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."

Comments

At least this is not

[zappepcs]

another battery from Sony

Re:At least this is not

[evwah]

as a sony employee, I think someone should mod you -1 humornotappreciated

jk:P

Re:At least this is not

[Anonymous Coward]

As a typical member of /. I think someone should mod you -1 employernotappreciated

Incremental Changes

[anonymous_but_brave]

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.

Re:Incremental Changes

[markov_chain]

I've given up on waiting. I'm thinking of building either a big NiMH pack out of D cells (10Ah at least), or just get a big sealed lead-acid. The former is light but expensive, the latter is heavy but dirt cheap. Run times close to a day!

Costs?

[bigberk]

I didn't see any mention of cost in the article. For instance looking at market aluminum prices, I am astounded to see that the price of the raw metal is increasing something like +23% per year. I don't know if relatively speaking the aluminum/zinc oxide is more costly than just zinc, but I think a greater point is... if the raw material costs are increasing at such a rapid pace (over 20% per year!) then just how "cost effective" will these batteries be in the long term?

P.S. the skyrocketing metal costs, including important ones like copper and silver, are part of an ongoing commodity boom and response to out of control inflation in the USA and depreciating US dollar. The rapidly increasing costs of these metals will be reflected in goods we buy, like batteries.

Re:Costs?

[SnowZero]

...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.

Re:Costs?

[antifoidulus]

Well, thats the official rate, which is only as good as the methodology that is used to measure it, which I think is flawed. They measure a "basket" of goods and services plus take surveys on rent. However, this is only meaningful if how you spend your money is representative of the way they measure inflation. For example, in certain catagories of goods we are seeing either 0 inflation or deflation because of the huge influx of goods from China(on things such as plasma tvs) but meanwhile healthcare, energy, housing, education, and even food prices(which are the basics of life) are spiraling out of control. So unless you buy a lot of luxury goods, your personal rate of inflation is probably markedly higher than the one the Fed considers. And in the EU it's even stranger because they try to harmonize prices from different countries meanwhile the inflation picture can be markedly different, esp. on things that aren't tradable across borders such as housing. In addition you have countries like Germany that raised its sales tax 3% this year, and that pretty much automatically creates inflation....

Just my 2 cents.

Re:Costs?

[timmarhy]

housing is out of control here in australia, yet it hasn't been reflected in our offical inflation rates. real world, rent has gone up $200 a week in the space of 2 years in most areas. i don't see many people getting $200 a week more in their pockets. if the US method is anything like ours (which i think it is) the offical inflation rate is nothing better then a guess.

Re:Costs?

[mpsheppa]

I'm not too sure on the details of the US economy and inflation in the US might well be related to a depreciating US dollar and a depreciating US dollar would have some effect on metal prices. However these effects are very minor compared to metal price rises which are actually a result of increasing demand, mostly notably from a booming Chinese economy, outstripping supply.

On your question of costs, according to lme.co.uk, Aluminium is currently $2,185 per tonne and Zinc is $3,850 per tonne, so I wouldn't be worried about the raw metal cost since Aluminium is cheaper. Anyway, neither of these costs is likely to be at all significant when making a battery.

In the last 2 years the Zinc price has gone up about 300%. By comparison, Aluminium has only gone up abut 60% in the same time period. The price of Aluminium is probably less affected because its cost comes more from the highly energy-intensive manufacturing process rather than the discovery and mining costs which would more heavily affect Zinc.

Re:Costs?

[TimSSG]

The price of energy is rising faster than inflation. Tim S From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminum#Aluminium_me tal_production_and_refinement Aluminium electrolysis with the Hall-Héroult process consumes a lot of energy, but alternative processes were always found to be less viable economically and/or ecologically. The world-wide average specific energy consumption is approximately 15±0.5 kilowatt-hours per kilogram of aluminium produced from alumina. (52 to 56 MJ/kg). The most modern smelters reach approximately 12.8 kWh/kg (46.1 MJ/kg). Reduction line current for older technologies are typically 100 to 200 kA. State-of-the-art smelters operate with about 350 kA. Trials have been reported with 500 kA cells.

Peak current, yes - Extra life, not so much

[mpoulton]

TFA is no longer than the summary, but based on the concept it appears that this would improve only the peak current capability but not the total capacity (mAh). In fact, if anything, the addition of aluminum which does not participate in the electrolytic reaction would decrease the capacity. Not sure this is a very useful development.

Voltage.

[lindseyp]

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.

Re:Voltage.

[inviolet]

My baby monitor uses AAs, and I *can* put nicads or nimhs in, but they go dead just from self-discharge as fast as they do from use, so I stick to cheap Kirkland alkalines.

The new Sanyo Eneloop NiMH batteries don't have that problem.

I recently $wapped out my vast collection of piss-poor Energizer (2500 mAH) AAs for Eneloop (2000 mAH) AAs, and there's no going back!

Re:Voltage.

[norton_I]

Any device which will not run on 1.2 V is poorly designed. Alkaline batteries drop in voltage nearly linearly over their lifetime from 1.5 V to about 1.0 V. Devices can and should run over this full range of voltages. NiMH batteries, by comparison, stay roughly 1.2 V for most of their charge cycle. There is simply no excuse for designing something that does not work for half the life of an Alkaline battery.

Re:Voltage.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Battery voltage is determined by its chemistry.. So unfortunately not possible!

Re:Voltage.

[Anonymous Coward]

I suppose you know a lot about electronics design to be making such a judgment. Yep, I worked for 4.5 years in an electrical engineering firm, designing the electronics for hand-held consumer products, with a particular focus on the supply side.

In particular, consumer products that can't deal with 1.2v cells simply have a supply-side electronic design that is 30+ years old. A lot of old designs get reused over and over again, as their patents have expired and the designers find it easy to replay the same theme over and over again.

Although it generally costs no money to design and build something that works properly using 0.9 to 1.8 v cells, some manufacturers like to milk old designs well beyond their useful life, because any engineering or manufacturing change costs at least some money.

Re:Voltage.

[ectal]

The Eneloops are great.

They live in my Wii remotes and really do hold a charge waay better than normal nimhs. And as a bonus the white and blue design of the batteries makes them look like they were made for the Wii. (Seems like a missed co-branding opportunity.)

Re:Voltage.

[Rolgar]

I was researching this earlier this week. The Hybrio also looks good. I'd like to try the Eneloops with the C and D size adapters, so I can recharge those as well.

As I was reading reviews, I found that several reviewers recommended getting a nice charger. The recommended one to get is the Maha Powerex MH-C401FS. Each of the slots charges independently so you can charge any number instead of 2 or 4 at a time only, supports AA and AAA, or NiMH, it can charge in fast mode (100 minutes) or slow (5-8 hours), gives the best charge, and seems to be the gentlest on the batteries while giving the best charge, which makes it a great investment for battery purchases. It costs $40, but it looks like a great investment if it will save me that much money on disposable batteries the first year I own it.

why

[wizardforce]

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.

Re:why

[richard.cs]

It will just form the oxide layer anyway and impede current flow.

Aluminium oxide dissolves in sufficiently strong alkali (it's the method used to prepare aluminium parts for anodizing). I don't know if the electrolyte in the battery is sufficient to do this but that might be the explaination.

Re:Cost-efficiency?

[evanbd]

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.

May I be the first to say

[CrazyJim1]

I'm glad we live in a world with zinc.

Re:Energizer super ultra-platinum pro?

[huckamania]

Any fire alarms you have should not be using rechargeables. It will usually say so on any new alarms you buy.

Re:Peak current, yes - Extra life, not so much-THI

[zippthorne]

Would that be their current current requirements?

Re:Peak current, yes - Extra life, not so much-THI

[fyngyrz]

Would that be their current current requirements?

Currently, yes. They're all amped up, you'll be unable to resist them when they come out. Shocking charges, I know, but few have the capacity to induce or impede such a flow of power, watt?

Re:One small step for Hitachi another big marketin

[SomeoneGotMyNick]

However the leap in added power will still be less than Lithium batteries

I agree, but the New and Improved batteries might still be much cheaper and less hazardous.

Powertop

[repvik]

Useful link for saving power on Intel hardware: http://www.linuxpowertop.org/index.php

Re:Peak current, yes - Extra life, not so much-THI

[smellsofbikes]

Wire you so revolting? You could've composed a joule-like response, but you'd rather choke us with terrible puns. Go hohm.