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

[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.

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.

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: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?