watch indivudual says has read mulitiple edison patents coudl contact them to ge tnumbers and advice, couldn't find a way through youtube
all things considered there seem to be very few patents related to nickel iron batteries, but a lot more on nickel zinc for some reason, also this searching through patentsonline did not unearth the edison patents so there is room for improvement in the search method. Also the swedishand german patents should be retireved and translated though I assume they would be in swedish or german so I did not do that. There are probably more edison patents to be uncovered.
What is a "chemical short"? thermal runaway type thing? Nickel iron is known to be prone to thermal runaway need to know the electrochemistry involved here
It appears that as usual the electrochemistry of a good rather than crappy battery is not so simple, especially over a large number of charge/discharge cycles.
Clearly a chemist or someone else with significant expertise is needed here to work out the details. For example sulfur from vulcanized rubber can contaminate the battery chemistry apparently. IIRC steel has a small quantities of sulfur in it so using sheet metal as the anode might not work out although that of course remains to be determined....
On may 17 I had another look for useful information:
There may be one or two duplicates here, in many cases for scientific docs those look like the most interesting but I did not have access to them. Someone with access could perhaps retrieve them and share them with developers who ask under fair use I think.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6TH1-43MDKGV-3T&_user=10&_coverDate=02%2F28%2F1990&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=gateway&_origin=gateway&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1754749372&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=fbe875e250bbedd5c9c31cc21f22158d&searchtype=a http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6TH1-43MDRN3-67&_user=10&_coverDate=04%2F30%2F1991&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=gateway&_origin=gateway&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1754737867&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=6cd39f8af38d365d4f7f3c3310c19022&searchtype=ais
In many cases docs were focussed on weight and discharge rate, but that is not out main concern, mainly $ per kWh and cycle life, with a discharge rate of at least 0.3 C (i.e. 300 watts for a 1kWh batt) it would work okay for pure solar systems, for biomass a higher discharge woudl be nice as it's primary function is to level the load on an hourly and daily basis at relatively high powers so a higher discharge rate could allow a smaller battery (whereas with pure solar you need a battery big enough to last for 3 days anyway and therefor even if the discharge rate as a fraction of capacity is low that is not a problem since the battery is so big anyway). However because batteries wear out partly as a function of the energy dumped into/removed (also ambient temperature but this will vary depending on the precise details of the battery, on ironedison.com it indicates substantial loss from elevated temperatures but the precise reaction that causes this needs to be identified) from them they may be considered on both a capital cost and running cost basis. Higher discharge rates will not in themselves affect the running cost, only capital cost, which may or may not be relatively small, that would need to be considered before effort is expended to produce a battery that would be okay with higher discharge rates. Secondly, there are no hard and fast rules on discharge rate for a given battery except to prevent overheating and achieve good energy efficiency, or for unusual reasons which are chemistry specific. The rules of thumb listed in battery datasheets are computed based on thermal characteristics, internal resistance of the battery (the higher it is the lower the discharge/charge rate you woudl want because Ohms law applies, therefore higher currents result in higher resistive losses) and in some cases unusual battery chemistry details like high speed charging resulting in wierd crystal structures of the anode or dendrite growth. Usually a battery can be operated above the rated charge/discharge rate as an engineering compromise though, which should be kept i nmind
In an OSE context it may no longer make sense to talk about battery cycle life in the same way. In a consumer context when a battery goes dead you get a new one, in some cases paying to get rid of th old one. And yet the active materials have not dissapeared. However there are sometimes irreversible side reactions that occur, changes in chemistry, the electrode that was supposed dto provide mechanical sterngth etc has dessolved, etc. For lead acid batteries there is information available on this of course. What is it for nickel iron? There is a whole industry based on rejuvenating "dead" lead acid batteris though clever chemisttry techniwues etc. and perhaps analogous techniques shoudl be worked out for nickel iron as part of this project. That could help to substantially decreae the effective running cost fo the batteries. There may already be a lot of information in existence to be drawn upon as these batteries have be used since they were invented in niche markets such as european mining, and in China, rather than as it is portrayed as beign forgotten.
By the way from what I have read this stuff about batteries lasting 50 years that some manufacturer's claim either includes this maintenance or it is bunk. They may last 3, 4 or 5 times as long as lead acid but certainly not 50 years of daily use without some kind of serious maintenance.
something about activatign the iron electrode,
patent number 5,788,943 Aug. 4, 1998
[54] BATTERY-GRADE NICKEL HYDROXIDE AND METHOD FOR ITS PREPARATION this one might have been already noted elsewhere
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6TH1-4679T4B-1B&_user=10&_coverDate=08%2F31%2F1995&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=gateway&_origin=gateway&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1754734072&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=84892d5964e609a899d54fbde534666c&searchtype=a good info on cycle life of exisyong cels
"battery grade nickel oxydydroxide" mayb be many such patents or the same on ekeep sseing
nicckel/iron
Battery-grade nickel hydroxide and method for its preparation B Aladjov - US Patent 5,788,943, 1998
higher quality: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=5525702 pdf seems to be here free http://www.nickel-iron-battery.com/sealed-nickel-iron-battery.pdf http://www.nickel-iron-battery.com/nickel-iron-cycle-testing-1995.pdf cyle testing http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6TH1-43MDJS6-2N&_user=10&_coverDate=09%2F30%2F1994&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=gateway&_origin=gateway&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1754797265&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=d2f1168545feacb1d7834ffd30cf729b&searchtype=a http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6TH1-43MDSPY-6S&_user=10&_coverDate=06%2F30%2F1991&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=gateway&_origin=gateway&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1754794033&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=96fe8af78e49f181bae86df2a1085081&searchtype=a
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6TG0-3Y0SH11-B&_user=10&_coverDate=02%2F29%2F1996&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=gateway&_origin=gateway&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1754792458&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=c47dbade5e61e0f4de4ac3707698bafe&searchtype=a coudl eb wuite iomportant, lithium hydroxide is often added to nickel iron batteries and this explains why , but litium is actually quite toxic (used as mood stabilizer for depression etc.) so shoudl be avoided if possible or unless the amounts are quite small, maybe sustitues can be found or maybe the edison batteries do not use it and are fine so it can be omitted. Also it is yet another component to add to the system and synthesize which is bad for OSE, how common is lithium in the environment?.
http://www.google.ca/patents?lr&vid=USPAT2653180&dq=nickel-iron%20%20battery&printsec=abstract&id=9mRlAAAAEBAJ&output=text&pg=PA2 on a battery itsself looks like a good one http://www.google.ca/patents?lr&vid=USPAT4680241&dq=nickel-iron%20%20battery&printsec=abstract&id=ACEvAAAAEBAJ&output=text&pg=PA1 good info too and method of restorign lost capacoty
http://www.google.ca/patents?lr&vid=USPAT3507696&dq=nickel-iron%20%20battery&printsec=abstract&id=tQ0hAAAAEBAJ&output=text&pg=PA2 interesting but has some funny parts like saying oxidization not known from th 70s maybe thats why explains iron passivation of leecctrode this coudl be important
lower quality:
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/3911094.html producing nickel oxydydroxide also discusses self discharg mechanisms of anode interesting but not needed migth reduce self discharge rate
There area many patents on the nickel electrode geometries and how to make them ususally intended for nimh or nickle zinc but coudl be used for us too, though again the perforated pockets are porbbaly adequate for our purposes anyway, they are usually intended to solve problems like low energy density etc which is not amajor problem for us anyway( http://www.google.ca/patents?hl=en&lr=&vid=USPAT4844999&id=ujE1AAAAEBAJ&oi=fnd&dq=nickel+iron++oxyhydroxide+battery&printsec=abstract#v=onepage&q&f=false http://www.freepatentsonline.com/EP0587973.html http://www.google.ca/patents?hl=en&lr=&vid=USPAT5861225&id=8LEYAAAAEBAJ&oi=fnd&dq=nickel+iron++oxyhydroxide+battery&printsec=abstract#v=onepage&q&f=false )
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V3F-50P47KJ-2&_user=10&_coverDate=09%2F30%2F2010&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=gateway&_origin=gateway&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1754805309&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=e286d03850bd05025a213e592d004af5&searchtype=a making ni(oh)2 electrodes: http://www.freepatentsonline.com/EP0723305.html
[ii] Patent Number: 4,863,484 [45] Date of Patent: Sep. 5, 1989
[54] PROCESS FOR PRODUCING BATTERY ELECTRODES BY ELECTROCHEMICAL REDUCTION
I hit the motherlode this time:
http://edison.rutgers.edu/battpats.htm
All (purportedly) of Edison's battery related patents, and it looks as though a large fraction of them relate to nickel iron directly or indirectly, from production of raw materials to the geometry of the electrodes. I started going through them but my computer is too slow. Most of them appear to be highly relevant; because he did not have high grade commodity materials to work with, this appears to be nearly an instruction book on making batteries from relatively low grade materials, although it might not be as good as a modern commercial one that remains to be seen, especially with a modest redesign combining the modern information above (and there is more like it I'm sure).