Sonic Enhancement of Battery Performance

Mass transfer ultimately limits the performance of all battery types:  sandwich configuration, flow, and air batteries.  These limits are significant even in the limits of thin separators with high porosities.  Two approaches to overcome the mass transfer limitations in both the separators and electrodes are to use convective flow and to use sonic-enhanced mass transfer.  Sonic enhancement has previously been demonstrated for cyclic voltammetry; but has not been evaluated and demonstrated in sandwich configurations with separator materials.  Demonstration and understanding in sandwich configurations is most important because it represents the common commercial design used for battery cell scaleup.  This presentation provides data that validates the sonic battery concept as applied to sandwich configurations.