US EPA

1758559 

Journal Article 

Solubility of nickel chloride in molten sodium chloro aluminate 

Babu, SR; Gnanasekaran, T; Ranganathan, R; Periaswami, G 

2000 

Yes 

Bulletin of Electrochemistry
ISSN: 0256-1654 

16 

1 

10-13 

WOS:000086928200003 

Sodium metal chloride batteries operating in the
temperature range of 523 K are being investigated extensively as high energy secondary storage
systems, They use of sodium anode and transition metal chloride in liquid sodium chloroaluminate
as cathode and beta alumina as solid electrolyte. While a lot of research effort had gone into
investigating sodium beta alumina anode in course of development of sodium sulphur batteries, the
relatively new metal chloride cathode in sodium chloroaluminate have not been extensively
investigated. In this work the solubility of nickel chloride in basic sodium chloroaluminate over
a temperature range of 448 to 523 K was measured to ascertain the chemical reversibility of
nickel chloride cathode material. Electrochemical investigations on nickel electrode was also
carried out to establish the electrochemical reversibility of nickel chloride cathode, Half cell
of configuration Ni/NaAlCl4/Al was assembled and both high speed voltammetric and high resolution
chronopotentiometric investigations were carried out in the temperature range of 448 to 523 K,
Well defined symmetric cyclic voltammograms were obtained in the scan rate of 10 mVs(-1) to 10
Vs(-1). The voltammetric and chloropotentiometric investigations establish that the redox
behaviour is governed only by diffusion in the time frame of the experiment. Solubility of nickel
chloride in basic sodium chloroaluminate melt was measured from voltammetric and
chronopotentiometric investigations on a tungsten inert electrode using a cell of configuration
W/NaAlCl4, NiCl2/Al. The mass transfer parameters derived from the cell Ni/NiAlCl4/Al were used
for this measurement. 

molten salts; Na-metal chloride battery; beta.Al2O3