Synthesis of nano lead oxide for the application of lead-acid energy storage devices

Wong, Kin Nyap (2017) Synthesis of nano lead oxide for the application of lead-acid energy storage devices. MPhil thesis, University of Nottingham.

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Abstract

Over the past decades, efforts have been emphasized on electric vehicles (EV) as a major solution to reduce carbon emission for greener environment. While one of the core design components of EV is the energy storage device which is to ensure sustainable power supply in the drive train system. However, existing energy storage applied in EV is relatively expensive, so, affordable and feasible energy storage needs to be explored to achieve the objective of fuel economy.

As a matter of fact, technology of lead-acid battery has been around for more than a century, the established manufacturing and recycling processes, as well as overall simplistic product designs with relatively high power and energy densities, are attracting global researchers to harness their ultimate innovation. This is done via the essence of nanotechnology in transforming existing product design of lead-acid battery so that it is applicable in EV power train. Despite the challenges are inevitable, global researchers accept that electrode material with novel microstructural is the key solution to the problem.

Recently, nanodendritic PbO2 has been the attractive material with unique morphology and enhanced electrochemical performance for lead-acid electrochemical storage devices. Thus far, many studies have only been investigated this unique material via electrodeposition technique. In this study, flower-like PbO consisting of three dimensional nanoflakes was synthesized and used as a starting precursor to form nanodendritic PbO2 via an electrochemical oxidation at constant voltage in the presence of electrolyte.

According to the XRD results, the as-synthesized PbO was perfectly indexed to the diffraction peaks of pure PbO with a mixture of orthorhombic and tetragonal structures. The same is true for PbO2 which was electrochemically oxidized from the as-synthesized PbO. Meanwhile, both SEM results show that the as-synthesized PbO was characterized with flower-like structures providing high active surface area to form nanodendritic PbO2 via electrochemical oxidation at constant voltage based on periodic bond chain theory. The formed nanodendritic PbO2 delivered a first discharge capacity of 170 mAhg-1 at 200 mAg-1 and displayed improved cyclic voltammetry curve. This suggested that the formation of nanodendrites on the primary surface of agglomerated PbO2 provides larger crystallite network structures for better material utilization at high discharge rate.

Upon the completion of current experimental work, a few general conclusions of this work have unfolded other research which focus on fabricating a prototype of lead-acid hybrid supercapacitor for evaluation.

Item Type: Thesis (University of Nottingham only) (MPhil)
Supervisors: Khiew, Poi Sim
Keywords: Nano lead oxide, lead-acid energy storage
Subjects: T Technology > TK Electrical engineering. Electronics Nuclear engineering
Faculties/Schools: University of Nottingham, Malaysia > Faculty of Science and Engineering — Engineering > Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering
Item ID: 43545
Depositing User: WONG, KIN NYAP
Date Deposited: 26 Sep 2017 10:49
Last Modified: 13 Oct 2017 00:02
URI: https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/id/eprint/43545

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