From the Rolls-Royce experimental archive: a quarter of a million communications from Rolls-Royce, 1906 to 1960's. Documents from the Sir Henry Royce Memorial Foundation (SHRMF).
Extract of a letter discussing the experimental state and numerous issues with nickel-iron batteries.
| Identifier | WestWitteringFiles\J\December1922\ Scan68 | |
| Date | 4th December 1922 | |
| R.R. 199 (250T) (SD676 19-7-17) MP180865 Extract from M/C412. from Mr. G.R.N.Minchin ( Messrs. Peto & Radford) 4.12.22. With regard to the nickel iron business, about which you wrote me, we have got a little further. We do not intend to drop it because we feel that there may be a future for these cells and if so we want to be in it. WE are not going to take over the firm that we have been in touch with definitely at this moment, but we are going to work with them and help them to perfect the article and if we do so we shall probably then take them over. The whole thing is really a matter of rather deep chemistry. Our feeling is that at the present moment all these batteries are in the experimental stage and there is a lot to be done before they are really made worth 2 or 3 times the price of a good lead battery. Whether they last 2 or 3 times as long as is claimed, is to us very much in the air. Then again there is a lot of detail work to be got through. The solution evaporates very quickly and one is always having to top up the cells, which the ordinary car user would not do. This no doubt can be obviated by designing for greatly increased volume of electrolyte at the tops of the plates and trying to get a decent vent, which will prevent the solution bubbling out and being lost. We think we see how to make a good vent, but at the present moment the vents of nickel iron batteries as far as motor cars are concerned are absolutely hopeless. It is not such an easy problem as on the lead batteries because the vent must have a valve in the nature of a non-returnable valve because it must shut up when not working, otherwise the air oxidises the solution and a loss of capacity results. With this leakage and spilling one gets a certain amount of corrosion and the steel cases get in a beastly mess. They are apt to rust and the material used is too thin as it chafes, and generally the mounting of the cells and the boxes and the insulation of the cells one to another require to be greatly improved over existing methods. All these batteries have been made by more or less amateur methods by people who do not know what is needed in the actual working conditions. Contd. | ||