Water Loss Predictive Tests in Flooded Lead-Acid Batteries

Abstract

Different aging processes rates of flooded lead–acid batteries (FLAB) depend strongly on the operational condition, yet the difficult to predict presence of certain additives or contaminants could prompt or anticipate the aging. Linear sweep current (LSC) and gas test (GT) characterizations were reported here to fasten the water consumption evaluation. The two methods were proposed to evaluate the water consumption effect at 60 °C, on a custom cell with a (1+ 2−) plate configuration. The predictive ability of the proposed tests was verified on 9 batches of plates for FLAB preliminary tested with the European standard CEI EN 50342-1 : 2019-11 method. LSC and GT tests showed the capability to identify plate batches with anomalous behaviour for the water consumption and good agreement with the European standard CEI EN 50342-1 : 2019-11 method. Furthermore, it was found that Tafel parameters determined from LSC and GT tests correlated well with the concentration of Te.