Solutions Amer-Sil brings solutions to customers technical problems. Our technical team will listen to you and find the best solution to improve your process, to answer to your request, to solve your problem... 1. Lower cost : The outstanding properties (high porosity volume and ideal pore size) of our separator lead to increase the cell capacity in most cases and applications. With the same battery performance, it allows the battery manufacturer to reduce battery size and saving on lead. 2. Delivery – logistics : Corrugated separators are available within a short time Corrugated separators are produced in 2 steps : production of flat sheet rolls which are always available from stock corrugation finishing before final cut Rolls of flat sheet are always available from stock and ready to go through the final finishing process and cut at any size upon customer request. 3. Process improvement : Full impregnated tube In order to overcome acid stratification, most of the battery manufacturers use air bubbling electrolyte agitation device. They leave one of the outer tubes of one of the gauntlets empty (not filled with positive active mass) and insert a long plastic tubing from the top to the bottom inside this empty tube (Figure 1). To facilitate this insertion of the long plastic tubing, a funnel shaped part acting as a guide is generally first placed on top of the empty gauntlet tube. To simplify the assembly of a tubular positive plate type battery, one of the outer tubes of one of the gauntlets is empty and rendered substantially impermeable to air, by using an impermeabilising agent (hotmelt) (Figure 2) This allows to directly use this tube instead of an additional plastic tubing, when connected to an air supply, to perform the mixing of the electrolyte solution by air-bubbling and thus efficiently prevent acid stratification. This invention has been developed by Amer-Sil. 4. Higher performance Side protection Lateral short circuit is caused by positive active mass going out of the gauntlets (mossing), creating particle agglomerates that touch the negative plate. In order to prevent for lateral shorts, most of our customers use side protection gauntlets. Before the thermoformation, the half -outer tubes of the gauntlets are treated with hotmelt. The hotmelt is applied all along the C external part of the outer tubes by an applicator. With this edge protection, no need of a sleeve. It leads to better acid circulation and higher battery performance. Corrugated separators for higher capacity The corrugated separators are made with the same raw material and extrusion process as the standard Amersil ribbed product. After extrusion, a flat sheet is recovered from the calender and passed through a set of corrugating rolls to reach its final pattern, and thus, the overall thickness is achieved without the need of ribs. The corrugated separators are available in two different wave designs : type “S” is sinusoidal, whereas type “T” is straight and vertical. The overall thickness achieved by the flat sheet corrugating process can range from 0.9 mm to 5.0 mm. A glassmat can also be laminated to one side of the corrugated product, as for standard ribbed separators. The composition and design of the material have a great influence on the physical properties of the separator, and especially porosity. Generally speaking, separator porosity refers to all the void spaces existing within the structure of the material. In the case of Amer-Sil microporous products, two sources of voids contribute to the overall pore volume : (i) the silica agglomerate void volume which is the empty space existing within each silica aggregates (intra-granular porosity) as well as the space in between different aggregates (inter-granular porosity), and (ii) the extraction void volume which results from the extraction of the solvent needed for the polymer extrusion. The pore size distribution in the Amer-Sil separators (ribbed or corrugated) is bimodal, with pores 0.05 mm related to the silica aggregates, and pores in the micrometric range due to the solvent extraction. While the extraction pores have an average diameter of 1 micron (mm) for the ribbed patterns, the corrugated separators have larger extraction pores (up to 3 mm) resulting in higher mean pore size as well as higher overall pore volume. This increase of the overall volume leads to a more open structure and results in optimized physical properties. Especially, the electrical resistance and acid displacement are reduced. Physical properties of corrugated separators compared to Amer-Sil and competition standard ribbed separators (typical values). As a consequence, the electrical output of a battery can be optimized by the use of the corrugated version of the Amer-Sil separator. The figure below illustrates the gain in capacity obtained by using a corrugated separator compared to a standard ribbed separator in case of a traction flooded battery.