IMPROVEMENTS IN ELECTRICAL ACCUMULATORS, APPLICABLE IN PART TO REGENERATIVE PRIMARY BATTERIES
Year: 1883

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by William Phillips Thompson at the
Office of the Commissioners of Patents on the 23rd October 1883. A
communication from Karl Wenzel Zenger, Professor at the Imperial
Polytechnical Institute of Prag in the Empire of Austria.
WILLIAM PHILLIPS THOMPSON, of the Liverpool and London Agency for Foreign
Patent Solicitors, 6, Lord Street, Liverpool, in the County of Lancaster, Civil
Engineer "IMPROVEMENTS IN ELECTRICAL ACCUMULATORS, APPLICABLE IN PART
TO REGENERATIVE PRIMARY BATTERIES a communication to me from Karl
Wenzel Zenger, Professor at the Imperial Polytechnical Institute of Prag, in the
Empire of Austria.
"
The present invention has for its object an improved accumulator, the
characteristic feature of which consists in positive pole-plates (or Cathodes)
surrounded by some halogen, such as chlorine, bromine, or iodine, these halogens
having a depolarizing action, and combining themselves as soon as both poles are
connected by means of a conductor, with the hydrogen surrounding the negative
pole-plate (i.e. anode). As soon as the circuit is closed, the hydrogen flows to
the cathode, combines itself with the said halogens and forms hydrochloric,
hydrobromic, or hydriodic acid, which of course also acts as a depolarizer. This
process goes on in the described manner until the whole quantity of the halogen
surrounding the cathode has combined itself with the hydrogen of the anode, and
up to this moment the current nearly maintains its original strength. As soon as
the current has become too much weakened, the described accumulator is loaded
by means of a dynamo-electric machine, the negative conducting wire of which is
led to the negative terminal, whilst its positive wire is fastened in the positive
terminal; the current thus passed through the accumulator, decomposes the
combinations of hydrogen with the halogens referred to, and the hydrogen streams
back again to the negative pole-plate (the anode).
Each element of such an accumulator is constructed as follows. The positive
pole-plate made of carbon or of platinum is placed in a porous clay cell, which is
filled around the electrode with pieces of carbon of the size of peas in order to
increase the superficies thereof. The said porous vessel (or diaphragm) is provided
with a lid hermetically cemented to the vessel; through this lid passes the top of
the electrode, and into it are inserted two glass tubes, one of which, being widened,

page_text: so as to form a funnel, serves for the introduction of the halogens, whether in a
gaseous, liquid, or solid state, in the said porous vessel; the other glass tube, of
a smaller diameter, gives a passage to the air during the introduction of the
halogens.
The thus prepared porous vessel containing the cathode is then placed in a glass
vessel filled with diluted acid and containing the negative pole-plate (or the anode),
likewise made of carbon or of platinum This plate is made to surround several
times the porous vessel in the form of a spiral coil in order to increase its
superficies; the hydrogen which adheres to the said coiled plate and fills out the
pores thereof as soon as the accumulator is loaded, is generated by means of pieces
of zinc, suspended in the diluted acid. After the halogens having been introduced
in the porous vessel, the glass tubes having been hermetically closed by pouring
some melted paraffin into them, the accumulator is loaded and then a strong
current can be started in a short wire connecting both poles, the potential difference
of this current being of from 2.2 to 1.7 Volts.
By substituting for the above described negative pole-plate (the anode) a zinc or
iron plate, a regenerative primary battery is obtained, in which, as soon as the
whole quantity of the introduced halogens is bound by the hydrogen, both the
halogens and the metal may be regenerated by passing through the said battery an
electric current of the same direction as the current for loading the secondary
battery hereinbefore mentioned,