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Iron Ferrite Batteries

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the kill-the-damn-rabbit dept.

Rustin writes "New Iron Ferrite battery may change batteries forever." I just pray that this doesn't mean a resurgence in energizer rabbit commercials.

3 of 45 comments (clear)

  1. ferrate by noy · · Score: 3

    any idea what bulk manufacturing costs of this stuff are? if it needs to be so pure, will these batteries end up being megabucks? what about comparisons to lithium ion... i wonder... either way, sounds cool, all of our gadgetry could use more juice...

  2. Lies, Dammed Lies, and Statistics by Solemn+Bob · · Score: 3

    "Licht said about 60 trillion primary batteries are used each year. Both dry and alkaline batteries use manganese dioxide and zinc."


    Huh. That's 30 new batteries, every day, for every man, woman, and child on the planet. I can't quite figure out what he's talking about, unless he's counting individual green plants as "primary batteries", since, after all, they do store up solar energy ...

  3. Iron Batteries are neither new nor little-used by Multics · · Score: 3

    Nickel-Iron batteries have been around a very long time. They are still available and offer considerable benefit for some kinds of uses. They have VERY long deep-cycle lives (40+ years is typical for daily use) and thus are great for un-interruptable power use. If you are in the USA, you've almost certainly talked on a public phone exchange held up with Ni-Fe cells. They also can be run totally dry and still be recovered far better than any other kind of wet cell.

    The down side of such cells is low energy density vs weight, so the volume of the cells is large compared to things like wet NiCads. These also have a higher than NiCad self-discharge rate and consume more water than Lead-Acid or NiCad cells.

    Ni-Fe technology uses a highly alkaline electrolite.

    So perhaps they've invented a new way to deal with Fe cells, but iron has been in the battery domain a very very long time.

    Need more on Ni-Fe batteries? Ask your favorite search engine.