Browsing by Author "Newnham, RH"

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    High energy X-ray imaging of heterogeneity in charged and discharged lead-acid battery electrodes
    (Elsevier, 2023-02) Stone, CW; Hall, CJ; Pohl, OM; Hollenkamp, AF; Newnham, RH; Mahon, PJ; Hocking, RK
    Lead-acid battery technology continues to form a critical part of the global electrochemical energy storage market. Part of the reason for the lead-acid battery's success is due to its well understood electrochemistry. However, over recent years it has become clear that a poor understanding of inherent heterogeneity in chemical changes that happen during the charge and discharge cycles of these batteries is limiting innovation. In this paper we show that high-energy X-rays can be used to better understand how the chemistry within these systems is localised spatially, and how it affects battery performance. Used commercial lead-acid battery electrodes were sampled then imaged before and after the Pb K-edge (88 keV). In these electrodes, multiple features associated with battery failure were clearly observed throughout each electrode. A custom-made lead-acid battery was also imaged in-operando. Inhomogeneous utilization of the negative electrode arising from charge-transport effects could be clearly observed in the electrode face. These results show that high-energy X-ray imaging could be a powerful tool to better understand the relationship between the spatial and electrochemical dimensions in lead-acid batteries. © 2022 Elsevier B.V.