RETURN AND MOISTURE CONTROL OF CATHODE AIR

摘要

An air manager system (10) for a metal-air cell (20) having an air cathode (28) is provided to control air and moisture admitted to the cathode. The air manager system optimizes the use of ambient air and reactant air utilized by a metal-air cell by recirculating (40) the reactant air and admitting (46) only a sufficient amount of oxygen from the ambient air to generate the necessary output for the battery. The present invention also provides a method of recirculating the ambient air while admitting only an amount of ambient air sufficient to replace oxygen that has been used by the cell during operation. The present invention also provides an oxygen supply (42) control circuit which increases or decreases the oxygen available to the metal-air cell based on load demand so as to provide further moisture control. The oxygen control circuit also adjusts the air inlet valve (47) to an optimum setting based upon the particular mode of operation of the load. The invention further provides a cathode plenum (39) having an inlet (42) and outlet (47) and a plurality of baffles (68) defining a nonlinear path, essentially covering the entire surface area of the cathode (28), for the air to flow from the inlet to the outlet in a turbulent manner.