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Economist 杂志评价 铅酸电池的文章
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这是 http://www.economist.com/science/tm/displayStory.cfm?story_id=12924031&source=hptextfeature[/url] Lead-acid batteries Recharged ------A 150-year-old technology looks to the future LEAD-ACID batteries seem to have been around for ever. They were invented in 1859 by Gaston Planté, a French physicist, and have done sterling work over the decades starting car engines and powering slow-moving vehicles such as fork-lift trucks and milk floats. Compared with the newer energy technologies that are now sweeping the world, however, it has to be admitted that they look old-fashioned and a bit frumpy. These days the catwalk is crowded with nickel-metal hydride and lithium-ion batteries, showing off their ability to pack a lot of energy into a small space and deliver a steady current over a long period. The fact that these modern batteries are also lighter (lead is, after all, one of the densest elements in the periodic table) has made them the first choices for powering truly serious electric vehicles, as opposed to the ones that potter about warehouses and suburban streets. It is, nevertheless, a mistake to dismiss something just because it is old. Another way of looking at things is that lead-acid batteries are tried and trusted. They may just need a bit of pepping up. And that is what is now happening. Axion Power, a firm based near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has found that the ideal tonic is carbon. A conventional lead-acid battery is a simple affair, made up of a series of cells each containing a positive electrode made of lead dioxide and a negative electrode of metallic lead. These are immersed in an electrolyte of dilute sulphuric acid. Car batteries tend to have thin electrode plates, which allows a lot of energy to be discharged quickly, but only for a short period of time. That is fine for turning a starter motor, but it is not so good for turning an electric motor intended to move a car any distance. Moreover, a lead-acid battery can be ruined if it is discharged completely, as many motorists discover to their cost when trying to start their car on an icy morning. Lead-acid batteries with thicker electrodes can tolerate such “deep” discharges better than those with thin ones, but only at the expense of making a heavy battery even heavier. In Axion’s battery the negative electrode is replaced with one made from activated carbon, a material used in supercapacitors. Normal capacitors—those that power the flashguns in cameras for instance—can be charged and discharged rapidly, but cannot store much energy. Supercapacitors are meatier versions that are able to hold a reasonable amount of energy as well as taking it in and releasing it quickly. Some, indeed, are already used in tandem with the lithium-ion batteries in electric cars to boost acceleration and recapture energy during so-called “regenerative” braking. Axion’s plan, therefore, is to have the best of both worlds by building a lead-acid/carbon hybrid, or PbC. The carbon in the hybrid, which is protected within a sandwich of other materials, is more effective than metallic lead at releasing and absorbing protons to and from the acid during charging and discharging. In tests, Axion says, its PbCs have withstood more than 1,600 charges and deep discharges before they failed, which is three times better than standard lead-acid batteries specifically designed for such deep cycles. True, the hybrids are still heavy compared with lithium-ion batteries. “But not everyone needs or can afford an electric car that accelerates like a Tesla,” says Ed Buiel, Axion’s chief technical officer, referring to the fastest electric car yet to be put into production, which uses a huge pack of lithium-ion cells. And for those who do not require Tesla-like performance, this makes sense. The hybrids are durable and also cheap to make because, according to Dr Buiel, they can be produced on existing lead-acid production lines. A Tesla costs $109,000. Axion, by contrast, has converted a pickup truck to run on a pack of its hybrids for around $8,000. (It has a range of 70km or about 45 miles.) The company is also working with a number of other small engineering firms to convert other sorts of vehicles. |
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Nor is transport the only application. In another project, called Power Cube, Axion is putting banks of its PbCs into a shipping container, which can then be used as a mobile energy-storage system that can supply up to 1MW of power for 30 minutes or 100KW for ten hours. Power Cubes could help deliver power to local electricity grids that might otherwise suffer “brownouts” as a consequence of demand temporarily exceeding supply. They might also provide an answer to the problem of matching the supply of solar and wind energy to the demand for electricity, by storing electricity during the day, or during particularly windy periods, so that it is available at night, or during periods of calm. Other companies are also looking at ways to give the lead-acid battery a new lease of life. Furukawa Battery, a Japanese firm, has developed the UltraBattery. This, too, combines the benefits of a lead-acid battery with those of a supercapacitor, but in a different way. It splits the negative electrode in two, with one part made of lead and the other of carbon. In September 2008 East Penn Manufacturing, a big American battery-maker, entered into an agreement with Furukawa to put the UltraBattery into production. Meanwhile, America’s marines are testing a special version of Axion’s battery in some of their assault vehicles. If even the marines like them, then lead-acid batteries with a dash of carbon should continue to have a long and useful life. |
2楼2009-01-15 12:24:10