The battery separator is a component of the conventional battery that for long has been overlooked. Just because it’s the only inactive component, doesn’t mean it’s any less important for the battery cell. Recent trends point to an immense growth of the electrical vehicle-industry, and by so, also the lithium-ion battery separators market. This is because the lithium-ion battery is the most common battery type in commercial electrical vehicles. In one of the major manufacturing processes of the separator, mineral oil is used, to achieve a porous film. This study aims to evaluate different oils interaction with the polymer resin in the manufacturing process. Since most oils used in the battery separator industry today use paraffin rich oils, oils with different naphthenic content is tested to find correlations between the oils properties and the crystallinity or the porosity. No correlations for either the porosity or the crystallinity could be made to the oil’s properties. The images taken with the SEM was not enhanced enough to study the pores themselves or the pore structure of the films. For future studies it is recommended to collect more data to identify outliers so more accurate values are obtained. The methodology needs to be verified to ensure the procedure is reproducible. For the study of the pores and the pore structure, an FE-SEM should be used to achieve greater quality enhancement images on the surface of the films. / Batteri separatorn är en komponent i det konventionella batteriet som länge har förbisetts. Bara för att den är en inaktiv komponent, betyder inte att den är mindre viktig för battericellens prestation. Trender idag pekar mot en enorm tillväxt inom elbils-industrin, och med det även litium-jon batteriseparatorns marknad. Det är för att litium-jon batteriet är det batteriet som vanligen används kommersiellt idag i elbilar. I en av de två stora industriella tillverkningsprocesserna används olja för att åstadkomma en porös film. Denna studie syftar på att utvärdera olika oljors interaktion med polymeren i denna tillverkningsprocess. Eftersom de flesta batteriseparator-industrier idag använder paraffinrik olja så testas oljor med olika mycket naftalensikt innehåll för att hitta korrelationer mellan oljornas egenskaper och kristalliniteten eller porositeten hos filmerna. Inga korrelationer för porositeten eller kristalliniteten kunde göras till oljornas egenskaper. Bilderna tagna med SEM var ej tillräckligt förstorade för att kunna studera vare sig porstorleken eller porstrukturen hos filmerna. För framtida studier rekommenderas att samla in mer data för att kunna utskilja ”outliers” i datan, för att erhålla mer korrekta värden. Metodiken måste även verifieras för att säkerställa att proceduren är reproducerbar. För att studera porerna och porstrukturen, borde en FE-SEM användas för att få mer förstorade bilder med bättre kvalité på filmernas yta.

Modified nanocellulose have distinctive qualities and have drawn a lot of interest from a variety of fields. It is a natural, sustainable product that is manufactured from plant-based materials like wood and other renewable resources. It is also biodegradable. It is a possible material for battery separators because of its great mechanical strength, flexibility, and ability to create a stable and consistent membrane. Due to the cost of using it as a membrane, it has been investigated in this work to see if it can be coated onto a substrate and used as battery separator. In this work sulfonated cellulose nanofibrils (SCNF) has been used to be coated on kraft paper and inkjet paper using a rod coater. Parameters like concentration, thickness and substrates have been varied in this experiment. Viscosity was measured using Brookfield instrument to measure the viscosity for 0,5% SCNF and 1,5% SCNF. The coating was carried out using a rod coater and varying between two rods to influence the thickness, the coating used concentrations of 0,5% SCNF and 1,5% SCNF and two different substrates, kraft paper and inkjet paper. Thickness was determined to study the effect of the variation in rod. The mechanical strength was tested on the coated paper substrates and compared the results to the noncoated substrates as reference, the mechanical strength showed an improvement with the coated SCNF substrates. Permeance through the Gurley method was studied in order to understand how the coated substrates behaves compared to the noncoated. Contact angle was determined as well to understand the wettability of the coated substrates and how they would behave as separators in zinc ion batteries. The contact angle decreased with increasing concentration of the SCNF which is a result of the sulfonate groups. Cross sections were analyzed using SEM to study the influence of the coating to the substrates. Ionic conductivity was also tested to evaluate the possibility of the coated substrates as separators.

This thesis deals with the development and current issues of Li-ion and Li-S accumulators, especially the separators. In the theoretical part is described history of Li-ion batteries, their properties and materials for the positive electrode. Li-S batteries and their problems are also described in this diploma thesis. In the practical part, electrochemical methods were described, and several separator samples with various modifications were created. These samples were then photographed using an SEM electron microscope and evaluated using electrochemical methods.

Le polymère poreux (PM) associe les avantages double des matériaux poreux et des polymères, ayant la structure unique de pore, la porosité supérieure et la densité inférieure, ce qui possède une valeur d’application importante dans les domaines de l'adsorption, le soutien de catalyseur, le séparateur de batterie, la filtration, etc. Actuellement, il existe plusieurs façons de préparer le PM, comme la méthode de gabarit, la méthode de séparation de phase, la méthode d'imagerie respiratoire, etc. Chacune des méthodes ci-dessus existe ses propres avantages, mais la préparation à grande échelle de PM à structure de pore contrôlable et aux fonctions spécifiques est toujours un objectif à long terme sur le domaine et l'un des principaux objectifs de ce mémoire. La co-extrusion de microcouche est une méthode pour produire de façon efficace et successive des polymères avec des structures de couches alternées, ayant les avantages de haute efficacité et faible coût. Par conséquent, sur les exigences structurelles de PM de l’application spécifique, ce mémoire a conçu le PM avec une structure spécifique et une co-extrusion de microcouche de manière créative combinée avec la méthode traditionnelle de préparation de PM (méthode de gabarit, méthode de séparation de phase), en combinant les avantages des deux méthodes, les PM avec une structure de pore idéale peuvent être préparés en grande quantité et l’on peut également explorer son application dans les séparateurs de batteries au lithium-ion et l'adsorption d'hydrocarbures aromatiques polycycliques.Le plus important, dans la deuxième partie de cet essai, se trouve que la simulation micro-numérique est utilisée pour étudier le transport et le dépôt de particules dans des milieux poreux pour explorer le mécanisme des matériaux poreux dans les domaines de l'adsorption et du séparateur de batterie. Le code de 3D-PTPO (un modèle tridimensionnel de suivi des particules combinant Python® et OpenFOAM®) est utilisé pour étudier le transport et le dépôt de particules colloïdales dans des milieux poreux, l’on adopte trois modèles (colonne, venturi et tube conique) pour représenter différentes formes de matériaux poreux. Les particules sont considérées comme des points matériaux pendant le transport, le volume des particules sera reconstitué et déposé comme partie de la surface du matériau poreux pendant le dépôt, la caractéristique principale de ce code est de considérer l'influence du volume des particules déposées sur la structure des pores, les lignes d'écoulement et le processus du dépôt des autres particules. Les simulations numériques sont d'abord conduites dans des capillaires simples, le travail de chercheurs de Lopez et d’autres est réexaminé en établissant un modèle géométrique tridimensionnel plus réaliste et il explore les mécanismes cachés derrière les règles de transmission et de dépôt. Par la suite, des simulations numériques sont effectuées dans des capillaires convergents-divergents pour étudier la structure des pores et l'effet de nombre Peclet sur le dépôt de particules. Enfin, l’on étudie l’effet double de l'hétérogénéité de surface et de l'hydrodynamique sur le comportement de dépôt de particules. / Due to the combination of the advantages of porous media and polymer materials, polymeric porous media possess the properties of controllable porous structure, easily modifiable surface properties, good chemical stability, etc., which make them applicable in a wide range of industrial fields, including adsorption, battery separator, catalyst carrier, filter, energy storage, etc. Although there exist various preparation methods, such as template technique, emulsion method, phase separation method, foaming process, electrospinning, top-down lithographic techniques, breath figure method, etc., the large-scale preparation of polymeric porous media with controllable pore structures and specified functions is still a long-term goal in this field, which is one of the core objectives of this thesis. Therefore, in the first part of the thesis, polymeric porous media are firstly designed based on the specific application requirements. Then the designed polymeric porous media are prepared by the combination of multilayer coextrusion and traditional preparation methods (template technique, phase separation method). This combined preparation method has integrated the advantages of the multilayer coextrusion (continuous process, economic pathway for large-scale fabrication, flexibility of the polymer species, and tunable layer structures) and the template/phase separation method (simple preparation process and tunable pore structure). Afterwards, the applications of the polymeric porous media in polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons adsorption and lithium-ion battery separator have been investigated.More importantly, in the second part of the thesis, numerical simulations of particle transport and deposition in porous media are carried out to explore the mechanisms that form the theoretical basis for the above applications (adsorption, separation, etc.). Transport and deposition of colloidal particles in porous media are of vital important in other applications such as aquifer remediation, fouling of surfaces, and therapeutic drug delivery. Therefore, it is quite worthy to have a thorough understanding of these processes as well as the dominant mechanisms involved. In this part, the microscale simulations of colloidal particle transport and deposition in porous media are achieved by a novel colloidal particle tracking model, called 3D-PTPO (Three-Dimensional Particle Tracking model by Python® and OpenFOAM®) code. The particles are considered as a mass point during transport in the flow and their volume is reconstructed when they are deposited. The main feature of the code is to take into account the modification of the pore structure and thus the flow streamlines due to deposit. Numerical simulations were firstly carried out in a capillary tube considered as an element of an idealized porous medium composed of capillaries of circular cross sections to revisit the work of Lopez and co-authors by considering a more realistic 3D geometry and also to get the most relevant quantities by capturing the physics underlying the process. Then microscale simulation is approached by representing the elementary pore structure as a capillary tube with converging/diverging geometries (tapered pipe and venturi tube) to explore the influence of the pore geometry and the particle Péclet number (Pe) on particle deposition. Finally, the coupled effects of surface chemical heterogeneity and hydrodynamics on particle deposition in porous media were investigated in a three-dimensional capillary with periodically repeating chemically heterogeneous surfaces.

Ce travail s'est concentré sur la compréhension de l'influence de la formulation et plus spécifiquement de la silice précipitée sur la résistivité électrique de séparateurs en polyéthylène destinés à des batteries au plomb. Les séparateurs de batteries en polyéthylène sont composés de silice précipitée, de polyéthylène ultra haute masse molaire (UHMWPE) et d'huile organique. La première partie de ce travail a été d'élaborer à l'échelle du laboratoire, des membranes modèles en polyéthylène. La seconde a été de comprendre l'influence de certains facteurs sur les propriétés structurales et physicochimiques des membranes. Ces facteurs sont principalement la quantité d'huile, la quantité et le grade de silice précipitée, les conditions de température lors de la cristallisation de la membrane et le mode de mise en œuvre utilisé. Les influences des quantités d'huile et de silice sur la cristallisation du polyéthylène sont méticuleusement étudiées, montrant que l'huile aide à augmenter la cristallinité finale de l'UHMWPE et que la silice joue un rôle de réservoir d'huile. Il a également été mis en évidence que la quantité ainsi que le grade de silice influencent la quantité de porosité de la membrane mouillable par l'électrolyte. La présence de silice en surface des pores est responsable de la mouillabilité de la membrane. Un paramètre empirique a donc été proposé dans le but de pouvoir quantifier l'efficacité de l'état de dispersion/distribution de la silice précipitée dans la membrane. Pour terminer, pour une formulation et un même mode de mise en œuvre, il est possible de discriminer l'efficacité des grades de silice précipitée pour l'application séparateur de batterie / This work is devoted to understand the effect of the formulation and more specifically of the precipitated silica on the resistivity of the PE-separators. The PE-separators are designed for the lead-acid batteries. PE-separators are composed of precipitated silica, ultrahigh molecular weight polyethylene (UHMW-PE) and organic oil. The first part of this work was to elaborate PE-separator models at a laboratory scale. Then, the factors impacting the structural and physico-chemicals properties of PE-separators were investigated. These factors are mainly the amounts of oil, precipitated silica, the grade of the precipitated silica, the temperature conditions of crystallization and the device used to elaborate the membrane. The influence of the amounts of oil and precipitated silica on the crystallization of the polyethylene wasthoroughly described showing that the oil helps to increase the final crystallinity of UHMWPE and that the silica plays a role of oil reservoir. Moreover, it was shown that the amount and the grade of precipitated silica have an influence on the wettable part of the porosity of the PE-separators. The coating of the pores by the precipitated silica is responsible of the wettability of the membranes by the electrolyte. Thus, an empirical parameter has been proposed in order to quantify the efficiency of the dispersion and distribution of the precipitated silica in the membrane. The more the membranes are wettable by the electrolyte the more the resistivity of the membranes is decreased. To finish, for a same amount of components and a same method of processing, it is possible to discriminate the efficiency of each grade of precipitated silica for the battery separator application