The demand for energy storage is increasing massively due to the electrification of transport and the expansion of renewable energies. Current battery technologies cannot satisfy this growing demand as they are difficult to recycle, as the necessary raw materials are mined under precarious conditions, and as the energy density is insufficient. Metal–air batteries offer a high energy density as there is only one active mass inside the cell and the cathodic reaction uses the ambient air. Various metals can be used, but zinc is very promising due to its disposability and non-toxic behavior, and as operation as a secondary cell is possible. Typical characteristics of zinc–air batteries are flat charge and discharge curves. On the one hand, this is an advantage for the subsequent power electronics, which can be optimized for smaller and constant voltage ranges. On the other hand, the state determination of the system becomes more complex, as the voltage level is not sufficient to determine the state of the battery. In this context, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy is a promising candidate as the resulting impedance spectra depend on the state of charge, working point, state of aging, and temperature. Previous approaches require a fixed operating state of the cell while impedance measurements are being performed. In this publication, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy is therefore combined with various machine learning techniques to also determine successfully the state of charge during charging of the cell at non-fixed charging currents.
Keywords:
electrochemical impedance spectroscopy; artificial neural networks; support vector regression; zinc-air battery; state estimation; state of charge
Oxygen consumption of zinc-air batteries and theirperformance at low oxygen concentration levels
(2018)
Already existing primary Zinc-air batteries providea high energy density. Due to new secondary cells, its tech-nology can become an alternative for energy storage. Sincethese applications require a big amount of storable energy, theoxygen consumption has to be taken into account. This articledetermines the oxygen consumption of zinc-air batteries duringdischarging. Furthermore the performance of zinc-air batteries atlow oxygen concentrations is analyzed. Both aspects are validatedby practical experiments.
State of Charge estimation of zinc air batteries using electrochemical impedance spectroscopy
(2018)
Die wachsenden Anteile fluktuierender regenerativer Energien in der Energieversorgung (bis 2020 sollen 30 % und 2050 sogar So % des Stroms aus regenerativen Energiequellen stammen) sowie die Steigerung der Elektromobilität machen deutlich: Das Thema der Zwischenspeicherung elektrischer Energie ist von höchster gesellschaftlicher Relevanz und verlangt zwingend nach einer Lösung. Neue Technologien, die umweltfreundlich, sicher, leistungsfähig und bezahlbar zugleich sind, müssen deshalb entwickelt werden.