The Zebra (Na-NiCl 2 ) batteries are regarded as a promising option for large-scale electrical energy storage due to their plentiful electrode material resources, high energy density, and safety features. In the cathode of Zebra battery, the nickel powders serve as both an active material and a conductive agent. In practice, its amount is significantly greater than its theoretical usage, often exceeding three times the theoretical amount. Hence, the presence of ultra-excessive nickel results in high material costs, posing obstacles to the wider implementation of Zebra batteries. To address this problem, we introduce hollow nickel source as active material to improve the nickel utilization in Zebra battery. In this work, we assemble Zebra batteries using nickel hollow spheres (NHS) with sizes of ∼200 nm, ∼500 nm, ∼1 μm and ∼ 5 μm as nickel source. The battery using NHSs with a size of 1 μm exhibits the best cycling performance and the lowest polarization voltage. By reducing the Ni(NHS, ∼1 μm)/NaCl mass ratio to 1.0, 60% theoretical capacity can be achieved after 170 cycles at 260 °C, which surpasses the traditional batteries using solid nickel source at the same Ni/NaCl ratio. This performance is comparable to that of traditional solid nickel sources with a mass ratio of 1.5 to NaCl. Therefore, using NHS as the nickel source in Zebra batteries reduces nickel usage by 33% without compromising performance.
Yimin Zhang,Yun Zu,Dedong He,Jun Liang,Linhua Zhu,Yi Mei,Yongming Luo
Strong metal support interaction between Ni and γ-Al 2 O 3 , resulted from the excessive hydroxyl groups on the Al 2 O 3 support, has restricted Ni utilization in the traditional Ni/Al 2 O 3 catalyst, which hampered its commercial application. Meanwhile, the concept of surface defects in activating single-carbon chemicals of CH 4 and CO 2 has attracted much attention in heterogeneous catalysis. Thus, designing better Ni/Al 2 O 3 system in generating surface defects without losing active Ni into Al 2 O 3 support remains challenging. Herein, the development of tailored defect sites on Al 2 O 3 through hydroxyl-exposed strategy shows dual role of stabilizing the active Ni sites and holding responsible for catalyzing CH 4 dry reforming (DRM) reaction via a more efficient route, which emphasizes the superior behavior of the traditional Ni/Al 2 O 3 catalyst. It is considered that it can be appropriately used for reactions using not only excellent DRM catalysts but also other Ni catalysts.
危险品化学品经营许可证（带存储）