expanders

Hammond Group, Inc. (HGI), owner of Hammond Expanders and Hammond Oxides, has announced a new family of next generation battery additives and expanders formulated specifically for advanced lead-acid batteries.

“Lead-acid chemistry is facing new challenges from the evolving energy demands of automotive and industrial batteries. Hammond’s goal is to bring value-generating solutions”, said Ed Klavin, President and COO of Hammond Oxides.

One of the first product introductions is a new, proprietary expander formulated to meet the specific demands of idle stop-start and micro-hybrid applications.

The traditional expander blends using carbon black, lignosulfonate and barium sulphate, have not been fully sufficient to meet the demands of dynamic charge acceptance. The new expander blend uses a significantly higher amount of advanced carbons in the mix to achieve desired performance characteristics.

Achim Lulsdorf, Vice President of Product Development at Hammond Group, said: “It could not just be any carbon, we established that a highly structured conductive carbon with certain surface properties works best. It helps to form a conductive matrix in the dense sulphate layers to break it up and allow the current to pass.”

HGI will use the Asian Battery Conference in Singapore to announce the fourth quarter 2013 start-up of a new, tetrabasic lead sulphate (TTBLS) plant in Selangor, Malaysia where Hammond now produces expanders and specialty oxides. Sold under the trade name SureCure, small additions of Hammond’s TTBLS can significantly improve battery capacity and cycle life with improved plate consistency; equal performance at lower cost may be realised as less positive active material is required.

“We are installing TTBLS production in Malaysia to serve growing demand in the Asian market. Hammond will offer our customers new additive solutions to improve battery performance and reduce material cost”, said Sudhir Patel, CEO and President of Hammond Group, Inc.