Fundamental Research to Probe Pb’s Big Questions

Dr Paul Everill, Chief Technology Officer at Black Diamond Structures LLC, joins the ALBA mini blog series to share insight into the “Mechanisms and morphology limiting charge acceptance’ breakout session.

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Battery development based on iterative component variation testing is the lead industry’s modus operandi. The tactic, however, is considered by some to be “foraging in the dark” since a company must be prepared to accept many wrong turns before a goal is met. That company must further accept that the process will need repeated every few years as new components hit the market. 

An efficient development plan includes a portion of fundamental research; an element of deep science that develops strong structure/function relationships more reliant on true understanding of the system rather than a transitory “1 + 1 = 3, I don’t know why, but I’ll take it for now” mentality.   

The Consortium for Battery Innovation encourages such understanding through precompetitive, collaborative research. One embodiment is the Automotive Lead Battery Advancement workshop (ALBA), conceived by Ford Motor Company’s Dr. Eckhard Karden, where some of the world’s leading battery scientists discuss lead’s deeper mechanistic and morphological questions:

• Does a discharged battery accept ~4X higher current (ex. I_D) than a charged battery (ex. I_C) because of morphological changes related to pore structure, sulfate size, or electrolyte/material stratification artefacts generated in the EN Dynamic Charge protocol? 
• Electric vehicles (EVs) represent a new use case for lead batteries where charge recovery may be measured in minutes instead of seconds, but are commonly held truths like “the negative plate limits charge acceptance” still true over new SoC windows, rest periods, and temperatures?
• The oxygen cycle is a neglected, uncontrolled component of a battery’s duty cycle that exists in AGM and FLD designs, but how does it participate in the CHR/DCH reactions of NAM and PAM and what role might it play in sulfate coarsening (Ostwald Ripening)?

Crucially, these topics are not academic novelties destined to be buried in the annals of an obscure journal. They are critical questions which, when answered, can direct battery developers to create the next generation of batteries smartly, “with the lights on”.

Interested in related topics? Read some more of CBI's blogs:

• Moving forward innovation in automotive batteries
• Project update: Energy boost - automotive EU battery research