Rainer Bussar

Energy Efficiency has become a key topic for our battery industry, and every contribution towards lower energy consumption is relevant to creating a more sustainable future. The formation of plates and cells or batteries is a crucial production step. The latter is associated with increased costs due to continuous and recently increasing electricity prices. Many technical improvements have been made in the past years, for instance, the so-called “closed-loop” formation introduced by Inbatec, allowing for a faster and more effective battery formation. PENOX focuses on bringing additional value to the battery industry by analysing the impact of different structural and chemical characteristics of leady oxides on formation efficiency.

The idea of PENOX follows the concept of tuning the performance of leady oxide by surface treatment and other functionalization. Such enhanced generation of leady oxides offer the following characteristics: i) specific particle size supporting a stable porosity of the active mass beneficial for enhanced mass utilization, ii) adjusted content of beta-PbO to support a strong backbone of the formed positive active mass for high cycle life, iii) improved tetrabasic structure by surface functionalisation of the oxide with tetrabasic seeding crystals in PAM and NAM, and iv) improved conductivity by functionalisation of the leady oxides.

“Red Lead Plus” (RL+), introduced in 2021 by PENOX, is one example of such innovative, functionalized oxide. Other functionalized leady oxides, such as Barton oxide and other Pb(II)-oxides coated with tetrabasic seeds to be also used in NAM, and a leady oxide doped with pyrogenic oxides are under research.

PENOX is engaging in collaborations to drive the innovation of “next-generation” oxides to support a sustainable energy future for lead-acid batteries.