Building a good working capacity NI Fe Battery.

[ChadManMN]

Has anyone had any sucess?

I've been playing around with this for a few weeks. Most of that time was spent learning about electroplating, as I want to try the nickel plating idea. BTW, to the detractors regarding nickel plating, I fully disagree. It is simple once you get the right solution and I made my own.

Tonight I assembled my first prototype and it's charging as I type. I'm hoping that some of you have kept this project alive offline and might have some findings to share.

 

[u4david]

Material is the key

So the material used will be the key to get this of the ground.
KOH is easy.
-iron-where how?
-nickel or nickel plating-where how?

Next step is the electrodes size and design.
-where how?

Any tips?

 

[cobra1]

Just thought i would add my own thoughts and experience to the mix, might help you out.

I have built very successfully, both a Zinc Iron, and also a Nickel Iron battery.

Nickel iron works well but the Zinc Iron battery was more of a success, in that by adding other metals i was able to make the battery (the size of a jam jar) last for over 4 months lighting an LED.

There were some things that i found that you may find useful.

The Nickel in the battery will degrade in the solution so it needs to be solid nickel to last a good time, upon charging what happens it that the nickel that was given up into the solution will rebond to the nickel plates.

The Iron doesnt have to be iron, Ideally it has to be something of high conductivity, but low in reactivity, the best materials i found and got amazing results were thiorated tungsten rods, and best of all tungsten carbide.

Both of these materials are expensive, so the next best thing i found was a grade of stainless steel high in chrome, in my experiment i used stainless steel welding rods.

Finally, adding Colloidial silver and colloidial magnesium to the KOH solution will aid in the self regeneration of the Nickel. you only notice this by the battery itself lasting much longer than normal.

i have a fair bit of knowledge with these cells so if anyone needs any questions answered let me know.

 

[u4david]

My plane is to:

would like to build these batteries for solar power battery bank.
I would like to use 5 gal buckets.
I would like to use cheep easy obtainable materials.
I was considering using Nickel plated iron and iron plates.

Would Steel mesh nickel plated mesh work good enough?

How about stainless steel mesh and cooper plated stainless steel mesh?
Any ideas?

 

[cobra1]

Hi, You cannot use copper or any other metal other than the nickel and iron.

If you use copper it is then part of the reaction and will give undesired results.

The key is surface area, best way is iron/stainless steel that has been sanded down on both sides, this gives it a rough texture will lots of peaks and valleys.

The nickel is the same more surface area the better, as a general rule the more iron you have the more power you can generate, if you have very little nickel and lots of iron you will see the nickel start to deteriorate, so you will need to work out a good balance.

 

[bryan1]

Well upon searching for some nickel I just turned up blanks on fruuuugle and then I thought about welding rods. The cast iron welding rods (castcraft100) are 'pure nickel core' so it looks like it could be some cheap fun with playing around making a nife battery on the cheap.......

 

[jnm]

nickel foam

Hello from France

I am also very interested to build my own low cost ni fe ( french) Ni-Iron batteries, in the most ecological way, to power my house with my solar cells. I know that I will cook the battery container in ceramics with Solar Fire Project - solar oven.

After hours of research on the web, I have found some manufacturers of Ni Iron batteries in China and Russia, but I still want to build them myself.
As the problem is to have the biggest Nickel surface, I have discovered that Nickel foam exists, and is sold by chinese factories, but I am unable to buy some samples as a simple citizen to make some tests. There are also some Nickel Balls, from 1 cm to nanoparticules sizes. So it could be possible to build Nickel "sticks" in "tubes" with such balls.
I have many ideas of designs, and test to realize, but impossible to find even a nickel ribbon or nickel sheet in France with a reasonable price.
I am following this very interesting discussion, and I hope you will share your knowledge as I will do on my web pages when my first tests will emerge.

 

[mramos1]

Guess I better do some research. I already have around the house, 2% thoriated tungsten and straight tungsten (the 100% I never use anymore), I have 316 filler rods, KOH and colloidal silver too.

So I make up a solution in a glass jar (add a little colloidal silver), drop in the two type rods and put a small charger on it and I have a single cell battery? If so I will try it.

 

[tytower]

Gee nickle plating your balls sounds painful . Just some advice . The solution type approach as advertised for nickle plateing only puts a film on stuff and it will wipe off quickly. Using an electric current to transfer the molecules works far better.

If you want iron get old blacksmiths stuff- old forged nails ,blacksmith made traps,bolts ,tools,etc and hammer them out flatter . Its a different iron and if you get the right stuff it does not rust very fast at all.

 

[isoutar]

If you go to the Nickel Iron Battery Association page you will get the details of the chemistry. Edison did 3.5 million dollars of research between 1900 to 1910 to perfect it.

The Nickel Electrode is not pure nickel but is Nickel Hydroxide or Nickel Oxy-hydroxide. It is held in a pocket cell made of stainless steel with little holes drilled in it.

There is no electroplating process in a commercial nickel iron battery and that is why they do not wear out. The chemistry happens inside hte pocket cell and not on the surface of the electrode.

nickel iron battery information

Ian Soutar

 

[Dolph]

I've been watching 'how to' videos on the Internet and reading up on the old Edison type Nickel Iron batteries. There are loads of claims that they are superior to many of the modern types of rechargeable batteries.
The problem is I am rather skeptical simply because what they claim Vs what I am seeing for actual performance numbers and cost don't come close to adding up so far.

One video shows a homemade 1 quart canning jar NI Fe battery that runs an LED for 12 minutes. Sorry but a good watch battery can do better than that!

The design has been proven to be very durable and very reliable but I have yet to find any real numbers that relate the simple physical size of a 12 volt (10 cell) NI Fe battery to a common 12 volt lead acid battery on any amp hours comparisons or discharge rate comparisons.

I once had and probably still do have an actual Edison NI Fe battery some place so I will be trying to find it (if its still around) to see what I can learn (if anything) from it.

So does anyone have any real practical working experience or knowledge about this type of battery and how it really relates to other types of batteries?
Especially on the realistic size VS capacity ratios.

 

[Dolph]

Use "(High Nickel Stainless Steel"), it is expensive, as all Nickel metal is. High Nickel Stainless rods, or screen material, will work if the distance between the 2 electrodes is close enough. forget about electroplating, use what is already available for materials. It's all about (cost) (and ease of assembly), (with already available materials,) which perform at near the performance of the high tech designs. You do not need Hyper Pure Nickel,electroplated to any other material, just use High Nickel Stainless. there is Iron/Fe, in the Stainless Steel, It is just Nickel Steel. Ni/Fe. The secret is (Ferro- magnetic) coupling. Hence (Fe) or (Iron). The FLR, the Feild Line Resonance, at (5Mhz)which is within the Schuman resonance range, will couple to any (Ferro Magnetic) (Fe/Iron) resonant, conductive material. As it does on Earth every day, Magnets are Ferro resonant. If you understand the hidden message, of what i,am telling you here?. Battery Capacity is from the electrons,( in the plate material)," the Area of the Plates". That is why Large wire Diameter produces more electrons,and they say can handle a greater current, the electrons come from the conductor itself,as free electrons. So increase the Plate Area, the Plate surface area,whatever shape it may be.

 

[Ian Soutar]

I am using nickel-iron batteries in the house To run my lighting and computers. Let no one tell you otherwise, nickel-iron is great to back up solar homes.

At 200 amp hour and 22 cells gives me a trouble and stress free power system. Occasionally I deep discharge them with incandescent DC 32 volt 100 watt bulbs until they just flow. This would be death for a lead acid but each time I do it the battery performance improves slightly.

Edison wrote a manual in 1922 which Says that abusing them for 4 years will boost their performance. After that it starts to degrade them. However a new set is capable of 1000 deep discharges which reduces their capacity by 30%

I am using ChangHong cells. Not easy to manufacture at all. They are one of the most difficult to make.

See my site ...

https://nickel-iron-battery.com

and read the Edison manual.

Ian Soutar

 

[Ian Soutar]

I am using nickel-iron batteries in the house To run my lighting and computers. Let no one tell you otherwise, nickel-iron is great to back up solar homes.

At 200 amp hour and 22 cells gives me a trouble and stress free power system. Occasionally I deep discharge them with incandescent DC 32 volt 100 watt bulbs until they just flow. This would be death for a lead acid but each time I do it the battery performance improves slightly.

Edison wrote a manual in 1922 which Says that abusing them for 4 years will boost their performance. After that it starts to degrade them. However a new set is capable of 1000 deep discharges which reduces their capacity by 30%

I am using ChangHong cells. Not easy to manufacture at all. Nickel iron are one of the most difficult to make. You need tons of pressure to fill the nickel oxide electrodes.

See my site ...

https://nickel-iron-battery.com

and read the Edison manual.

Ian Soutar

 

[4pyros]

This is all vary interesting, I have not read it all but I will.
I found this site if it helps.
It talks about pounding nickel into hot steel plates.
https://www.noonco.com/edison/improvements.htm

 

[4pyros]

How about using the nickel from old NiCad batterys???

 

[jpanhalt]

I think the Noon site has a bit of misinformation. The Soutar site (linked above) has information that is more in line with conventional thought and nomenclature.

Without going line-by-line through the white papers by Noon, consider only this:

Sourece: White Paper #1, Noon
It is an oxide of nickel (Nickel II hydroxide Ni (OH)2 ) that is used as the positive electrode of an Edison cell (not nickel plate as shown in the video). It is an oxide of iron (Fe3 O4) that formed the negative plate of an Edison cell, and not simply a piece of iron as shown.

The more generally accepted description puts nickel(III) as the positive electrode (i.e., NiOOH, nickel oxyhydroxide). Hence, it can accept electrons and be reduced to Ni(II). Similarly, Fe3O4 (a mixed oxide of iron) is not a good electron donor, which is a property required for the negative electrode. Fe3O4 is produced during battery discharge from oxidation of iron at the negative electrode. In brief, the "battery " described by Noon appears to be a discharged battery. It is not surprising he eventually found that Ni(III) worked better as the positive electrode (See: White Paper #2). Note, do not mistake NiOOH for a peroxide. The structure of NiOOH is shown below (Journal of The Electrochemical Society, 153 2 A210-A215 2006):


The overall reaction can be written:

3Fe + 8NiOOH + 4H2O <==> 8Ni(OH)2 + Fe3O4

Wikipedia shows the electrochemical half reactions for those who are interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel-iron_battery

John

 

[KeepItSimpleStupid]

I was pondering on that same idea of electroplating my own nickel cathodes being it is easy to do. I am not that familiar with electroplating as of yet and dont know which metal would make the best substrate material.

Nickel coats very well to copper. In fact, it has to be used so gold can stick. HP did that in their early GOLD PCB process.

Where I worked we evaporated Nickel all the time.

Judging from https://electrontubestore.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=133 it looks like Nickel is going to be expensive.

 

[4pyros]

Nickel coats very well to copper. In fact, it has to be used so gold can stick. HP did that in their early GOLD PCB process.

Where I worked we evaporated Nickel all the time.

Judging from https://electrontubestore.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=133 it looks like Nickel is going to be expensive.

Most just use steel.

 

[tcmtech]

Well it's been about four years since I started this thread so it's safe to say I have sort of of lost interest in the whole concept. I dont have the time or reasons to justify the research anymore.