A study on the characteristics of inner cell pressure for sealed type Ni-MH rechargeable battery using Zr-based hydrogen storage alloy as anode

Zr-based 수소저장합금을 음극으로 사용한 밀패형 Ni-MH 2차전지의 내압특성에 관한 연구

Extensive work has been done on investigating the inner cell pressure characteristics of sealed type Ni-MH battery in which Zr-Ti-Mn-V-Ni alloy is used as anode. The inner cell pressure of this type Ni-MH battery much more increases with the charge/discharge cycling than that of the other type Ni-MH battery where commercialized $AB_5$ type alloy is used as anode. The increase of inner cell pressure in the sealed type Ni/MH battery using Zr-Ti-Mn-V-Ni alloy system is mainly due to the accumulation of oxygen gas during charge/discharge cycling. The accumulation of oxygen gas arises mainly due to the low rate of oxygen recombination on the MH electrode surface during charge/discharge cycling. The difference of oxygen recombination rate between $AB_5$ type electrode and Zr-Ti-Mn-V-Ni electrode is caused by the difference of electrode reaction surface area resulting from different particle size after their activation and the difference of surface catalytic activity for oxygen recombination reaction, respectively. After EIS analysis, it is identified that the surface catalytic activity affects much more dominantly on the oxygen recombination reaction than the reaction surface area does. In order to suppress the inner cell pressure of Ni-MH battery where Zr-Ti-Mn-V-Ni is used as anode, it is suggested that the surface catalytic activity for oxygen recombination should be improved.