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Metz

I have been looking at building a nickel Iron battery but the costs for sheets of nickel are quite high.

I have read on some sites that people were using nickel plated electrodes and others mentioning alloys.

this brings me to the following question:

Can a US nickel which is 25% nickel 75% copper work in a nickel iron battery?

Can mild steel be used in place of iron in the battery?

If I can substitute these materials I cam make a very low cost battery compared to buying sheets of nickel online.

DavidIAm

Metz, doesn't material generally say you want nickel(III) oxide for the cathode?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel(III)_oxide

Its not as if you're just dropping a pure nickel plate into the potassium/lithium hydroxide electrolyte, right?

At any rate, you can always start with an experiment with a beaker, some lye, a nickel, and an iron plug, yes/no? Its SCIENCE!

Mike_Apostol

Metz,

You may also want to throw in your questions at a chemical engineering forum or somewhere similar where people with that kind of knowledge congregate.

A quick search yielded this place: http://www.cheresources.com/invision/ and I'm sure there are many others as well!

http://www.eng-tips.com is a place I've used previously too that is quite good

Metz

I will assemble a collection of American nickels to try this. Im not in the US anymore so I will have to scrounge for them. Bought multi meter yesterday for this

Allen15

The only reason you'd really need nickel for this kind of battery, is if you were making your own chemicals from scratch, since the primary reaction is between nickel hydroxide & iron oxide (discharged state) or nickel oxy-hydroxide & iron (charged state), or if you were plating parts with nickel (which you may still want to do).

If you're buying something for making batteries, you'd be better off buying nickel hydrate in bulk although the price for nickel as a commodity has gone up quite a bit recently, and everything that uses nickel has gone up with it, including most stainless steels & other nickel alloys.

As far as making a low cost battery, first, before you spend money on anything, decide what you'd like to do with the finished product. If you're just making a proof of concept, fine, go the cheap route & get whatever you can scrounge.

If, however, you need your battery to be able to do real work, you'd better put some more planning & probably some more money into it, or you will be very disappointed in your results.

Either way, you should probably look through the archives of both the Edison_NiFe_Batteries & Edsworkshop Yahoo Groups, plus you can watch the series of YouTube videos that Ed of Ed's Workshop put together, showing how to build a functional NiFe battery, which he guesses would scale up fairly well, if one were to attempt it. http://www.youtube.com/user/edsworkshop

Yes, it can be done by using US coins, but your output is pathetically tiny, so it may not be more valuable than the face value of the coins... You could even use straight nickel & iron in a potassium hydroxide solution, and if you cycled it enough times, it would build up oxide coatings on the electrodes enough to hold a charge, but your surface area would still be too small to carry much current. Keep reading.

gregor

There was tons of detailed and accurate information about this on the wiki, which I had assembled, but a lot of it seems to have been wiped out by the forces of chaos. Even my nice library section is gone as far as I can tell.

But I'm not going to spend hours trying to fix things, if this is happening here it is happening everywhere and I certainly can't fix it all. It's just what happens when you drive people away/make grossly poor use of the person power available. There have been quite a few people that have come through interested in the batteries, and while no one person has the resources to do it, with the info I gathered and the willingness to experiment that several other people show, good progress could be made. But according to his actions, Marcin doesn't want our help, so whatever. He and his inner circle will be stuck doing it themselves then, not trying to say this is some sort of "punishment", just that it's what they naturally bring upon themselves.

Metz

Yea, I have sent Marcin several letters expressing my desire to be a enterprise open source shop, but I have not heard anything back. I know he is very busy and by the looks of his video, it looks like he isn't eating well either as he has gotten really skinny lately. Oh well, I don't need his permission to do a open source machine shop, just would be nice to be able to contribute back asides from the true fan money I send.

Beluga

Here's the stuff in the wiki by gregor relating to batteries:
http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Gregortheinventor
http://opensourceecology.org/w/index.php?title=Nickel-Iron_Battery/Research_Development&diff=prev&oldid=33831
http://opensourceecology.org/w/index.php?title=Nickel-Iron_Battery&diff=prev&oldid=33533
http://opensourceecology.org/w/index.php?title=Zinc_bromine_battery&diff=prev&oldid=33527

PulseFuelNerd

My search into making lead acid batteries ended when i found out about the requirement of lead oxide and the complexity of the plate configuration. It is not as simple as two sheets of lead and acid.

Similiarly, the process of creating nickel oxide is somewhat skilled (and carcinogenic). I do not see the household as a place for this process.

Homebrew nickel iron batteries appears to be out of scope for households. Can we agree?

My question is can this be accomplished safely on a village wide scope? A specialist (and specialized area) supplying the needs of the local community. Batteries are returned to them for reprocessing. (which brings up a whole bunch of questions....)

Would our design include a modular approach? Sealed and repairable? A single standard sized cell (1.4/1.2 volts) is important.

This brings up the question of purpose: mobile or stationary. mobile needs are much different than stationary.
I will assume the focus is stationary where weight and size are not significant factors.

It appears that increasing weight and size increases robustness and re-usability (modular replacement).

If inner components are not replaceable, then a reusable container is good.
If some components inside are repairable, then reusable components and reusable container is good.

Does modular mean one (1) single standard size?

What would be the minimum amp hours needed?
Or perhaps one person lifting a cell (cell max weight) is a bounding parameter?
Would a tip and roll container be of value as a standard?

Allen15

"Similiarly, the process of creating nickel oxide is somewhat skilled
(and carcinogenic). I do not see the household as a place for this
process.

Homebrew nickel iron batteries appears to be out of scope for households. Can we agree?
"
Umm, no, I don't agree to that.

There are many things no one would willingly give up around the home that can be hazardous, if not properly managed, and given the frequency that one would need to do this task, it might lend itself more to a specialist operation, but is certainly not something that should be restricted to such. Even more so for a farm-type operation.

I would contend that it is far more important to spread the know-how on doing it correctly to as many folks as can stand to learn it, so that this information isn't lost or ever held hostage to the highest bidder - keep it commoditized. Do you know of any battery technology that isn't carcinogenic in any way? There are plenty of warnings in the video series on YouTube about there being danger, and also in the related Yahoo Groups that focus on this, so I'd say let the participant be forewarned & better prepared to proceed safely.

If all the nasty or unpleasant technology was avoided because of its inherent hazards, either no progress will have been made, or society risks being held captive by the few willing to brave the risks...

This battery technology has a long enough lifespan that building them isn't likely to become anything more than a capacity growing issue, more often than not, so I think that the benefits far outweigh the risks.

On the other points, while Edison saw this as a contender for electric vehicles, they are most certainly well suited for stationary use. It is still a question whether or not they would be appropriate for mobile use, as their bulk and power density may pose problems that can't be easily designed around for some mobile applications.

02baenergyfree

Hi i have constructed nickel iron batteries and sorry to tell you ,but cooper-nickel coils wont work ... now nickel plating stainless or nickel plated steel will work , but half the secret is in the surface area , the other quarter is the lithium hydroxide added to the solution of koh and making nickel hydrate is the last bit ,

there is a yahoo group where all the info patents/ making hydrates/ purchasing nickel foam / type of containments ..

here is the link

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/Edison_NiFe_Batteries/

all the best and good luck with the workshop fabrication business

Andy

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