Design principles of lead-carbon additives toward better lead-carbon batteries

In the last 20 years, lead-acid battery has experienced a paradigm transition to lead-carbon batteries due to the huge demand for renewable energy storage and start-stop hybrid electric vehicles. Carbon additives show a positive effect for retarding the sulfation of Pb negative electrode toward the partial state of charge operation. Lead-carbon composite additive could synergistically solve the problem of sulfation while inhibiting parasitic hydrogen evolution reaction of carbon. The design principles of lead-carbon additives toward future lead-carbon batteries are discussed in this paper.