Bipolar Battery Plate Spacing for Uniform Active Material Use
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional lead-acid storage batteries experience shortened lifespan due to uneven active material usage during charging and discharging, leading to localized softening and potential early failure.
Innovation Solution
A bipolar storage battery design featuring cell members with positive and negative electrodes and electrolyte layers, where space-forming members with substrates and frames create spaces to accommodate cell members, ensuring uniform active material usage by maintaining a specific distance ratio between active material layers, thereby tolerating unevenness and extending battery life.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If conventional lead-acid storage battery design is used, then economic efficiency and safety are improved, but active material usage becomes uneven leading to shortened lifespan
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies local quality by creating non-uniform spacing between adjacent bipolar plates at different locations. Specifically, the spacing varies in the stacking direction to compensate for potential distribution differences across the plate surface. This localized adjustment ensures uniform active material usage throughout the battery while maintaining the overall bipolar structure.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent changes the geometric parameter of plate spacing to resolve the contradiction. By adjusting the distance between bipolar plates according to their position (with smaller spacing where potential is higher and larger spacing where potential is lower), the design achieves uniform current density and active material utilization, thereby extending battery lifespan.
2Reliability
If uniform active material usage is achieved through adjusted plate spacing, then storage battery lifespan is extended, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the battery into multiple stacks, with each stack containing bipolar plates arranged with specific spacing patterns. This segmentation allows the complex spacing requirement to be distributed across simpler modular units, making the overall design more manageable while achieving uniform active material usage.
3Productivity
If bipolar plate spacing is adjusted to prevent local active material usage, then active material utilization efficiency is improved, but manufacturing precision requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent incorporates the required spacing variations directly into the bipolar plate structure design itself, rather than attempting to achieve the spacing through separate assembly steps. The plates are manufactured with built-in features that maintain the correct distances, performing the spacing function in advance and reducing the precision requirements for final assembly.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
The design suppresses local active material usage unevenness, achieving uniform material utilization and extending the storage battery's lifespan by maintaining a distance ratio of 1.1 or more between active material layers, while preventing volume increase and energy density reduction.
Implementation Method 1
electrolyte layers interposed between the positive electrode and the negative electrode
Data Source
AI summary
A bipolar storage battery includes cell members arranged with spacing in a stacked manner, each of the cell members including a positive electrode, a negative electrode, and an electrolyte layer interposed between the positive electrode and the negative electrode, and space-forming members forming a plurality of spaces individually accommodating the plurality of cell members. A value obtained by dividing the distance between a positive active material layer and a negative active material layer placed in a position facing the positive active material layer by the sum of the thickness of the positive active material layer and the thickness of the negative active material layer is 1.1 or more. The bipolar storage battery may suppress local use of active material during charging and discharging to achieve uniform use of active material in a cell.