Electrolyte additives for electrochemical devices

Abstract

A system and method for stabilizing electrodes against dissolution and / or hydrolysis including use of cosolvents in liquid electrolyte batteries for three purposes: the extension of the calendar and cycle life time of electrodes that are partially soluble in liquid electrolytes, the purpose of limiting the rate of electrolysis of water into hydrogen and oxygen as a side reaction during battery operation, and for the purpose of cost reduction.

Description

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS[0001]This application is a continuation-in-part of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 15 / 442,634 filed 25 Feb. 2017; this application is a continuation-in-part of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13 / 892,982 filed 13 May 2013 which claims benefit of U.S. Patent Application No. 61 / 722,049 filed 2 Nov. 2012; and this application is a continuation-in-part of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 15 / 062,171 filed 6 Mar. 2016 which is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14 / 231,571 (now U.S. Pat. No. 9,287,589) filed 31 Mar. 2014 which claims benefit of U.S. Patent Application No. 61 / 810,684 filed 10 Apr. 2013, the contents of which are all hereby expressly incorporated by reference thereto in their entireties for all purposes.STATEMENT REGARDING FEDERALLY SPONSORED RESEARCH OR DEVELOPMENT[0002]This invention was made with government support under ARPA-E Award No. DE-AR000300 With Alveo Energy, Inc., awarded by DOE. The government has certain...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

The patent text describes the use of solvents and cosolvents in liquid electrolyte batteries for multiple purposes. The use of cosolvents can increase the calendar and cycle life time of electrodes that are partially soluble in liquid electrolytes, limit the rate of electrolysis of water during battery operation, and reduce costs. The patent also describes a method of manufacturing an electrochemical apparatus with a specific cathode material that can be exposed to an aqueous electrolyte without losing its performance. This is achieved by adding a specific electrolyte additive to the electrolyte.

Problems solved by technology

Not one of these technologies is commonly used for applications related to the stabilization and reliability of the electric grid due to exorbitantly high cost, poor cycle and calendar lifetime, and low energy efficiency during rapid cycling.

However, the development of lower cost, longer lived batteries is likely needed for the grid to remain reliable in spite of the ever-increasing deployment of extremely volatile solar and wind power.

Existing battery electrode materials cannot survive for enough deep discharge cycles for the batteries containing them to be worth their price for most applications related to the electric grid.

Similarly, the batteries found in electric and hybrid electric vehicles are long lived only in the case of careful partial discharge cycling that results in heavy, large, expensive battery systems.

The performance of most existing battery electrode materials during fast cycling is limited by poor kinetics for ion transport or by complicated, multi-phase operational mechanisms.

One challenge for the development of practical batteries using TMCCC cathodes is their trace solubility in aqueous electrolytes.

Their partial dissolution into the battery electrolyte can result in a decrease in battery charge capacity due to mass loss from the electrodes and a decrease in efficiency due to side reactions with the cathode's dissolution products.

The development of a TMCCC anode has proven much more challenging than that of TMCCC cathodes because these materials typically have reaction potentials either near 0 V or below −0.5 V vs.

SHE, the charge efficiency of the anode can be poor due to rapid hydrolysis of water to hydrogen gas.

Finally, if the Mn(CN)6 groups in the TMCCC anode hydrolyze, the capacity of the electrode is rapidly lost.

However, for an electrochemical cell using one or more electrodes of the second class, there is a possibility that there could be unbalanced potentials on the electrode, particularly in an event that the cell is not at maximum charge.

Unbalanced potentials reduce an energy density of the cell.

However electrochemical cells made with the materials of the second class may have a degraded performance in other areas, including the possibility of the unbalanced potentials.

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