Battery Power Tips

  • Home
  • Aerospace & Defense
  • Automotive
  • Renewables & Grid Connected
  • Robotics
  • Stationary Power
  • FAQs

What is cell potential?

By Jody Muelaner | October 4, 2021

In simple terms, cell potential is the voltage of a single electrochemical cell. A battery may package a number of cells in series in order to increase the voltage of the battery. Cell potential is inherent in a particular chemical reaction, so a fully charged lead-acid battery will always have cell potentials of approximately 2.1 V, regardless of the size of the battery. Similarly, lithium-ion batteries have nominal cell potentials of between 3.2 and 3.85 V depending on the cathode material. The actual electric potential of a cell depends on temperature, concentration, and pressure.

cell potentialA battery converts chemically stored energy into electrical energy by redox reactions. This involves two half-reactions, with oxidation taking place at the anode and reduction occurring at the cathode. A half-cell is one of the electrodes and the electrolyte immediately surrounding it, which forms an electrical double layer (EDL) made up of pairs of positively charged cations and negatively charged anions.

For a real electrochemical cell, the electric potential across the terminals can be directly measured in volts. The potential for each half-cell cannot be measured within a complete electrochemical cell. When calculating the theoretical potential of a battery, perhaps during design, it is necessary to consider the reactions for each half-cell. It is also possible to measure half cell potentials by pairing a half-cell with the standard hydrogen electrode which serves as a reference electrode.

The current flowing through an electrochemical cell is related to the Gibbs free energy change for the cell reaction. This is a product of the number of electrons transferred per unit of the overall reaction, the cell potential in volts, and the Faraday constant (96 485 C/mol). The theoretical cell potential depends on the composition of the reaction mixture and can be calculated using the Nernst equation.

You may also like:

  • dry cell vs wet cell
    Dry cell vs wet cell batteries
  • What is an electrode
    What is an electrode?
  • electrolyte
    What is an electrolyte?
  • cathode
    What is an anode?
  • cathode
    What is a cathode?

  • Introduction to batteries and their types

Tell Us What You Think! Cancel reply

Stay Up To Date

Battery techEnews Sign Up

CURRENT DIGITAL ISSUE

How to turn off a smart meter the hard way Potential cyber attacks have a lot of people worried thanks to the recent conflict in Ukraine. So it might be appropriate to review what happened when cybersecurity fi rm FireEye’s Mandiant team demonstrated how to infiltrate the network of a North American utility. During this…

EE Learning Center

“ee

“ee

RSS Current EDABoard.com discussions

  • Dynamic power consumption.
  • Limits of duty cycle for ICM7555 IC?
  • pmos folded cascode vs nmos folded cascode for LDO
  • Pic 16f877A Hex file
  • Need help to choose accelerometer
Battery Power Tips
  • EE World Online
  • Design World
  • Medical Design & Outsourcing
  • Solar Power World
  • The Robot Report
  • Contact
  • Sign Up Enews

Copyright © 2022 WTWH Media LLC. All Rights Reserved. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of WTWH Media
Privacy Policy | Advertising | About Us

Search Battery Power Tips

  • Home
  • Aerospace & Defense
  • Automotive
  • Renewables & Grid Connected
  • Robotics
  • Stationary Power
  • FAQs