MULTIPLE CELL COMMON PRESSURE-VESSEL NICKEL HYDROGEN BATTERY

Johnson Controls Battery Group, Inc. has developed a multiple cell common pressure vessel (CPV) nickel-hydrogen battery that offers significant weight, volume, cost and interfacing advantages over the conventional individual pressure vessel (IPV) nickel-hydrogen configuration that is currently used for aerospace applications. The baseline CPV design was successfully demonstrated through the testing of a 26-cell prototype, which completed over 7000 44% depth-of-discharge LEO cycles at COMSAT Laboratories. Two-cell boilerplate batteries have now exceeded 12 500 LEO cycles in ongoing laboratory tests. CPV batteries using both nominal 12.7 and 25.4 cm diameter vessels are currently available. The flexibility of the design allows these diameters to provide a broad capability for a variety of space applications.