Marco Robotti
Bio
Marco Robotti is a Materials Engineer at Hammond Expanders UK (United Kingdom). With more than 7 years of experience in the lead acid battery industry, he is a member of Hammond’s technical team, providing support to customers with Hammond’s performance additives. Before joining Hammond Group Inc., Marco held an R&D Innovation Product position at Fiamm Energy Technology S.p.A. (Italy) where he was involved in automotive and industrial battery projects. Marco earned a PhD in engineering and advanced technologies from the University of Barcelona (Spain) and a Master’s and Bachelor’s Degree in materials engineering from the University of Padua (Italy).
Co-authors: S. Barnes, E. Gao, T. Wojcinski, G. Beckley, P. Nikolov
During the last thirty years, lead acid batteries (LAB) have been facing major challenges, such as the adoption of start/stop technology, the development of autonomous driving vehicles, the introduction of electric vehicles, and the demand for increased capacity for energy storage. This reliance on electrification in transportation is exemplified by auxiliary batteries becoming common in most vehicles to ensure safety even under extreme temperature conditions (from -30°C to +75°C). Another example, is EV fast charging stations will require energy storage to supplement the utility’s electrical infrastructure. Numerous battery designs, such as flooded, GEL, AGM, flat plate, tubular, prismatic, spiral wound, and bipolar, exist to provide focused benefits for specific applications. However, a common factor for improvement in all designs begins with the enhancement of positive (PAM) and negative (NAM) active material utilization, a critical area for research in LABs. Hammond’s Research Team, in collaboration with the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and leading battery consultants, has improved paste additives for each electrode separately using 2V laboratory cell testing. The latest results on Hammond’s patent pending Gravity-GuardTM will be presented in this project. Loading, particle size, and reactivity of this innovative material in both PAM and NAM have been further characterised (particle size, BET, SEM) and optimised to reach significant improvements in terms of high-power and cold-cranking performances. Gravity-GuardTM advanced paste additive allows to achieve the performance gains needed and will open the door for the next generation of lead-acid batteries to compete with other electro-chemistries and be the energy system of choice in the future.
