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Simple Chemical Trick To Boost Battery Efficiency
space_mongoose writes "Hitachi thinks that a simple chemical additive could significantly improve battery life. Alkaline batteries have a positive electrode of manganese oxide and a negative electrode of finely powdered zinc, but zinc oxide forms around these grains of zinc. Hitachi's solution is to replace the zinc with a fine powder of zinc-aluminum alloy, displacing the zinc within the zinc oxide layer making it a much better conductor."
These changes to batteries are really just tweaks. Batteries are still very expensive, and thermodynamically inefficient. Also, they aren't even talking about lithium batteries, which would not benefit from this tweak. I'm still waiting for that breakthrough which will allow me to run my laptop for days (instead of hours) on a battery.
Another advance I'd like to see in Battery Technology, that is for rechargeable batteries to be the same voltage as their alkaline counterparts.
There are many applications where 1.2V just doesn't substitute well for 1.5V.
j'ai découvert une démonstration vraiment admirable (de ce théorème général) que cette si
TFA talks about a zing aluminum alloy with the aluminum acting as a sacrificial electrode to prevent an oxide layer from forming on the zinc but aluminum forms a very hard oxide layer too so how exactly does it solve anything if it's an alloy? it will just form the oxide layer anyway and impede current flow. now if it were a seperate electrode you would have a problem where the current mainly originates from the aluminum electrode not the zinc so in that case why have the zinc there? for that matter why are we still using these alkaline battery formulas? they end up with this problem when an acidic formula probably wouldnt from the oxide layer in the first place.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
And battery companies don't do it because they want your batteries to run out faster, so you'll buy more...
Do you have *any* evidence for this?
I'd say the opposite is true. Battery companies *do* come out with new, higher performance models, and they provide good data about how well they perform. For example, Energizer has their e2 line of batteries, which have a longer life under some discharge conditions -- and those conditions are thoroughly documented in the data sheet.
See also continued improvements in lithium ion rechargeable technology -- in the past few years both power and energy densities have improved dramatically.
I suggest you do some research into the current state of the art before claiming the battery companies just sit on technology so you'll buy more batteries.
...out of control inflation in the USA... While I agree with most of what you say, I have no idea what makes you think inflation is out of control right now in the US. The average for the last 8 months is a 2.36% yearly rate. The EU has averaged 0.5% better over the same period. Most analysts seem to think that is pretty reasonable.I can still buy a loaf of bread ... for $1
Where are you at? In Houston, the bread I get is $1.19, up from $1.09 a year ago, and it used to be $0.99 when I was in college.
Here's a hint for you: if you have to buy a crappier product to maintain the same price (I can get $0.99 bread still, but it's 3/4 a loaf and tastes like chewing on a sponge), it's still inflation.
I agree, but the New and Improved batteries might still be much cheaper and less hazardous.