Sealed Zinc-nickel Battery Anode And Electrolyte

This paper briefly reviews the history and current situation of Ni-Zn battery, and focuses on the research progress of secondary Ni-Zn battery, including its working principle, problems existed currently and the corresponding solutions, and then the application prospects of Ni-Zn battery was expected. Calcium zincate was successfully synthesized by hydrothermal method. The chemical composition, surface morphology and electrochemical performance were investigated. Calcium zincate was characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and SEM. Electrochemical performance of calcium zincate was examined by charge-discharge test. The binder of zinc anode was studied through the preparation process of zinc anode, charge-discharge tests and cyclic voltammetry. The influence of inhibitors and electrolyte concentration on the cycle life and self-discharge performance was examined. The effect of winding method on the self-discharge behavior of Ni-Zn battery was also studied.Calcium zincate was synthesized by hydrothermal method. All the diffraction lines of Ca(OH)2-2Zn(OH)2-2H2O could be indexed by XRD. The regular fine particles of sample could be observed by SEM. Charge-discharge tests at constant current on the Ni/Zn battery showed the material of calcium zincate had excellent electrochemical performances. However, the self-discharge behavior of Ni/Zn battery using Ca(OH)2 was better than that of calcium zincate.Different organic inhibitors were added into zinc anodes in this experiment. The results indicated that charge-discharge efficiency of sealed Ni/Zn battery employing zinc electrode added with CTAB and SDBS was increased, the cycle life of sealed Ni/Zn battery employing zinc electrode added with SDBS was improved. Furthermore, it was revealed that battery discharge capability retention was also enhanced in self-discharge test.The studies over the binder of zinc anode found that zinc electrode using hydroxypropyl methyl cellulose (HPMC), Polyvinyl Alcohol (PVA) and the styrene-butadiene rubber (SBR) had a longer cycle life and better storage performance for Ni/Zn battery. The performance of Ni/Zn battery using different concentrations of electrolyte was studied detailly, finding that the larger concentration of electrolyte for zinc-nickel battery, the more beneficial to charge and discharge process, the internal resistance during charge and discharge, discharge capacity and cycle life, thereinto cycle life of cell is best using electrolyte concentration of 7.5mol/LThe self-discharge experiments on Ni/Zn battery were studied. The results showed that self-discharge of Ni/Zn battery was mainly caused by unreasonable winding process due to nickel plating onto steel shell (overpotential at 0.5V or less).The traditional winding process is to make negative exposure on the nickel steel, in this way it will speed up the process of hydrogen evolution of zinc anode, while the self-discharge of nickel-zinc battery has greatly been eased by adopting the new winding technology which could avoid the zinc anode contacting with nickel. So taking reasonable winding process can effectively inhibit the self-discharge of Ni/Zn battery.