October 24, 2019

Nickel-Zinc Main Batteries Unsuited to Submarine Use

Lead-acid batteries (LABs) have been used for submarines for over 100 years and it appears they will unquestionably be used for Australia's future Attack-class submarines.

If replacement battery technologies were considered? There is a debate in Australia about the suitability of using 100 year old Nickel-Zinc (NiZn) battery technology for these future submarines rather than using newer technology Lithium-ion Batteries (LIBs).

Anonymous does not think NiZn is suitable for submarines.

There are two issues (A. short lifetime [1], and B. low voltage) in NiZn battery applications for submarines. 

A. The biggest issue is short battery life. Charge/discharge cycles for NiZn is only 200-300 times. 

Snorkeling of a submarine (with LABs) is conducted at least once a day. 

If the annual availability rate of submarine is 60% (ie. 200 mission days per year) then NiZn main batteries would need to be replaced once a year. This is unrealistic on cost grounds. 

NiZn's 200-300 cycles can be compared to:
-  500 cycles for Japanese LIB-NCA technology
-  7,000-15,000 cycles for Japanese LIB-NTO technology,
-  up to 4,000 cycles (10 years of use) for South Korean LIBs technology. and
-  2,000 cycles for LABs but with LAB's disadvantages compared to LIBs including lower LAB voltage (power)/weight as well as shallower and slower charging (higher LAB indiscretion ratio).

B. Also, the voltage (power) of a NiZn battery (1.6V) is lower than LABs (2V) and LIBs (3.6V).

[1]  https://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/nickel_based_batteries see Nickel-zinc (NiZn) subheading

Comment

As NiZn batteries have been around since 1901 one would have thought NiZn would have been adopted well before now if LiZn were a serious contender.

 Anonymous and Pete

2 comments:

  1. MHalblaub10/29/2019 8:19 AM

    Dear Pete,
    the low lifecycle is no longer a problem. I use AA and AAA sized NiZn batteries and they work rather fine compared with NiNH batteries. For many applications 1.6 V are much better than 1.2 V NiMH. Voltage is no issue with series circuits and a custom built layout.

    The big main issue with NiZn is a delicate loading process that takes a rather long time. Even longer than for lead acid batteries.

    The main issue is to reload the batteries on a submarine in a rather short time. The question therefor is not how much energy per weight rather than how much energy per weight within an hour snorkling.

    Regards,
    MHalblaub

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  2. Pete10/29/2019 4:31 PM

    Hi MHalblaub

    Yes there are so many comparative issues between large scale LABs, LIBs and NiZn batteries that take years and many $millions in land-based tests.

    This would have particularly occurred in Japan from 2012 (when looking at the Table at https://gentleseas.blogspot.com/2019/03/aip-libs-difference-on-japanese.html ). In 2012 no Japanese submarine was launched and instead likely the equivalent of US$500 million in submarine LIBs development funding began to be spent.

    Seabased tests then become even more thorough and expensive than landbased tests with hundreds of tonnes LIBs on a Japanese test-"training" submarine or two.

    Regards

    Pete

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