Sealed lead-acid battery

Abstract: The improved tubular sealed lead-acid battery has superior cycle life performance and is characterized by providing a gap A between adjacent tubes such that it is expressed by the following equation, in which constant X is within the range of 0.29 - 0.75: A = B × constant X × (1.1 - 0.1 × E) - 2 × C × D where A: the gap between the tubes (mm) B: the inside radius of the tube (mm) C: the thickness of the tube (mm) D: the porosity of the tube (%) × 0.01 E: the inter-electrode distance (mm).

Description: BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION This invention relates to an improvement of sealed lead-acid batteries and has an object providing a sealed lead-acid battery having good life performance. When a conventional open flooded-type cell is used for fork lifts and in other applications where deep discharge is performed cyclically, it is common practice to use tubular positive plates having the positive active material enclosed with a tube made of either glass or synthetic resin fibers. Upon discharge of a positive plate, PbO 2 as the active material is usually converted to PbSO 4 of a larger volume, so that the shape and the volume of the positive plate will change greatly as the number of discharge cycles increases. Hence, if deep discharge is performed cyclically, the binding strength of the positive active material will decrease, causing a gradual decrease in the discharge capacity. Tubular positive plates having the positive active material enclosed with a tube are capable of suppressing the expansion and dislodging of the active material, so they are known to have a long cycle life with the binding strength of the active material being maintained for an extended period. For these reasons, tubular positive plates are also used in the art to manufacture sealed lead-acid batteries having good cycle life performance. The following three methods are generally known to be applicable for sealing cells: (1) an electrolyte is impregnated and retained in the plates and separators that are made of fine glass fibers and that conform to the shape of positive and negative plates to fabricate a "retainer type" cell; (2) an electrolyte is gelled with colloidal silica, etc. to fabricate a "gel-type" cell; and (3) silica granules are packed between plates and around a plate group consisting of the plates and a separator and an electrolyte is impregnated and retained in the plates, separators and the silica granules to fabricate a "granulated silica retainer type" cell. However, method (1) has not been commercialized since the cost for preparing separator is very high. An enclosed lead storage battery of the clad type according to method (1) is described in Pat. Abstr. of Jap., Vol. 11, No. 92 (E-491)(2539). Compared to the flooded-type, the cells fabricated by methods (1) - (3) have a less discharge capacity and their life performance is also considerably low. Further, those cells experience more deterioration in performance than cells using pasted plates and the inherent advantages of using tubular plates have not been fully exploited. In order to investigate the reasons for those problems, the present inventors conducted various experiments on gel-type and granular cells and found the following. In sealed lead-acid batteries of the types described above, the greater part of the electrolyte is retained in the gel or granular silica but the transport speed of H 2 SO 4 through those retainers is much slower than in flooded-type cells, so H 2 SO 4 in the electrolyte will be transported into the active material at a much slower speed than in flooded-type cells. As a result, when sealed cells that use tubular positive plates are discharged, H 2 SO 4 in the neighborhood of tubular positive plate is mainly used, and the following phenomena occur in cells. In sealed cells that use tubular plates, only a very small amount of electrolyte is present in the contact areas of 2 adjacent tubes as one can see from Fig. 2 which shows in cross section the essential part of a prior art sealed lead-acid battery. As a result, the active material at the contact areas of adjacent two tubes is supplied with only a small amount of electrolyte, whereby the discharged capacity is lowered. Fig. 3B shows diagrammatically PbSO 4 distribution of the positive plate of a cross section in the case described above; obviously, PbSO 4 which is the discharge product is distributed unevenly across the thickness of the positive plate. Fig. 3 shows the profiles of distribution of PbSO 4 after discharging the tubular positive plate; Fig. 3A refers to the cell of the present invention; Fig. 3B refers to a conventional sealed cell; and Fig. 3C refers to a conventional flooded-type cell. In the flooded-type cell, H 2 SO 4 in the electrolyte will move very fast because it also moves by convention which is absent or less in the sealed cell. As a result, the areas of contact between tubes are replenished with H 2 SO 4 from other areas as soon as it is consumed, so that the discharge of the positive plate will proceed uniformly in a substantially concentric manner as shown in Fig. 3C. The above results show that the discharge capacity of the sealed cell is much smaller than in the flooded-type because the transport speed of H 2 SO 4 is slow whereas the use of tubular plates causes a greater drop in capacity compared to the flooded-type than when pasted piates are used because discharge of tubular positive plate is less likely to occur in areas of contact between tubes. As a consequence, in the sealed cell, current density will localized in the active material where discharge is highly likely to occur, where by said active material deteriorates prematurely to shorten the life of the cell. Tubular plates having a gap between the tubes are, for example, disclosed in FR-A-2 268 364. SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION An object of the present invention is to improve the cycle life performance of a tubular sealed lead-acid battery. The present invention attains this object with the help of a sealed lead-acid battery comprising the features of claim 1. By retaining an electrolyte in a gap of suitable dimensions between tubes, the tubular positive plate in a gel-type or granulated silica retainer type will be uniformly discharged as shown in Fig. 3A. As a result, the effective current density will become lower than in the prior art to retard the deterioration of the active material and hence improve the cycle life performance of the cell. In practice, however, in order to provide a gap between tubes within the same space, the number of tubes has to be made smaller than in the prior art and the amount of active material that can be used decreases accordingly. Hence, the gap to be provided between tubes must be limited to a certain range. Providing a gap between tubes is equivalent to insuring a greater amount of electrolyte in the neighborhood of the positive active material and the same result can be attained by changing the parameters of the tube such as its diameter, thickness and porosity. If those parameters are changed, the amount of the necessary gap would also vary. Further, if the distance between electrodes is changed, the manner in which the electrolyte is supplied to the active material will change, which would also cause a change in an optimal size of the gap between tubes. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS Fig. 1 is a diagrammatic cross-sectional view showing the essential part of the sealed lead-acid battery of the present invention; Fig. 2 is a diagrammatic cross-sectional view showing the essential part of a prior art sealed lead-acid battery; Fig. 3A shows a profile of the PbSO 4 distribution after discharging a tubular positive plate of a cell according to the present invention; Fig. 3B shows a profile of the PbSO 4 distribution after discharging a tubular positive plate of a conventional sealed cell; Fig. 3C shows a profile of the PbSO 4 distribution after discharging a tubular positive plate of a conventional flooded-type cell; Fig. 4 is a characteristic graph for the discharge capacity of the gel-type cells fabricated in Example 1 having an inter-electrode distance of 1.0 mm; Fig. 5 is characteristic graph for the discharge capacity of the gel-type cells fabricated in Example 1 having an inter-electrode distance of 3.0 mm; Fig. 6 is a characteristic graph for the life performance of the gel-type cells fabricated in Example 1 having an inter-electrode distance of 1.0 mm; Fig. 7 is a characteristic graph for the life performance of the gel-type cells fabricated in Example 1 having an inter-electrode distance of 3.0 mm; Fig. 8 is a characteristic graph for the discharge capacity of the granulated silica retainer type fabricated in Example 2 having an inter-electrode distance of 1.0 mm; Fig. 9 is a characteristic graph for the life performance of the granulated silica retainer type fabricated in Example 2 having an inter-electrode distance of 1.0 mm; Fig. 10 shows diagrammatically a geometry of tubes to be used in the sealed lead-acid battery of the present invention. DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS The preferred embodiments of the cell of the present invention will be described below with reference to Figs. 1 and 4 - 10. EXAMPLE 1 Fig. 1 is a diagrammatic cross-sectional view showing the essential part of the sealed lead-acid battery of the present invention. As shown, the battery comprises a tubular positive plate 1, pasted negative plate 2, separator 3, a gelled electrolyte 4, tube 5, lead spine 6 and positive active material 7. Using lead spines made of a Pb-Ca-Sn alloy and glass tubes having a porosity of 70%, samples of positive plates having the dimensions shown in Table 1 below were prepared. Two units of each positive plate sample, three units of the conventional pasted negative plate and pulp separators were assembled to make two cell samples, one having an inter-electrode distance of 1.0 mm and the other having an inter-electrode distance of 3.0 mm. After filling an electrolyte made of a mixture of dilute sulfuric acid and a gelling agent, the cells were charged for a predetermined capacity until their specific gravity was 1.30 (20°C). A safety valve and other necessary components were fitted in the usual manner to fabricate cells having a capacity of about 65 Ah(5HR). Positive plate Tube parameters Remarks inside diameter (mm) thickness (mm) gap (mm) number 1-A 11 0.5 0.2 12 prior art 1-B 11 0.5 1.2 11 invention 1-C 11 0.5 2.7 10 invention 1-D 11 0.5 3.9 9 1-E 11 0.5 5.6 8 2-A 9 0.45 0.2 15 prior art 2-B 9 0.45 0.9 14 invention 2-C 9 0.45 1.7 13 invention 2-D 9 0.45 2.6 12 invention 2-E 9 0.45 3.6 11 3-A 8 0.4 0.1 17 prior art 3-B 8 0.4 0.7 16 invention 3-C 8 0.4 1.3 15 invention 3-D 8 0.4 1.9 14 invention 3-E 8 0.4 2.7 13 3-F 8 0.4 3.6 12 4-A 7 0.3 0.2 19 prior art 4-B 7 0.3 0.6 18 invention 4-C 7 0.3 1.1 17 invention 4-D 7 0.3 1.6 16 invention 4-E 7 0.3 2.2 15 4-F 7 0.3 2.8 14 The cells using the positive plates characterized in Table 1 were discharged at 13 A to investigate their discharge capacity. The results are shown in Fig. 4 (inter-electrode distance E = 1.0 mm) and Fig. 5 (inter-electrode distance E = 3.0 mm). Irrespective of the inter electrode distance of 1 mm or 3 mm, the discharge capacity of the cells was substantially the same as in the prior art when a gap was provided between tubes, with constant X not exceeding 0.75. It was therefore clear that by at least satisfying the condition of X ≤ 0.75 for the inter-tube gap, the drop in discharge capacity could be prevented even when the number of tubes used was smaller than in the prior art. The cell samples were subjected to a cycle life test at 50°C in which each cycle consisted of discharge at 20 A × 2.5 h (DOD 77%) and charge at 20 A × 90% and 6 A × 25% (for a total of 110%). The results are shown in Fig. 6 (E = 1.0 mm) and Fig. 7 (E = 3.0 mm). The samples in which X was within the range of 0.29 - 0.75 specified by the present invention had a much better life performance than the prior art samples. This is probably because in the presence of a gap between tubes, the localization of the discharge reaction in a limited area could be prevented as shown in Fig. 3A, whereby the deterioration of the active material was retarded. The life performance was poor when X exceeded 0.75 and this is probably because the amount of active material was so small that the depth of discharge was excessive. EXAMPLE 2 Samples of "granulated silica retainer type" were fabricated using the same layout as in Example 1 except that silica granules of 50 -200 µm were packed between the plates and around the plate group. The discharge capacity of the cells having an inter-electrode distance of 1 mm is plotted in Fig. 8 and the life performance of the same cells is plotted in Fig. 9. As in Example 1, the cycle life performance was improved while the discharge capacity was substantially the same as in the prior art when a gap was provided between tubes in such a way as to satisfy the condition of X = 0.29 - 0.75. Even in the case of E = 3 mm, the life performance of the cells satisfying the condition of X = 0.29 - 0.75 was improved (data not shown). In order to provide a constant gap between tubes, for example, two porous sheets are sewn together or heat- or vibration-sealed at intervals corresponding to the pitch of tubes to make "chained" tubes in which individual tubes 5 are linked by connectors 8, and the sewing or heat- or vibration-sealing of the porous sheets are performed in such a way that the gaps (connectors 8) between tubes are spaced apart by a constant interval as shown in Fig. 10, where the shape of the tube is shown. As described above, the tubular sealed lead acid battery of the present invention has cycle life performance that in significantly improved over the conventional types and, hence, the battery will offer great industrial benefits.

Claims: A sealed lead-acid battery comprising tubular positive plates, pasted negative plates and an electrolyte, wherein a gap is provided between adjacent tubes of said positive plates such that it is expressed by the following equation, in which constant X is within the range of 0.29 - 0.75: A = B x constant X x (1.1 -0.1 x E) - 2 x C x D where A: the gap between the tubes (mm) B: the inside radius of the tube (mm) C: the thickness of the tube (mm) D: the porosity of the tube (%) x 0.01 E: the inter-electrode distance (mm). wherein the sealed lead-acid battery is a gel-type battery or a granular-silica type battery. A sealed lead-acid battery as claimed in claim 1, wherein said electrolyte is made of dilute sulfuric acid gelled with inorganic oxide such as silica or alumina. A sealed lead-acid battery as claimed in claim 1, wherein said electrolyte is impregnated and retained in said plates, a separator and silica granules which are packed between said plates and around a plate group.

Inventors: NAKAMURA KENZI, SHIOMI MASAAKI, NAKAMURA, KENZI, SHIOMI, MASAAKI, NAKAMURA, KENZI, JAPAN STORAGE BATTERY COMP. LTD., SHIOMI, MASAAKI, JAPAN STORAGE BATTERY COMP. LTD.
Applicants: JAPAN STORAGE BATTERY CO LTD, JAPAN STORAGE BATTERY COMPANY LIMITED
Application year: 1991
Main classification: H01M10
IPC codes: H01M10, H01M4