Nickel-Iron Battery/Research Development

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This page is deliberately somewhat free-form to allow an open exchange of ideas regarding the development, within an Open Source Ecology economy, of a Ni-Fe battery, a somewhat esoteric subject. The further down the page you go, the more free-form the information.

Source Materials

Nickel Compounds

Iron Compounds

Electrolytes

Other

Sources and pricing

FusionBeads [1] 3"x3" 24 gauge nickel sheet is $3.25.
Metric: 76.2x76.2mm and 0.5mm thick. The density of nickel is 8.902 g/cm3. 2903.22 mm3 which is 2.90 cm3. Thus, each sheet weights 25.84g. 2000g (2kg required as above) is 77.38 sheets. $251.50 is the cost of 2kg of nickel. Actually, it can be gotten cheaper in these quantities, but this is an outside number.

We need to look into purchasing in bulk as it is far cheaper than this sheet. Those guys must be making generous profit to say the least.

Wikipedia indicates that the price of metallic nickel these days is about 13 USD a kilogram, but it has been in the fifties during certain price spikes, I could not find a historical record, or even the current commodity price anywhere.

There are several ways to make the nickel electrode and active material which require different raw materials. See electrode sections for details. To both produce the nickel oxyhydroxide or hydroxide either inside the electrode matrix or as a powder of good particle size and porosity, which is then mixed into a paste and pasted into (with a matrix electrode) or onto (with a metal plate electrode, needs other additives to the paste) the electrode, there are several established economical ways that involve different raw materials, all of which will have different prices and availabilities:

-Use a metallic nickel which is then oxidized electrochemically in a suitable chemical bath - Use the oxyhydroxide or hydroxide powder, which can be purchased directly in purities adequate for battery use - Nickel oxide (NiO2 I think), which is then roasted in air to oxidize it to the oxyhydroxide - Nickel nitrate, sulfate, and potentially other salts can be melted, the electrode dipped in, and then the electrode dipped in hot sodium hydroxide solution to convert the nickel through a binary reaction to nickel hydroxide. This has to be repeated several times to load the electrode. - To produce nickel hydroxide powder from some other salts, the nickel salt is sprayed into a basin of sodium hydroxide.

As long as we have nickel compound of adequate purity it's just a matter of figuring out an economical production method, or using an existing one. Which material will be needed can be chosen on price, availability and the ease and economy of the associated manufacturing technique.

Nickel could be recovered from the waste stream too, but this might not end up saving any money.

Iron as an element or in the form of steel is cheap, but a look on alibaba.com indicates that it may cost substantially more in pure iron powder. We might want to make our own in the production phase, especially if a design which only uses a fraction of the iron as active material is chosen. The first problem is purification, in which the carbonyl process or other industrial processes might be useful in scaled down form, but this is where the contributions of a chemist would be particularly welcome as there is probably something which is more practical. Then it needs to be powdered either mechanically or through chemical or electrochemical processes, or some combination thereof.

Purification may not be badly needed. It would improve performance but how much so needs to be worked out so an informed decision can be made.

The Edison process for producing the iron powder was much like what references indicate is the current process used for producing the powder for pocket plate batteries [the battery handbook, 3rd edition]:

- dissolve "pure iron" (how pure, what impurities are problematic can be nailed down to a fair degree from the documents listed in the sticking points section). - The FeSO4 is then re-crystallized (are we talking fractional crystallization here to purify it?), dried, and roasted (815 to 915 deg. C) (in what atmosphere? Air probably) to Fe2O3.

- The material is washed free of any remaining [iron] sulfate, dried, and partially reduced in hydrogen.

-The resulting material (Fe3O4 and Fe) is partially oxidized, dried, ground, and blended. Small amounts of additives, are blended in to increase battery life, depassivate the iron electrode, reduce gas production, and improving conductivity. (See other reaction and additives sections for details on potential additives.)

There are other ways established ways:

Heating iron oxalate in a vacuum produces a mix of iron and iron oxide powder High purity iron powder like carbonyl powder

Price of Nickel and Iron

http://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/?commodity=nickel price is very roughly $23 per kg. Pretty good really. http://www.steelonthenet.com/commodity_prices.html price $0.60 per kg for scrap steel, presumably pure iron would be in that range.


From the electrochemistry figures above for a 1 kWh unit, that would be $48 or so on metals. So 20 Wh per $ ($0.05 per Wh). Even the cheapest lead acid batteries are 7 Wh per $. In reality they are more like 5. So the good news it that materials cost should not sink the ship anyway, although I'm sure all the other costs for the perforated pocket, assembly etc. will add up plenty fast.


Patents

  • 0678722: Reversible Galvanic Battery: edison us patent fist one metioned in wikipedia also appears to be on nicad not nickel iron)
  • 0692507: Reversible Galvanic Battery: (edison, second one mentioned appears to be on nicad batteries not nickel iron)
  • 0827297: Alkaline Battery: (edison)
  • 1402751: Storage Battery Electrode and the Production of Same: (edison)
  • 3650835: PREPARATION OF BATTERY PLATES WITH IRON OXIDES HAVING A FUSED COATING :
  • 3785867: BATTERY PLATES COMPRISING A MULTIPLICITY OF PERFORATED METALLIC FOIL ELEMENTS AND A BATTERY UTILIZING SAME
  • 3819413: RECHARGEABLE METAL ELECTRODE FOR STORAGE BATTERIES AND METAL-AIR CELLS: nother iron electrode
  • 3836397: IRON ELECTRODE FOR ALKALINE CELLS: another one on iron electrode activated with sulfur etc not sure what the other parts were
  • 3849198: IRON ELECTRODE PASTE FOR ALKALINE BATTERY PLATES
  • 3853624: HIGH ENERGY DENSITY IRON-NICKEL:
  • 3895961: Electrodeposition of iron active mass
  • 3898098: Process for producing iron electrode: (electrodeposition method, says that electrodes used today (1975) are almost identical to those used by edison, says easy to deposit ferrous hydroxide, might be wrong hydroxide?)
  • 3941614: Method of preparing high capacity nickel electrode powder
  • 4016091: Method of preparing high capacity nickel electrode powder: says nickel coated steel wool is good
  • 4029132:Method of preparing high capacity nickel electrode powder: again steel wool
  • 4064331: Method for the preparation of iron electrodes: (iron electrodes for batteries; the patent on pyrolized resin and carbon black being used as the support matrix nickel plated screws)
  • 4207383: Negative, highly active iron electrode: (iron electrode maybe not useful)
  • 4399005: Method of nickel electrode production: (with zinc hydroxide)
  • 4519425: Control method for loading battery electrodes: diffusion bonded steel wool? also mentions vacuum impregnation and hand pasted and centrifuge
  • 4540476: Procedure for making nickel electrodes: a good one, forming nickel electrode straight on the electrode electrolytically looks like this could be transferred from a main electrode to the acceptor electrode in an electrode production tank too so you could form nickel electrodes from nickel ingot (need to check solubility of hydroxide)if you could get metal for some reason checked alibaba though and looks like it is more expensive substantially actually ,
  • 4623600: Low shear nickel electrode: high stresses exist in the electrode applies to NiMH but check the molar volume change for nife might matter also streses caused by gas pressure
  • 4663256: Nonsintered nickel electrode: another plastic emulsion type
  • 4844999: Nickel electrode for alkaline battery and battery using said nickel electrode: porous electrode prob nihm
  • 5151162: Rechargeable storage battery with electroactive organic polymer electrodes in polar solvent electrolyte: electrically conductive polymers, maybe some of them would make sense as a conductinve substrate that's easy to make and low cost
  • 5200282: Nickel electrode and alkaline battery using the same: (electrode rather than plates if wanted high disshcarge currents maybe) (nickel plate mesh, remove substrate)
  • 5788943: Battery-grade nickel hydroxide and method for its preparation:
  • 6193871: Process of forming a nickel electrode (forming nickel electrode)
  • 6261720: Positive electrode active material for alkaline storage batteries: (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)
  • 6265112: Method of making a nickel fiber electrode for a nickel based battery system: another
  • 6492062: Primary alkaline battery including nickel oxyhydroxide: (nickel,zinc)
  • 6991875: Alkaline battery including nickel oxyhydroxide cathode and zinc anode: (another nickel zinc)
  • 7081319: Preparation of nickel oxyhydroxide: (preparation of nickel oxyhydrozide with ozone suitable fo use n battery (ozone is easy to produce with high voltage electrodes))
  • 7407521: Process for producing nickel oxyhydroxide by electrolytic oxidation: (process to produce nickel hydroxide maybe not useful though)
  • ttp://www.freepatentsonline.com/7435395.html| 7435395]: Alkaline cell with flat housing and nickel oxyhydroxide cathode: (another nickel zinc)
  • 7691531: Alkaline primary battery including a spherical nickel oxyhydroxide: primary battery with nickel oxyhydroxide there seems to be no attempt make to contact the active material with a matrix but it is a high current discharge battery probably capable of more than 1C. read again maybe there are spherical particles, also the crystal structure might be a reason , also it expands after being added to battery apparently so that might be causing compressive stress if there are conductive particles too, could be a useful way to get the needed force




patent 3583624, porous fiber matt described in such a way that surface arae can be calculated is okay at 0.5 C also describes a process used to load the electrodes that sounds like a lot of work, precipitating the iron in the electrode matrix, also says "electroprecipitation" can be used without elaborating.


http://www.freepatentsonline.com/4064331.html mentiones activating iron oxide by soakin in h2s water (h2s highly toxic note similar to cyanide but strong odor at subtoxic levels so relatively safe )also provides brand names for iron oxide might give an idea of purity freedom from various compounds required , is using pyrolized polymer and carbon as electrode maybe coudl use well heated pyrolized biomass instead of carbon and some other polymer or material for carbon but this seems to be only for small electrodes of 1.7 grams but may be used in conjuntion with other methods


more

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

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).

patent number 5,788,943 Aug. 4, 1998

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/4335192.html ammonium halogenides suitable for activatin iron elecrtrode

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/4335192.html The classical method, dating back to Edison, for producing active metallic iron powder involves dissolving the pure iron in sulfuric acid, subjecting the iron sulphate derived from the solution to a baking process at 900° C., and reducing it in hydrogen current at 450° C. after washing and oxidizing drying. The iron powder so formed can subsequently be sintered either in the dry state or as a moist paste in an H 2 current after application to a support, and thus formed into an electrode. Later electrochemical processes for making active iron masses have also become known, e.g., in accordance with Austrian Pat. No. 320,770, which teaches the electrolysis of an iron nitrate solution, with copper salt added to it.

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/4443526.html nickel oxide electrode "A very suitable material is nickel coated steel wool." for current collector of cathode "As can be seen from FIG. 2, the cobalt containing electrode paste of this invention provides pasted electrodes which retain theoretical output of about 0.26 ampere-hours/gram for between 25 to 38 cycles, curves (A) and (B). Without cobalt additive, output drops to below 0.20 ampere-hours/gram of NiCO 3 ." But this is for a nickel oxide electrode. Note also that the efficiency with which the active material is used is very high, wonder if we can get this with oxyhydroxide

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/4236927.html High curretn hihgly active more on a sintered iron electrode Numerous attempts have already been undertaken to maintain the polarization within acceptable limits, for example, in that one mixes active iron material with nickel flitter (very fine nickel flakes) as conductive substance and stuffs this mixture into steel pockets or small steel pipes. This electrode type is very stable and sturdy; however, it can be operated only with small current strengths.[the pocket electrode edison used? need to check edison patents he may not have added the flitter or used adifferent metallic material for conductivity]

"A simultaneous cathodic separation of iron and of a conductive material such as, for example, nickel, entails a further improvement; " what does this mean?

another sugested option might be mixing pure iron powder with sodium chloride solution,sintering adnduring sintering the sodium chloride prevents the particles from sticking together so much as to reduce the surface area more than needed, then removing the excess chloride by dissolving it, read in previous patents that this can help with leectrode activation as well as mentioned it corrodes small pores in the surface of teh iron , also in the process when sinterin gis done in an atmosphere of H2 activates the electrodes (removes oxide I think although not quite sure yet what electrode activation altogether necessarilly entails). Even better use feric chloride then rather than dissovling it reduce it with hydrogen gas to form iron apparently works well, Note that this may not have been tested for lon gterm urability but they are in the know and do no expect it to be a problem and why patent something unless pretty sure it is useful unless they are just putting up fences in case it might be useful, also the patent said that "The theoretical capacity with respect to weight of an iron electrode lies at 960 ampere hours per kg (Ah/kg). In practice, once reaches capacities of about 200 to 250 Ah/kg because" this indicates that the cost calculations for the raw material amount of iron is much higher than the naive electrochemical equations, it migh tals obe comparable for the cathode reaction which would be bad but from descriptions for other electrode producing methods this might be wrong or out of date (filed 1978) check with that starved electrolyte nickel iron battery paper to see if can extract data on the actual performance vs. theoretical that they acheived

note the tendency to use diffusion bonding to connect fibers involved with fiber elecgtroe plaques, in many cases no tmentioned but may be important. Can probably calculate bulk specific resistance with and without bonding, contact resistance between 2 metals just touching not bonded can be found in references.

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/4250236.html says lithium hydroxide not needed "tubular electrodes"? "bonded iron plastic elctrodes"? Maybe an electrically conductive polymer would eb convenient maybe with metal fibers embedden in it "The positive electrodes were intentionally made with larger capacities than the negative electrodes" it shoudl be the other way around, otherwise you risk reacting the entire iron electrode during discharge and the iron usually provides some of it's own current collector matrix, maybe they made a mistake or maybe they did it on purpose for testing or something.

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/4250236.html

still doesn't explain how the variation in electrode geometry changees with charg/discharge cycles, but it seems that it is assumed that it stays more or less the same for some reason i.e. an electrode that has a high surface area to weight ratio when new will continue to have one, and without the need for additives or anything like that. Maybe the hydroxide precipitates out right after being formed and stays more or less put on the surface, and likewise does nto travel far during charging though ther must be some diffusion and maybe this is part of what limits battery life. Alternatively on in combination with this, maybe the processes during reformation of the electrode during chargnine are remarkable symmetrical with the ones during recharging, leading to a very slow reduction in surface roughness/porosity, or it usually goes up over time so as long as you start high engouh to be good you're okay.

Still need to identify the temperature dependent capacity loss mechanisms http://www.freepatentsonline.com/4132547.html another electrode one for the iron electrode, there are so many am skipping most of them, they can be found by searching easily http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6335120.html polymer support matrix , helps explain the method used to make the electrode in the sealed nickel battery testing doc, applies to both electrodes, why would you add syncrystallized materials they mention? could semimelting of the polymer work to provide adhesion thereby replace some of the ingredients here reducing ingredient count?

Performance/capacity loss mechanisms identified thus far:

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/4236927.html I think mentioned that the interfaces between the iron particles in a sinterd electrode can oxidize with some electrode production methods, increasing the resistance of the bulk of the electrod's current collecting matrix to high level,

Oxidization of the iron to iron oxide causes electrode passivation, the addition of something to provide sulfide ions in electrode or the electrolyte causes reductino of the pxide on an ongoing basis, but eventually the sulfide oxidises to sulfate and doesn't go back,

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/4250236.html says passivation occurs more so at *low* temperatures, not higher , also points out depletion of sulfide is one mechanism by which it is due to oxidization of sulfide to sulfate

The marketing material for e.g. nickel-iron-batteries.com indicates that there is a reaction that occurs which produces capacity loss with time and is more problematic at higher temperatures. This has not been identified yet and should be.

Activation of iron electrodes:

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/result.html?p=1&edit_alert=&srch=xprtsrch&query_txt=Iron+sintered+electrode+battery&uspat=on&date_range=all&stemming=on&sort=relevance&search=Search


Battery-grade nickel hydroxide and method for its preparation B Aladjov - US Patent 5,788,943, 1998

patent 01488480 describes some failure modes and fix looks like ause for the waste glycerine from biodeisel too

nickel plated screws http://www.freepatentsonline.com/4663256.html anothe plastic emulsio n type one http://www.freepatentsonline.com/4540476.html a good one, forming nickel electrode straight on the electrode electrolytically looks like this could be transferred from a main electrode to the acceptor electrode in an electrode production tank too so you could form nickel electrodes from nickel ingot (need to check solubility of hydroxide)if you could get metal for some reason checked alibaba though and looks like it is more expensive substantially actually ,

check our foreign patents too sometime

  • EP0889535 January, 1999 Nickel hydroxide active material for use in alkaline storage cell and manufacturing method of the same
  • JP0378965
  • http://www.freepatentsonline.com/4000005.html electrode for nimh but still may be applicable here also some about vacuum impregnation of the slurry (not paste?
  • might be able to use a microporous plastic filter pit fibermetal or paper against and then have the particles cake out on it a s afilter cake woud be limited though density

Options from patents (not all may be promising):

In French Patent No. 2,236,283 to Bonnaterre, http://www.freepatentsonline.com/5563004.html recombinant electrode in some other way General info on recombination and catalysts and how to make use of them practically:

Sealed battery doc describes way to make catalyst but takes a lot of platinum

Papers

library

A lot of information has been gathered and this needs to stay available to other devs. For documents accessible on the net links should be provided, and the page should be spidered a few links deep to produce a backup copy the docs.

Some docs can be shared but aren't available online and I will upload the few I have and list them here.

Some docs cannot be legally put on the wiki but can be shared to at least 3 layers of passing the docs for free person to person, under fair use. A list of these ones I have now is below. Contact me at gregorfolouk@hotmail.com and I will send you a copy of any or all of them.

cyclic voltammetry studies of porous iron electrodes in alkaline solutions used for alkaline batteries

electrochemical behaviour of iron oxide electrodes in alkali solutions

performance characterisation of sintered iron electrodes in nickel/iron alkaline batteries

comparative studies of porous iron electrodes

electrochemical behaviour of teflon-bonded iron oxide electrodes in alkali solutions

rechargeable alkaline iron electrodes


SECONDARY BATTERIES – Electrodes: Iron

On the key importance of homogeneity in the electrochemical performance of industrial positive active materials in nickel batteries

SECONDARY BATTERIES – NICKEL SYSTEMS

The electrochemical generation of ferrate at pressed iron powder electrodes: effect of various operating parameters

SECONDARY BATTERIES – Nickel–Iron

DEVELOPMENTAL STUDIES ON POROUS IRON ELECTRODES FOR THE NICKEL-IRON CELL

The electrochemical generation of ferrate at pressed iron powder electrode: comparison with a foil electrode

The nickel/Iron battery

A nickel-iron battery with roll-compacted iron electrodes

Nickel-based rechargeable batteries Original Research Article Journal of Power Sources, Volume 100, Issues 1-2, 30 November 2001, Pages 125-148 A. K. Shukla, S. Venugopalan, B. Hariprakash


Passivation of iron in alkaline carbonate solutions Original Research Article Journal of Power Sources, Volume 35, Issue 2, July 1991, Pages 131-142 M. Jayalakshmi, V.S. Muralidharan

Iron/carbon-black composite nanoparticles as an iron electrode material in a paste type rechargeable alkaline battery

Electrochemical behaviour of Teflon-bonded iron oxide electrodes in alkaline solutions P. Periasamy, B. Ramesh Babu, S. Venkatakrishna Iyer

Electrochemical characteristics of iron carbide as an active material in alkaline batteries Kiyoshi Ujimine, Atsushi Tsutsumi

ASSESSMENT OF PERFORMANCE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE NICKEL-IRON CELL

Role of activation on the performance of the iron negative electrode in nickel/iron cells M. Jayalakshmi, B. Nathira Begum, V. R. Chidambaram, R. Sabapathi and V. S. Muralidharan* Central Electrochemical Research Institute, Karaikudi 623006 (India)

The role of FeS and �NH / CO additives on the pressed type Fe 4 2 3 electrode C.A. Caldas, M.C. Lopes, I.A. Carlos ) Group of Electrochemistry and Polymers, DQ-UFSCar, P.O. Box 676, CEP 13565-905,


TEMPERATURE LIMITATIONS OF PRIMARY AND SECONDARY ALKALINE BATTERY ELECTRODES SRI International, 333 Ravenswood Avenue, Menlo Park, CA 94025 (U.S.A.)

RESEARCH, DEVELOPMENT, AND DEMONSTRATION OF A NICKEL/ IRON BATTERY FOR ELECTRIC VEHICLE PROPULSION Eagle-Picher Industries Inc., C and Porter Streets, P.O. Box 47, Joplin, MO 64801 (U.S.A.)

Rechargeable alkaline iron electrodes K. Vijayamohanan, T. S. Balasubramanian and A. K. Shukla Solid-state and Structural Chemistry Unit, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore - 560 012 @&a)

RESEARCH, DEVELOPMENT, AND DEMONSTRATION OF A NICKEL/ IRON BATTERY FOR ELECTRIC VEHICLE PROPULSION Westinghouse Advanced Energy Systems Division, P.O. Box 10864, Pittsburgh, PA 15236 (U.S.A.)


  • There are a few more which are probably available for free somewhere but which are still under copyright and therefore cannot be shared on the wiki, usually manuals on existing batteries etc.:

"the edison alkaline storage battery" doc from the edison battery company with some historical info about the batteries and their production

Operations manual(TN cell).pdf for changhong batteries(probably available on the changhong site)

"table 6 plus apendices" a piece of a manual for batteries that are in manufacture today, according to the person that sent me this doc they were made in Ukraine. (changhong=china)

Electrolyte Mixing Procedures V5611.doc This doc is for modern batteries still in production don't remember if it was ukraine or changhong ones

Changing Electrolyte pages 1 and 2.pdf this doc is for modern batteries, don't remember if it was the ukraine ones or the changhong ones

Notes

The parts added by me,Gregor, are only my personal notes, essentially unedited and may be indecipherable, but it was that or much less research would be here because I only had so much time to put in. In some cases parts will appear to mean nothing to people who are not already knowledgeable on the subject, or there may even be notes that only make sense in context of what I was thinking at the time. I am a believer in a high level of transparency, and I could have chosen to leave this on my hard drive instead, but I am more interested in success than avoiding embarrassment. I am no longer working on this project much due to management issues on the OSE project so if you want it cleaned up you will have to do it yourself.

Did some googling around and making notes, here is what I found, this is ordered chronologically and I will try to organize the information into sections later, but this is only a sampling of the information available. Sorry about the perforated boxes, I have not been able to stop the wiki from doing that, and the lack of hard returns is another wiki quirk:

  • apparently their efficiency goes *up* with time over about 2 years 80% as mentioned in the forum, purportedly unknown exactly why, would be nice to know.
  • 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:

higher quality

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 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 from 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

assignee 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

emailed http://apptechdesign.org/contact-us/ again on may 15asking for documentation on nickel iron

more links

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, might refer to coloumbic leakage rather than an actual short i.e. ions in the electrolyte moving in the opposite direction or electrons consumed in some

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 according to the edison patents.
   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.

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 would 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.


http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6TH1-44CVXGT-F&_user=10&_coverDate=11%2F30%2F2001&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=gateway&_origin=gateway&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1754742248&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=ec803b11bf9489e6f5a74dad0ccbfcce&searchtype=a

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6TH1-3VR6J5Y-2&_user=10&_coverDate=09%2F30%2F1996&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=gateway&_origin=gateway&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1754736866&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=5fe7b156fc556763f1a2488f1a2eef78&searchtype=a

something about activatign the iron electrode,

[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

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6TG0-44CHX0D-90&_user=10&_origUdi=B6TH1-4679T4B-1B&_fmt=high&_coverDate=04%2F30%2F1976&_rdoc=1&_orig=article&_origin=article&_zone=related_art&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=cacbfb701007ce4d2ed73e9ffecb40a7 self discharge


"battery grade nickel oxydydroxide" mayb be many such patents or the same on keep seeing nickel/iron

higher quality:

lower quality:

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(

)

electrodes:


[54] PROCESS FOR PRODUCING BATTERY ELECTRODES BY ELECTROCHEMICAL REDUCTION


May 19

I am making this a separate section because the wiki put a warning that the page may have been to long for some browsers to edit without breaking into categories.

Maybe look at the most specific or relevant patents and then search using the names of inventors etc.

The conductive scaffold for active material is referred to as a plaque of it is metallic (and maybe if not).

nickel iron cycle testing pdf has somethin gabout mucic acid to reduce the production of gas during charging that was from a pantent could probbaly find the patent

"Nickel hydroxide has been used for many years as an active electrode material for the positive electrode of alkaline batteries. The nickel hydroxide electrodes for these electrochemical cells traditionally fall into one of two major groups, sintered electrodes or pasted electrodes. Sintered electrodes are typically prepared by loading nickel hydroxide into a microporous substrate formed of a perforated steel sheet or mesh followed by sintering to form nickel oxyhydroxide, NiOOH.[why do the sintering if it is already loaded with nickel hydroxide??] The more recent pasted electrodes are prepared by producing an aqueous mixture of nickel hydroxide powder in a suitable carrier such as carboxymethyl cellulose. A porous metal substrate of fiber, foam or sponge is then impregnated with the solution to fill the pores of the substrate with nickel hydroxide. One advantage of the pasted nickel electrodes is the higher energy level approaching and even exceeding 600 mAh/cc compared to the typical energy density for sintered electrodes of about 400 mAh/cc. "


From the sealed nickel iron battery doc: 

 Negative-limited Ni–Fe cells were assembled by stacking
 an iron electrode in between two sintered nickelpositive
 electrodes. The cells were housed in plexiglass
 containers in starved-electrolyte configuration, and were
 sealed with a plug containing 0.5 g of 2 at.% Pt/CeO2
 hydrogen–oxygen recombinant catalyst mixed with an
 equal amount of fumed silica. 6 V/1 Ah sealed, starvedelectrolyte
 Ni–Fe batteries were assembled in a plexiglass
 container comprising five compartments to

What? no Oxyhydroxide? When/how is it formed ?

maybe possible to form nickel hydroxide from metallic electrolytically, metallic nickel may be more expensive anyway though

faradaic efficiency of nickel iron cells, the sealed battery paper says is only 60% but again goes up over time to 80%

new docs

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/5989746.html listsa a few types of nickel electrode

searched "nickel iron batteries" on sciencedirect.com and went through the first 3 pages

&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=f94cc3c3f3988c1195112305e5e27202&searchtype=a

it employs electrodes with the pocket plate construction wherein the active material is encapsulated between double perforated folded steel strips. http://www.hblnicad.co.uk/Our%20Products.htm

note, these links are all broken, I have gone back and retrieved the titles of the papers and others, they are listed lower down http://www.freepatentsonline.com/5989746.html a pocket-type electrode, obtained by compressing electrochemically active material, in this case hydroxide Ni(OH) 2 , mixed with a conductor, into a metal pocket having perforated walls so that the electrolyte can impregnate the active material, but the active material cannot escape from the pocket; and


Maybe vacuum for gettin gpaste into the porous electrode, expose electrode to vacuum, cover in paste then expose to atmospheric, paste gets sucked into electrode , could also put electrode in a pan then vover with paste and maybe do one vacuum cycle

make a complete contained widget machine or glove box for electrode production to contain the (moderately) toxic materials if have to use paste

Cost of nickel oxide and hydroxide to determin if they might be cheaper than metal nickel in terms of the quantity of nickel:

Prices on the pages are FOB: free on board; assumption of responsibility by shipper for all costs until goods are placed on carrier , whatever carrier is, presumabbly the shipping company.

Ranges from 7 to 30$ on alibaba.com some grades migh tnot be suitable for batteris due to impurities, this can probably be determined from the information in the scientific articles and some manufacturer's conveniently say it is suitable for batteries. Detailed analysis may be available from suppliers. Samples may be obtainable form suppliers for prototyping with the specific material of concern. NiO2 (oxide) and Ni2O3 (peroxide) or NiO see wikipedia for CAS numbers but the pages sometimes fail to distinguish saying oxide always? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_chemical_formulas/Merge/N note that chemical suppliers are sometimes very sloppy about talking about chemicals and chemical names and may make mistakes, a lot of chemists are, with oxide meaning any of the oxides so need to double check the exact chemical used in the patents if the route of producing nickel oxyhydroxide from nickel oxide by oxidization in o2 gas, ozone in solution or humid ozone gas or otherwise, is chosen.

Details on which impurities are problematic needs to be tracked down so the cheapest stuff that will do can be used. Testing works to some degree but not if the impurity causes reduced life which would go undetected. Nickel hydroxide I did not check yet because I still need to look at other patents and see if electrode can be made straight from it.

alibaba, jus tsearch nickel oxide or "nickel oxide" battery

conclusion: In terms of nickel content, depends on who it is purchased from etc. But it is usually substantially cheaper than nickel metal.

The if vacuum is use for pasted equivalent electrode, battery could be designed such that the pasting process occurs inside the battery maybe no point though, but trying to keep the reactions and toxic materials in the battery during manufacture rateher than needing to pour and transfer them would be nice , and using nickel metal as a starter material coudl be a perk in that regard actually nickel oxide not soluble in water is it? No do not accept "insoluble" as an answer, want to know exactly how soluble

Is apparent that the reaction products stay put where the reaction material was before, unlike in a lead acid battery where they form a sludge of material at the bottom of the battery, that assumption tripped me up for a bit there so be it known.

http://academic.research.microsoft.com/Paper/11920038 solubility of NiO

maybe post on amateur chemist forums when the time comes ask for help clearin up uncertainties, maybe experimenting like finding solubility of nickel oxyhydroxide or p 

 iron air battery sounds interesing http://www.freepatentsonline.com/4474862.html wonder what the efficiency for rechargnin is probably very low, could make a good electrid lifetrack

No doubt this applies to searches in other venues as well like on sciencedirect etc.

While at first it appears there is relatively little info on these batteries there is a vast amount just under the surface that can be mined out and is fairly informative. Clearly after the information is mined out of the public spaces there will still be plenty left squirreled away by companies for one reason or another that is just not available to us. Some of this will need to be re figured out on paper by someone with some chemistry knowledge/ rediscovered though prototyping/testing/research.

aluminum air if coudl use aluminum elecrdodes from clay wonder how to make the gas permeable electrode though maybe coudl metallize a gas permable polymer layer with vacuum vapor deposition or similar or could maye the polymer slighlyt conductive and embed metallic fibers or similar

check out other ways to make active iron electrodes are probably lots of them, includes a low solubility sulfide mixed in the iron or added in excess to the electrolyte, adding sulfide to the iron electrode, other ways of getting sulfite where it needs to be, apparently present as an impurity in adequate amount in some iron anyway so thats handy.

nickel zinc might be worth lookin g into since they have higher cahrge/discharge efficiency are more efficient

searchable archive of the pdfs which I ocred, I tried to upload this to the wiki but it is more than 7 megs and not a permitted file type (.zip) not can batch uploading of PDFs be done, so maybe someone else can put this information on the wiki where it will not disappear in the future as it will on zippyshare, but will rather remain conveniently searchable for future developers: http://www30.zippyshare.com/v/76183680/file.html

why is it that edison keeps mentioning that sulfur is undesirable in the vulcanized rubber in the insulators but in modern batteries is is used to acitvate the electrode?

yet another optio nfo the anode is to take copper crystals and iron particles and compress them into a blockL 2683182 says low purity iron can be used for this

How hard would it be to make the nickel cloth again? if diffusion bonding is needed then that reduces the benefit of using steel wool and cloth can't release inhalable fibers when you dont want it to , maybe sintering not so bad either would be durable too , oh it nickel plating of the wool happens after diffusion bonding it says maybe beat or vacuum clean or blast with high pressure air the steel wool to reduce the amount of small fibers involved to reduce amount of stuff that migh tbe released subsequently maybe no point nickel metal anyway http://www.nmfrc.org/epadocs/1994f.htm on chemicall yplating steel wool

maybe nickel foil but without compression no probably not need the metal scaffold to be condictive throughout maybe a method could be developed to use salt or sugar and get the nickel foil bit sto bond with electrochemical plate-out

maybe plate-out on the active material or a polymer matrix?

check the polymer paste methods again maybe flouropolymer not needed coudl use a different material combo they mention also they explain why they use fluoropolymer, highly hydrophobic, maybe a substitute can be found.

also check the conductive pyrolyzed plastic again check conductivit of activated carbon etc to see conductivity of pyrolized biomass

that US3853624.pdf file gives an idea of the sort of fiber density and size that is suitable for electrodes

Maybe thixotropic material to prevent escape, have a look at gells again do the diffuse and sort of spread throughout a liwuid they are immersed in or stay solid maybe the nickel plating process would electrically attach the wool together appropriately

wool needs to be cleaned adequately first

with the iron electrode make it from scratch What to do about the need to obtain nickel from environment in abundance?

if do buy stuff needs to be commodity as possible so no buyin nickel wool or electroplate stuff then

That leaves the polymer maybe dense polymer fibers woudl work

bickel plated bolts for final termination, and probably a bit more fragile (though actually carbon fiber is pretty tough) so might want to make the branching of the fiber stuff heirarchical if can maybe test it for wtrenght first also extra dense can be done easily also support it in the casing of the battery with foam supports to distribute loads due to shock etc and make it a block instead of a plate maybe check the tensile strength of pyrolized plastics of varying sorts esp common and cheap ones remember carbon fiber is made by pyrolizing aramid right and we can make polyaramid 11 or whatever see wikipedia under biopolymers

need to find the patents that mentioned downsides of including carbon or graphite in the electrodes on either side

block can have veritcal and horizontal holes etc. easily to allow gas to excape s

for heirarchy could use fiber and powder together need to have contingency pland in case a certain commodity no longer available hardly, also need co calculate costs as go along they have to be less than commercial batteries, if as mentioned above only a quarter of the active electrode on iron side actually gets used (also tells how much material need to sinter to make the electrode), also on the nickel side need to know what fraction of active material gets used

"Eagle Pitcher Ni " is a commercial plaque sutiable fo rht enickel side

damn, went back to look at some of the scientific articles and the urls are all broken and cant be fixed. no correlation between url and articles at all .search browser history to find the title and put them with the urls so can find the articles again

scrap nickel prices? with electrolytic loading maybe particularly easy to use scrap metal though of course it can be used anyway in one way or another.

find what fraction of nickel can expect to be actually used for a battery like with iroon eectrode compare for different electrode types esp edison and nickel plated steel wool, in the scientific docs that describe construction of cell this would be revealed, maybe in some patents too, remember seeing the information on weight and amp hour capacity of a pocket electrode by edison in his patents, need to look it up again, the efficiency will probably be a lot higher for a pasted electrode.

bulk conductivity of steel wool at large medium and small scales

Okay my browser malfunctioned when I was searching for the names of the articles from my history and wiped out the history. So I search again for the best ones and started copying the titles downWe basically want all of them that mention nickel iron specifically and most of the others that relate to eletrodes made from nickel oxyhydroxide, and metallic iron and/or iron oxides. The electrode ones may not mention "nickel iron" per se because e.g. a good iron electrode in nickel iron battery can also be used in many other battery chemistries.

searched "nickel-iron" battery went through to end of second page

  • "nickel-iron" storage cell searched first page only one up at the top
  • "nickel/iron" battery searche dto the end of second page
  • Nickel iron battery need to record searched to the end of the 3rd page page
  • Nickel iron electrode record went through thr first 2 pages migh tbe more
  • also can look at the related papers section


Assessment of performance characteristics of the nickelnext term---previous termiron cellnext term

Self-discharge of Fe–Ni alkaline batteriesnext term


The role of FeS and (NH4)2CO3 additives on the pressed type Fe electrodenext term


The electrochemical properties of Fe2O3-loaded carbon electrodesnext term for previous termironnext term–air previous termbatterynext term anodes

Effect of metal-sulfide additives on electrochemical properties of nano-sized Fe2O3-loaded carbon for Fe/air batterynext term anodes

Passivation of ironnext term in alkaline carbonate solutions

Electrochemical characteristics of ironnext term carbide as an active material in alkaline previous termbatteriesnext term

­Temperature limitations of primary and secondary alkaline battery electrodesnext term

97/03847 Performance characterization of sintered ironnext term electrodes in previous termnickel/ironnext term alkaline previous termbatteriesnext term


SECONDARY BATTERIES - NICKEL SYSTEMS Electrodes: Nickel

Assessment of performance characteristics of the nickelnext term---previous termironnext term cell

Nickelnext term-based rechargeable previous termbatteriesnext term

Developmental studies on porous iron electrodesnext term for the previous termnickel---ironnext term cell Performance characterization of sintered ironnext term electrodes in previous term nickel/ironnext term alkaline previous termbatteriesnext term

On the key importance of homogeneity in the electrochemical performance of industrial positive active materials in nickel batteriesnext term Electrochemical behaviour of Teflon-bonded ironnext term oxide previous termelectrodesnext term in alkaline solutions Rechargeable alkaline iron electrodesnext term high curent though Performance characterization of sintered ironnext term electrodes in previous termnickel/ironnext term alkaline previous termbatteriesnext term


The role of lithium in preventing the detrimental effect of ironnext term on alkaline previous termbattery nickelnext term hydroxide electrode: A mechanistic aspect looks like not just about nihm may be some applicable to nife too Role of activation on the performance of the ironnext term negative previous termelectrodenext term in previous termnickel/ironnext term cells Rechargeable alkaline iron electrodes

Microstructure changes to ironnext term nanoparticles during discharge/charge cycles The discharge capacity of the first cycle was extremely high, 510 mAh/g-Fe, at a current density of 200 mA/g-Fe, check what that is well, it;s 510 Ah per Kg as compared with the ~250 figures in the patents for sintered electrodes with reduced salts on their surfaces (a high rate one) and 960

Really interesting looking :\

Assessment of performance characteristics of the nickelnext term---previous termironnext term cell

  • SECONDARY BATTERIES - NICKEL SYSTEMS Nickel–Iron
  • SECONDARY BATTERIES - NICKEL SYSTEMS
  • SECONDARY BATTERIES - NICKEL SYSTEMS Electrodes: Iron

The nickel/ironnext term battery

A nickel-iron batterynext term with roll-compacted previous termironnext term electrodes

Less interesting:

The role of lithium in preventing the detrimental effect of ironnext term on alkaline previous termbattery nickelnext term hydroxide electrode: A mechanistic aspect

Iron/next termcarbon-black composite nanoparticles as an previous termironnext term electrode material in a paste type rechargeable alkaline previous termbatterynext term

Research, development and demonstration of a nickel—iron batterynext term for electric vehicle propulsion there are several papers with this term LO

Microfibrous nickelnext term substrates and electrodes for previous termbatterynext term system applications can't use them anyway most likely though maybe The fabricated previous termnickelnext term electrodes that included a supporting previous termnickelnext term mesh in the substrate tested in a 26% KOH half-cell delivered a specific capacity of more than 250 mAh/g of the electrode weight (i.e. fibrous substrate, previous termnickelnext term mesh, and active material) at a 1.0 C discharge rate. An Auburn electrode without a previous termnickelnext term mesh tested in the same half-cell attained a higher specific capacity of 268 mAh/g at a 1.37 C discharge rate. The substrates used in these electrodes had porosities of 95–97%, and greatly improved the specific capacity of the previous termnickelnext term electrode. With the use of the previous termmicrofibrousnext term electrode, improved specific energies of previous termnickelnext term-based cell and previous termbatterynext term designs are possible. When assembled in a previous termnickelnext term–hydrogen (Ni–H2) boilerplate cell, the specific capacity of nearly 230 mAh/g was observed for the previous termnickelnext term electrode at a 0.5 C rate during the 127th cycle test.

  • Assessment of performance characteristics of the nickelnext term---previous termironnext term cell
  • The electrochemical generation of ferrate at pressed ironnext term powder previous termelectrode:next term comparison with a foil previous termelectrodenext term
  • The role of FeS and (NH4)2CO3 additives on the pressed type Fe electrodenext term
  • Alkaline poly(ethylene oxide) solid polymer electrolytes. Application to nickelnext term secondary previous termbatteriesnext term

least interesting

  • Importance of alkaline accumulators in the application of renewable resources , can tell something about the needed performance reqs

Alkaline Battery Separators

  • The role of halide ions on the electrochemical behaviour of ironnext term in alkali solutions
  • Nickelnext term-based rechargeable previous termbatteriesnext term
  • maybe or clearly probably only applicable to nihm but didn't want to loose
  • Effect of zinc and ironnext term ions on the electrochemistry of previous termnickelnext term oxide previous termelectrode:next term slow cyclic voltammetry
  • An electrochemically impregnated sintered-nickel electrodenext term An electrochemically impregnated sintered-previous termnickelnext term porous previous termelectrodenext term with a capacity of 225 ± 10 mAh per g of active material has been developed nihm, can calculate from wikipedia how much that is relative totheoretical also in one of the above it was mentioned the overall weight of the electrode for a fibrous electrode vs. current per gram, could make asumptions actually said it was 97 oercent porous so that tells how much but migth be weightin the water too still puts a lower boundary
  • Electrocatalysis of anodic oxygen evolution at the nickelnext term hydroxide previous termelectrodenext term by ferric hydroxo species in alkaline electrolytes
  • The significance of electrochemical impedance spectra recorded during active oxygen evolution for oxide covered Ni, Co and Fe electrodesnext term in alkaline solution
  • The influences of some additives on electrochemical behaviour of nickel electrodesnext term
  • The role of lithium in preventing the detrimental effect of ironnext term on alkaline battery previous termnickelnext term hydroxide previous termelectrode:next term A mechanistic aspect
  • The effect of lithium in preventing ironnext term poisoning in the previous termnickelnext term hydroxide previous termelectrodenext term

may 21

  • http://www.freepatentsonline.com/5989746.html A nickel electrode of the pasted type is made by depositing a paste either on a two-dimensional conductive support such as expanded metal, a grid, a fabric, a solid strip, or a perforated strip, or else in a three-dimensional conductive support that is porous such as a felt, a metal foam, or a carbon foam. so carbon okay prob at nickel electrode though saw another one that mentioned it had significant downsides
  • a polymer cloth pocket could be used to keep the paste in, maybe this was partly what the pocket used in the sealed battery doc was for doubt it because had elastomer binde r
  • Document EP-0 658 948 describes an Ni--MH alkaline storage cell provided with a positive electrode of the pasted nickel electrode type constituted by nickel hydroxide, as its active material, and by graphite, as its conductor. The nickel positive electrode provides the storage cell with increased stability at high temperatures of use. Furthermore, it can be seen that the nickel positive electrode cannot be associated with a cadmium negative electrode, because, in that case, the graphite oxidizes into carbonate ions which pass into the electrolyte.
  • To increase the rapid discharge performance of a non-sintered nickel electrode, document JP-57 138 776 proposes a conductor constituted by a mixture of particles, preferably of graphite powder, and of fibers made of carbon or of stainless steel, for example. stainless steel okay?

purpose of cobalt additives mmight be to increase conductivivty

  • During the first charge of an alkaline storage cell provided with a nickel electrode containing a cobalt compound as its conductor, said compound is oxidized into cobalt oxyhydroxide CoOOH in which the cobalt is brought to oxidation number +3. The cobalt oxyhydroxide is stable in the normal operating range of the nickel positive elec
  • ask chemist if there is a conductive polymer that would be okay for the nickel (resistant to redox environment) and if it is expensive or coudl be synthesised by makers
  • there was on that mentioned that nichrome wire or mesh could be used migh tbe more available thatn nickel

Battery-grade nickel hydroxide and method for its preparation B Aladjov - US Patent 5,788,943, 1998

http://edison.rutgers.edu/battpats.htm patent 01488480 describes some failure modes and fix looks like ause for the waste glycerine from biodeisel too

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6335120.html (duplicate) Several types of electrode exist, in particular sintered electrodes and non-sintered nickel electrodes, also referred to as impasted or plasticized electrodes.

maybe rods would be useful if nickel mulit strand wire is avilable or something

maybe putting the electrodes horizontally could be better to prevent loss of paste for one of the electrodes if wanted to eliminate binders and density an fibrosity of fiber mat was relatively low (like steel wool?), could then have either other electrode horx too with tray spearating it from the other one and conduction occuring aroud edges of tray also coudl have cloth barrier or something tightly woven to reduce escape of particles during mecahnica lagitation, or have electrolyte ffairly viscous with an additive, probably not much of a problem thoug heven if particle sget fro, one electrode to the other they would just stay there in the discharged state, main thing is to keep active material close to the current collector, also could be adjacent then stack for battery, check what effective the resistance of the electrolyte is, might be too high for this to be practical (ionic current of the relevant ions vs/ voltage). If a bed of fibrous nonwoven cloth material like tyvek or what is used often in depth filters for water filters, which is a effective particle barrier at the particle sizes concerned, but also a high porosity for ionic current, could form the bottom of the tray

in terms of shape changes of active material particles or mass that one with the nanoparticles had evidence of it changing but aparently happens quite little as was not a problem for even them causeing relatively little variation in particle size and total surface area thoug hit was growth in particle size/reduction in active area. wait, that migh thave been a nickel hydride cell double check, but in any case this is the assumption; very little change in particle or surface geometry occurs, though some does and this is taken advantage sometimes to electrolytically attach the particles together and to the current collector surface for better conductivity, also particles that are not attached such that electron current flow can practically occur are not utilized as active mass (they are wasted) so it's important to have them connected in this way. In edison cells a significant fraction is wasted, need to check again how much, can comput form wieght of the tubes etc.

should eventual;y preserve the research page by spidering to prevent link death being a problem, then upload the finished webpage with files maybe 3 deep for links so get pdf files for posterity since development will continue and also for repair manuals writing etc.

more docs:

  • google scholar'd "nickel-iron" battery electrode and went through the first 100 hits:
  • Journal of Materials Science Letters Volume 12, Number 9, 620-622, DOI: 10.1007/BF00465571 Electrochemical impregnation of the nickel hydroxide electrode under ultrasonic irradiation A. Chiba, T. Tani and Y. Ouchi
  • Electrocatalysis of anodic oxygen evolution at the nickel hydroxide electrode by ferric hydroxo species in alkaline electrolytes hi
  • Comparative Study of Fe2O3-Nanoloaded Carbon and Fe2O3-Nano/Carbon Mixed Composites for Iron-Air Battery Anodes
  • Electrochem. Solid-State Lett., Volume 8, Issue 9, pp. A476-A480 (2005) LO
  • 6V, 60Ah nickel-iron battery.
  • Bulletin of Electrochemistry. Vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 263-265. 1990
  • High reversibility of the charge discharge reaction leads to the longest service life. The iron electrode has low hydrogen overvoltage. Its ionisation potential and hydrogen evolution potential are very close in alkaline medium. As a result, the self discharge of this system is 1-2% of the nominal capacity at 300K (1). The advanced Ni/Fe batteries with an energy density of 55-82 Wh/kg (2,3) serve as power sources for electric vehicles. The electrode fabrication techniques and the performance characteristics of the 6V, 60 Ah Ni/Fe battery are presented in this paper. * Very HI


  • Open-circuit potential—time transients of alkaline porous iron electrodes at various states-of-charge
  • Purchase
  • $ 31.50
  • Solid-State and Structural Chemistry Unit, and Department of Inorganic and Physical Chemistry, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore-560 012, India iron air mostly LO
  • Effect of synthesis conditions on characteristics of the precursor material used in NiO·OH/Ni(OH)2 electrodes of alkaline batteries LO
  • Mechanisms of self-discharge of the negative of alkaline accumulators available as html without images through google's view as html, google title and there it is
   "The self-discharge of the negative in nickel-iron batteries is caused mainly by the
   anaerobic attack of the active material by water. As in other instances of corrosion,
   this process can be retarded by cathodic protection. A cadmium negative is practically
   immune against water, but in an incompletely sealed"
   It is known that the negative in alkaline nickel accumulators loses charge on
   standing idle, the loss being of the order of 20 % per month in Ni-Fe cells 1
   and 2-3 % per month in recent makes of Ni-Cd cells.2 In contrast to the lead-
   acid battery, no attention has yet been given to the corrosive mechanism causing
   self-discharge in the alkaline storage cell. 
   In  1955 thogugh porous nickel plate (6-3 cm x 1.7 cm x 0.3 cni) made from low-density carbonyl powder
   by sintering in H2 at 950” C without compression. The pore volume of the plate was
   85 % and the surface area was l-l*mz/g, as measured by the B.E.T. method. In one
   spiral and the negative. With a
   70-cm nickel strip, the rate of self-discharge was about 1000 times as fast as in the absence
   of a water-line. This effect was also found in commercial Ni-Fe cells, the water-line
   being present round the rod supporting the negative. On separating the latter from the
   rod, and inserting a meter, an air junction current of 0.3-0-4
   mA (in a 10 A h cell) was measurable. This current is large enough to account for t[sic] so nickel electrode needs to be submersed

also indicates that maybe id we pressurized the battery self discharge could be reduced but pressure might eb too high Also explains the main problem by far with self discharge in nife is that the iron reacts with the water

High energy density micro-fiber based nickel electrode for aerospace batteries LO

An iron—air vehicle battery

http://books.google.ca/books?hl=en&lr=&id=_PGzaO48Rz0C&oi=fnd&pg=PR4&dq=%22nickel-iron%22+battery+electrode&ots=WUrahYuzAm&sig=QjxT0uYcDvtejauBT0ClpFO9XZs#v=onepage&q=%22nickel-iron%22%20battery%20electrode&f=false

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Electrochem. Solid-State Lett. / Volume 4 / Issue 3 / BATTERIES AND ENERGY CONVERSION

Ceria-Supported Platinum as Hydrogen-Oxygen Recombinant Catalyst for Sealed Lead-Acid Batteries

Electrochem. Solid-State Lett., Volume 4, Issue 3, pp. A23-A26 (2001)

The influences of some additives on electrochemical behaviour of nickel electrodes might be interesting not clear

The effect of iron hydroxide on nickelous hydroxide electrodes with emphasis on the oxygen evolution reactionstar, open might be interesting since some particles will get in the nickel leectrode and eventually mix

Battery Basics [2]

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