Structure improvement and development of sealed nickel metal hydride batteries in bipolar design
Nickel metal hydride batteries in bipolar design off er significant advantages as a power storage system for electric vehicles. This st udy deals with some aspects in structure design and development of bipolar nicke l metal hydride batteries. An improvement on conventional bipolar structure was made, and some novel sealed bipolar nickel metal hydride batteries with 6 cells were assembled and studied.Testing results showed that the improved structure e ffectively protected the worst single cell of bipolar battery, and led to a bett er pressure and cycle performances of novel batteries compared with conventional ones.In addition, the improved bipolar batteries showed excellent discharge and recharge ability, and low resistance in electrochemical tests. As simulating h ybrid electric vehicle working conditions, the batteries displayed good stabilit y during pulse cycles, which indicated the possibility of being used on electric vehicles.