Axion Power gets the lead out

Thought that lithium ion was the bee's knees of contemporary advanced batteries?

A small, 23-person company that recently relocated from Toronto to Pennsylvania is ramping up production of a new kind of battery based on an evolved lead-carbon (PbC) technology.

"It's really a hybrid battery/supercapacitor," Axion Power (OTCBB: AXPW) CEO Thomas Granville told the Cleantech Group. "Even though it looks like a lead acid battery, and can be manufactured on a lead acid battery line, its characteristics are significantly different."

Axion claims its new patented lead-carbon approach represents a major advance in lead-acid battery technology, yielding batteries that require less lead, yet deliver higher power delivery rates, faster recharges and longer life cycles than conventional lead acid batteries.

At the same time, the company claims they're less expensive than traditional nickel metal hydride (NiMH), or the lithium ion approach of by A123Systems, Tesla Energy Group and others.

A standard lead-acid battery takes up to eight hours to fully charge. Axion's battery can be charged in 20 percent of that time, it says.

Lab prototypes have withstood more than 1,000 charge and deep discharge cycles, it claims. By comparison, most lead-acid batteries can only survive 300 to 500 deep discharge cycles.

According to Axion's Granville, the company's secret is replacing negative electrodes with a microporous activated carbon with a very high surface area.

"The negative lead acid component, which is normally pasted lead, is now made of activated carbon. The positive electrode remains lead. The negative electrode is the limiting factor in conventional lead acid batteries. It's the thing that goes first."

Building batteries with longer lifespans should translate into lower total lifecycle costs, which is how the company rationalizes the 1.7 to 1.8x premium it plans to charge over similar batteries.

Axion acknowledges that its battery has obvious applicability in the traditional $30 billion-dollar a year deep cycle markets, such as uninterruptible power supply (UPS), telecommunications markets, and even golf carts and forklifts.

But CEO Granville seems more excited about seeing large banks of the batteries used in the shaping of demand and supply of renewable energy.

"The markets of the future we're looking at are wind, solar, HEV (hybrid electric vehicle) and potentially grid buffering," he said.

"We're doing a demonstration project for NYSERDA, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority. They've given us a contract to prove the technology in grid buffering applications. A bank of 1,000 batteries would take power from the grid at off-times and sell it back to the grid at peak times. We'd also be doing some load leveling for the grid."

In another contract for another demonstration project, the batteries are to be used for wind and solar storage application in the Toronto area.

Axion began small-scale production of niche market lead-acid batteries, including 16-volt performance racecar and various collector car batteries in May, 2006. It produced its first batch of PbC batteries this January.

The company is now investing in automated equipment to scale production of its proprietary carbon electrodes, which are currently are being produced by hand at the plant. The equipment is being partially underwritten with $1.2 million in state aid.

While terms like "lead" and "acid" don't feel very politically correct, the technology is indeed environmentally friendly, Axion's Granville claimed.

He pointed out the batteries are even more recyclable than standard lead acid batteries, "which are very recyclable in the U.S., though not so much in Europe or Japan," he admitted, and use much less lead.

Axion believes its new technology is the only class of advanced battery that can be assembled on existing lead-acid battery production lines throughout the world without significant changes. It's considering selling its carbon electrode assemblies as plug-and-play replacements to other lead-acid battery manufacturers.

The company has a new 70,000-square-foot research and development center and manufacturing facility in New Castle, Pennsylvania obtained at a "fire sale," as Granville put it, from another battery company. The facility is already permitted to manufacture 3,000 batteries a day.

Axion raised $8 million late in 2006, and is not actively seeking funds at this time, it said.

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