May 7, 2020: BCI innovation award 2020 winner ArcActive is closer to commercializing the first generation of its AACarbon anodes, CEO Stuart McKenzie told BESB on May 5.
“We are reaching the end of the process to get our first generation of electrodes into commercial products,” McKenzie said. “Having said that, we are really only at the start of realizing the potential of this technology.
“We have leap-frogged the performance of the traditional negative electrode by changing the electrode architecture, but we have barely begun work on optimizing the material,” he said.
“There’s a lot of additional performance to be extracted from our technology, but time will tell.”
ArcActive has re-engineered the negative electrode in a lead battery to remove the lead grid and replace it with a non-woven carbon fibre fabric — AACarbon — resulting in much higher dynamic charge acceptance, much lower water consumption, and around 1kg less lead.
East Penn Manufacturing partnered ArcActive in May 2018 to try out the technology. McKenzie says: “Our feedback is great. East Penn presented their test results on batteries using the AA technology at the AABC in Wiesbaden. Germany earlier this year.
“They have verified the high DCA/low water consumption attributes — and there are no red flags on other tests. They said that they believe that the AA technology is the best technology for micro hybrid automotive batteries.”
While the company has formed formal relationships with a number of battery makers, there is a limit to the number ArcActive can support, so it is not seeking new relationships yet.
“The technology is reaching technical maturity thanks in large part to our relationships with companies such as East Penn,” says McKenzie. “We have a high degree of consistency with our performance levels and the electrodes can be readily manufactured.
“But it’s a big job taking a completely novel design and making it a stable industrial technology, and there’s more work to do, principally on fine tuning manufacturing processes.
“So far we have been highly focused on the automotive applications — there’s been plenty to do on this front! Having said that, we do have an interest in other markets, such as ESS, and the early testing is promising.
“The ability to resist sulfation (retain high DCA) that we’ve seen in automotive testing has also been demonstrated for ESS, which makes sense. But it’s early days on this front, and there’s a lot to do.
“The battery development cycle is lengthy; tests take months to complete, and changes to the design and materials specifications, which are being constantly worked on, require testing to verify all aspects of performance.”
