Innovative technology emerges, battery industry brings new spring

The battery is the lifeblood of technology. Since the invention of the battery, the battery has experienced more than 100 years of development. From the widespread use of the earliest rich battery as a starter battery, to the advent of valve-regulated sealed batteries in the late 1970s, to the breakthrough of low-Sb Pb-Sb-Cd alloy technology to the advent of rare earth alloy technology, the battery industry ushered in A new spring.

The first stage: from sputum to calcium, cadmium pollution attracts attention, valve control technology becomes mainstream

The grid used in battery manufacturing is a Pb-Sb alloy grid. However, due to the disadvantage of the Pb-Sb alloy in oxygen evolution potential, since the 1970s, due to the requirements of the sealed maintenance-free battery, a grid alloy with a lower gassing rate is required. The Pb-Ca alloy has the advantages of low electric resistance, high hydrogen evolution overpotential, and calcium does not elute from the positive electrode grid, and therefore, it is cited in a sealed type storage battery. In the past few decades, VRLA batteries have been applied to the deep discharge field, and due to the cyclic mode, Pb-Ca alloys show poor creep resistance, poor corrosion resistance, and reduced barrier properties of the barrier layer. . The low Sb Pb-Sb-Cd alloy is reapplied to the electric vehicle battery, improving the deep discharge performance of the valve controlled sealed battery and improving the cycle life of the battery. However, with the increasing environmental awareness of the market and the country's market restrictions on heavy metal cadmium, Pb-Sb-Cd has gradually been eliminated by various manufacturers and re-transferred into the application and research of Pb-Ca alloy.

The second stage: from calcium to silver, titanium, silver alloy still can not solve the problem of passivation film

Experts in the industry have been seeking to break through the shortcomings of early capacity decay and cycle life of Pb-Ca alloys. Experts in the industry have also tried to add some other elements to improve the performance of Pb-Ca alloys. At present, the industry's grid alloy is mainly Pb-Ca-Sn-Al quaternary alloy. The addition of a certain amount of Sn increases the creep resistance, corrosion resistance and cycle performance of the grid, but there is no qualitative improvement. Some manufacturers have also tried to add the influence of titanium, silver and other elements on the quaternary alloy. The results show that the titanium alloy is difficult to control due to its own density, and Ag has been in existence for several years. The addition of the battery can improve the corrosion resistance of the quaternary alloy and reduce the hydrogen evolution rate, but it still cannot solve the problem that the gate/active material interface is easy to form a passive film with poor conductivity. Therefore, although the early capacity reduction of the valve-controlled battery has been improved, it is difficult to make a big breakthrough.

The third stage: from silver to rare earth, rare earth three stable battery technology into the battery industry, into a major technological breakthrough

The rare earth element oxide refers to 15 kinds of lanthanide oxides with an atomic number of 57 to 71 in the periodic table, and oxides of 17 elements of cerium (Sc) and yttrium (Y) which are similar in chemical properties to lanthanoid elements. . Rare earth elements known as "industrial vitamins" have been widely used in petroleum, chemical, metallurgy, textile, ceramics, glass, permanent magnet materials, etc. With the advancement of technology and continuous breakthrough in application technology, rare earth oxides The value is getting bigger and bigger.

Tianneng has been working on the research and development of grid materials for many years. It has also improved the performance of various metals such as silver and titanium in the alloy, but it was not until the addition of rare earth alloys that Tianneng Research Institute A new breakthrough has been made in the study of alloys for valve-controlled batteries. A large number of studies have shown that the addition of trace rare earth can refine the Pb-Ca alloy and reduce the corrosion of the grid. At the same time, it is found that the rare earth alloy has superior characteristics in suppressing the formation of the anodic film, and the battery does not appear in the cycle. Conventional Pb-Ca alloy batteries have greatly reduced the battery life due to the battery capacity degradation caused by the formation of the anode film barrier layer. It can be said that the technical application of rare earth alloys has broken through the shortcomings of the traditional Pb-Ca alloy and has a qualitative change in the performance improvement of the valve-controlled battery. Therefore, "rare earth alloy" is considered to be a new generation of maintenance-free lead-acid battery grid material.

Tianneng Group will soon be listed as a "rare earth triple-stable battery" battery product - the big black cattle, while using "cell-like high-energy electrodes", "original salting process" and "German high-speed dispersion technology" three technologies. It is expected to introduce the battery industry to a new level.