A Technique for Calculating Shunt Leakage and Cell Currents in Bipolar Stacks Having Divided or Undivided Cells

The present investigation has the objective to develop a compact procedure for calculating current distributions in cell assemblies with parallel electrolyte feed. Ionic shunt or bypass currents short-circuit each cell in the assembly causing power loss, corrosion, current inefficiency, and nonuniform cell-to-cell current distribution. The magnitude of the bypass current in an assembly is a function of the number of cells in the assembly, cell voltage, conductivity of the electrolyte, and the geometry of the electrolyte feed system. The reported study presents a treatment of bypass current based on the solution of finite difference equations. The formalism is applied to assemblies of divided and undivided cells. The analysis yields a set of compact equations for determining branch currents in the circuit analog.