Abstract
Lead-acid battery system is designed to perform optimally at ambient
temperature (25 °C) in terms of capacity and cyclability. However,
varying climate zones enforce harsher conditions on the automotive lead
acid batteries. Hence, they age faster and exhibit low performance when
operated at either extremity of the optimum ambient conditions. In this
work, a systematic study was conducted to analyze the effect of varying
temperatures (-10, 0, 25 and 40 °C) on the sealed lead acid. Enersys®
Cyclon (2V, 5Ah) cells were cycled at C/10 rate using battery testing
system. The environmental aging results in shorter cycle life due to the
degradation of electrode, and grid materials at higher temperature (25
and 40 °C), while at lower temperature (-10 and 0 °C) negligible
degradation was observed due to slower kinetics and reduced available
capacity. Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction and
Energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy analysis were used to evaluate the
degradation mechanism, chemical and morphological changes.