Effect of milled carbon as negative electrode additive for lead acid energy storage device

Abstract

In the presented work, an experimental investigation is conducted to determine the performance of milled carbon electrode of valve-regulated lead-acid batteries (VRLAB). Knowing the performance and the behavior of lead electrodes and its constituents during exposure to the electrolyte medium for the energy storage devices, an effort has been made to enhance the performance with milled carbon material. The most important purpose of milled carbon is to increase the area of reactivity and create a conductive network throughout the electrode in VRLAB. In this investigation, the electrical studies of Milled Carbon and the Regular Carbon electrode materials were conducted by employing a charging/discharging profile under ambient temperature conditions (25 ± 2 °C) on 3Ah cells. The test specimen electrodes were fabricated with regular and milled carbon as per Industrial Standards. The morphological, elemental analysis was carried out on the test specimens to examine the structural stability of the material. The electrical data indicated a higher active materials utilization for the milled carbon electrode samples when compared to the regular electrode, depicting enhanced performance in H2SO4 as an electrolyte. These studies help to evaluate the size impact of the carbon particles for the performance enhancement of lead-acid batteries.