TECHNOLOGY

Lead-Carbon Energy Storage Device Overview
PbC® Technology
The full technical description of Axion's proprietary PbC technology is a "multi-celled asymmetrically supercapacitive lead-acid-carbon hybrid battery." Like a lead-acid battery, our battery consists of a series of cells. Within the individual cells, however, our construction is more complex. Where the negative electrodes in lead-acid batteries are simple sponge lead plates, our negative electrodes are five-layer assemblies that consist of a carbon electrode, a corrosion barrier, a current collector, a second corrosion barrier and a second carbon electrode. These electrode assemblies are then sandwiched together with conventional separators and positive electrodes to make our battery, which is filled with an acid electrolyte, sealed and connected in series to the other cells.

We have been testing laboratory prototypes of Axion's PbC batteries since April 2004. Our test protocol requires a complete charge-discharge cycle every 7 hours to a 100% depth of discharge. During testing, our laboratory prototypes have withstood more than 2,500 cycles before failure. In comparison, most lead-acid batteries designed for deep discharge applications can only survive 400 to 600 cycles under these operating conditions. Based on the work completed during the laboratory development stage, we believe our application specific prototypes will offer several key performance advantages over conventional lead-acid batteries, including: We also believe that we will have the following performance advantages when compared to lithium ion technologies:
  • significantly faster recharge rates;
  • significantly greater charge acceptance
  • significantly longer cycle lives in deep discharge applications; and
  • minimal required maintenance.
PbC vs Lithium Ion
We also believe that we will have the following performance advantages when compared to lithium ion technologies:
  • 2 to 4 times faster recharge rates in partial state of charge applications;
  • Significantly less complicated - and therefore also much less expensive - battery management and thermal management, systems;
  • Significantly better safety record;
  • Significantly better cold temperature performance;
  • 5 times faster module replacement, resulting in significant savings in go forward maintenance and replacement;
  • Known end of life value compared to lithium ion's end of life cost to recycle.
More than eight years have been devoted to research and development on various aspects of this technology. Our work has focused on developing our intellectual property, characterizing baseline performance, developing proprietary treatment processes for the activated carbon we use in our electrodes, developing proprietary designs and manufacturing techniques for electrode assemblies and fabricating a series of material and design evaluation prototypes that range from single cell to multi-cell batteries.



 

[ Privacy ]