Controlling hydrogen evolution on iron electrodes

Aiming to develop a cost effective means to store large amounts of electric energy, NiFe batteries were produced and tested under galvanostatic conditions at room temperature. Multiple regression analysis was conducted to develop predictive equations that establish a link between hydrogen evolution and electrode manufacturing conditions, over a wide range of electrode/electrolyte systems. Basically, the intent was to investigate the incidence of lithium hydroxide and potassium sulphide as electrolyte additives on cell performance. With this in mind, in-house built Fe/FeS based electrodes were cycled against commercially available nickel electrodes on a three electrode cell configuration. A 3 × 4 full factorial experimental design was proposed to investigate the combined effect of the aforementioned electrolyte additives on cell performance. As a consequence, data from 144 cells were finally used in conducting the analysis and finding the form of the predictive equations. Our findings suggest that at the level of confidence alpha = 0.05, the presence of relatively large amounts of the soluble bisulphide would enhance the performance of the battery by reducing electrolyte decomposition.