Calcium and Other Advances in Lead Acid Battery Technology

Lead acid batteries are pretty much the oldest batteries in the world. Over a century and a half ago, in 1860, Gaston Planté first demonstrated the lead acid battery in France. I thought it would be interesting to look at what else was happening at the same time as battery technology was improving. I hope you’ll find it to be interesting as well.

The same year that everyone delighted at Planté’s new battery, and Camille Faure was already working on improving it, France and Britain forced the Qing Empire to sign the treaty at the Convention of Peking. This Convention came at the end of the Second Opium War, in which the Europeans nobly demanded to be able to freely sell opium and other junk in China’s ports.

Time went on, and many things happened.

The sealed lead-acid battery was introduced in France in 1909 (the same year that the Futurist Manifesto was published there). Lead-acid batteries with gelled (as opposed to liquid) electrolyte were first produced in Germany in 1934 (the year after Hitler’s rise to power). The valve-regulated sealed lead acid (VRLA) battery was also patented in Germany in 1957 (by a company that grew during WWII, Sonneschein). The first Absorbed Glass Mat (AGM) battery – another electrolyte improvement – was developed in 1967 by the Gates Corporation based in Denver, USA (the summer of that year is known for its many Black urban uprisings).

There were also multiple developments in the metal plates (electrodes) of sealed lead acid batteries. In addition to pure lead plates, most lead acid batteries use alloys of lead-calcium, lead-tin, lead-tin-calcium, or lead-antimony. The addition of calcium to the plates improves the battery’s recharge rate and its resistance to corrosion. The lead-antimony plates have the advantage of prolonging the life of the battery and they are cheaper than the calcium ones.

Just like history, the sealed acid battery moves forward, but also comes full circle. Maybe its biggest strength is that when the battery has outlived its usefulness, it can be fully recycled, and have a new life as something else. A used-up SLA battery can resurrect as a sound-proof wall in a recording studio, or an x-ray vest in a hospital, or the paint on your wall.