Category: Battery News

Lithium – Who Uses It – and Lithium Uses

On June 16, 2011 Chemtell announced that there will be a 20% price increase for its lithium salts, including lithium carbonate, lithium hydroxide, lithium chloride, and increases on battery grade lithium metal. This price increase caused a concern for those buyers of lithium in terms of how the price increase will play out with their customers and ultimately their business. But who buys lithium carbonate, lithium hydroxide, lithium chloride, and battery grade lithium metal? To understand the market segment for lithium we need to understand where lithium comes from, where it is used and why it is used.

Lithium was first discovered through a chain of events and a number of scientists. Near the end of the 18th century the mineral petalite was discovered by the Brazilian scientist José Bonifácio de Andrada e Silva. Then in 1817 Johan August Arfvedson, while conducting an analysis of petalite ore, Arfvedson discovered lithium in the minerals spodumene and lepidolite. Then C.G. Gmelin observed in 1818 that lithium salts produce flames that are bright red yet neither Gmelin nor Arfvedson were able to isolate the element itself from lithium salts. A few years later the lithium was isolated by W.T. Brande and Sir Humphrey Davy by the electrolysis of lithium oxide and then in 1855, Bunsen and Mattiessen isolated large quantities of the metal by the electrolysis of lithium chloride.

Lithium does not naturally occur as a free metal, and thankfully so, due to its high reactivity. Thus lithium being a compound of must be extracted and processed before it can be put into use. Lithium is naturally found in the universe, sun, meteorites, crustal rocks, sea water, streams, and humans (a 200 lb man has 0.0027% of lithium in his body). Large lithium deposits are known all around the world and are most notably found in spodumene, lepidolite, petalite, and amblygonite.

Lithium being a metal with the highest specific heat of any solid element is used frequently in heat transfer applications. Lithium is used in various nuclear applications, as a battery anode material (high electrochemical potential) and lithium compounds are used in dry cells and storage batteries. Lithium is also used in the manufacturing of high strength glasses and ceramics, and lithium carbonate is also used as drug to treat manic-depressive disorders. Lithium stearate is mixed with oils to make all-purpose and high-temperature lubricants. Lithium hydroxide is used to absorb carbon dioxide in space vehicles. Lithium is alloyed with aluminum, copper, manganese, and cadmium to make high performance alloys for aircraft. Lithium is used a component for railroad car bearings, and lithium is also used as part of a reagent compound.

In what type of applications is lithium being used today? When we look at the broad spectrum of how and where lithium is used we find that lithium compounds are used in the production, processing and manufacturing of:

  • glass, ceramics, and aluminum (in fact 50% of all lithium is used for this purpose);
  • batteries;
  • pharmaceuticals;
  • air treatment;
  • continuous casting;
  • lubricants and greases;
  • rubber and thermoplastics;
  • rocket propellants;
  • vitamin A synthesis;
  • underwater buoyancy devices;
  • to form strong, light-weight alloys (an alloy is a mixture of metals)
  • as medicine to treat gout (an inflammation of joints) and to treat serious mental illness (bi-polar and manic-depressive disorders );
  • railroad car bearings;
  • and as a reagent compound

This is just a sample of the uses lithium is sought after acquired for and when you factor in the wide variety of uses you will begin to see that many end users of lithium exist. Governments, corporations, scientists, and educational institutes use and require lithium.

Until next time, Dan Hagopian – www.batteryship.com

Cost of Battery Grade Lithium Increases 20%

In an article titled Battery Grade Lithium I highlighted the only US manufacturer of Lithium (Chemtell). It gives a backdrop to a very important metal that we all use in some form or another. Recently on 6-16-2011 Chemtell announced a 20% increase in prices (effective July 1, 2011) for its lithium salts, including lithium carbonate, lithium hydroxide, lithium chloride, and increases on battery grade lithium metal.

Battery grade lithium metal is the material that is used in batteries and over the past 7 years about 2.4 billion batteries have been in use and are utilizing approximately 35 million pounds of battery grade lithium.

Standard battery grade lithium is a lithium carbonate manufactured for solid ion conductors and monocrystals used in the electronics industry. Such carbonate is a source of a raw material for the production of cathode material used in lithium ion batteries (lithium cobalt oxide, lithium manganese oxide). In terms of its chemical composition standard battery grade lithium, or Lithium bis-(oxalato) borate – LiBOB. LiBOB is a conductive agent for the use in high performance lithium (Li) batteries and lithium ion (Li-ion) batteries and lithium polymer (Li-po) batteries.

Battery grade lithium metals are sold to a wide assortment of manufacturers by the kilogram as ingots. A lithium ingot is often times a cylindrical roll of lithium that weighs about 11 pounds on average. Special order ingots of course can be requested thereby changing the average weight. Lithium ingots are made from technical grade lithium carbonate which is a byproduct of lithium and a solution of lithium hydroxide. The conversion of lithium in the lithium hydroxide solution results in lithium carbonate as a fine white powder. This powder is placed into a billet container prior to being processed through the extrusion. The extruded billet may be solid or hollow in form, commonly cylindrical, used as the final length of material charged into the extrusion press cylinder. It is usually a cast product, but may be a wrought product or sintered from powder compact. This billet of lithium carbonate is the ingot.

Battery manufacturers take the typically shaped ingot and stretch it into a thin sheet of metal that is only 1/100th of an inch thick and 650 feet in length. A laminator furthers the process by stretching the 655 foot lithium roll to about 1.25 miles of lithium used to make 210 lithium batteries. The battery cell is then tested to measure 3.6V. Volts (volts are an electrical measure of energy potential – you can think of it as the pressure being exerted by all the electrons of a battery’s negative terminal as they try to move to the positive terminal)

In terms of pricing in 1998 the price of lithium was $43.33 per pound. In April of 2009 the average price per pound was $28.57. In May of 2010 the average price of lithium per pound was $28.24 and currently the average price per pound of lithium is increasing to around $35.86. As noted above a typical ingot weighs in at about 11 pounds (total metal value is about $394.46 per ingot – note this is not the complete costs that manufacturers pay for a single ingot).

Until next time, Dan Hagopian – www.batteryship.com

How Much Demand for Lithium is There?

Lithium is used in a very wide variety of resources including lithium for use in primary and secondary batteries.  This type of lithium is called battery grade metal. Battery grade lithium has been on the increase by about 25% year over year since 2000. With the push for lithium to be used in electric cars the obvious question would be is how much lithium is available worldwide?

In the most recent edition of “The Economics of Lithium” (Roskill Market Reports, 11th Edition, 2009), worldwide lithium reserves are as follows:

  • Current worldwide production is about 22,800 tonnes Lithium. (or 114,000 tonnes carbonate)*
  • Current worldwide demand is about 23,000 tonnes Lithium. (or 122,000 tonnes carbonate)*
  • Current estimates of worldwide Lithium reserves total about 30,000,000 tonnes Lithium (or 150,000,000 tonnes Lithium Carbonate)*

Interesting the world’s supply of lithium is concentrated by producers in very few countries. The largest concentration of lithium is in the America’s (Argentina and Chile). Australia also has a large producer, Talison Minerals, and in the U.S. Chemetall is the only U.S. domestic source of lithium raw material and the largest global producer of lithium and lithium compounds used in batteries, pharmaceuticals and many other industries.

According to the USGS (U.S. Geological Survey, Mineral Commodity Summaries, January 2010):

  • identified lithium resources the United States total 2.5 million tons
  • identified lithium resources for Bolivia total 9 million tons
  • identified lithium resources for Chile total in excess of 7.5 million tons
  • identified lithium resources for Argentina total in excess of 2.5 million tons
  • identified lithium resources for China total in excess of 2.5 million tons

 Until next time, Dan Hagopian – www.batteryship.com
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Battery Grade Lithium

If you drove 211 miles north of Las Vegas off the I-95 you would come to a small town called Goldfield, Nevada. It is a very small town whose population counts at the 2000 census was only 440 people.  What makes Goldfield very important to the US and the world is its close proximity to Silver Peak Nevada (home of 80 full time residents).  Silver Peak is home to Chemetall Foote Corporation's local lithium mine, the area's largest employer and the only lithium producing mine in the United States.

Chemetalls’s net sales from mining operation are just over $1 Billion. Not too shabby! In August of 2009 Chemetall was awarded $28.4 million in the Federal Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds to expand and upgrade the production of lithium materials for advanced transportation batteries.  The funds will be used by Chemetall in part to expand and upgrade the production of lithium carbonate at the company’s Silver Peak, Nevada, site. Again it should be noted that Chemetall is the only U.S. domestic source of lithium raw material and the largest global producer of lithium and lithium compounds used in batteries, pharmaceuticals and many other industries. Chemetall is a very important partner in the U.S., economy due to the fact that over the past 7 years about 2.4 Billion batteries are in use and are utilizing approximately 35 million pounds of battery grade lithium.

So what is standard battery grade lithium? Standard battery grade lithium is a lithium carbonate manufactured for solid ion conductors and monocrystals used in the electronics industry. Such carbonate is a source of a raw material for the production of cathode material used in lithium ion batteries (lithium cobalt oxide, lithium manganese oxide).

In terms of its chemical composition standard battery grade lithium, or Lithium bis-(oxalato)borate – LiBOB. LiBOB is a conductive agent for the use in high performance lithium (Li) batteries and lithium ion (Li-ion) batteries and lithium polymer (Li-po) batteries.

In terms of appearance it is a white and free flowing powder. It’s chemical formula is C4BO8Li. Its molecular weight is 193.79 g/mol. Its density is 0,8 – 1,2 g/ccm (at 20°C). Its thermal stability is decomposition > 290°C; hygroscopic; decomposes slowly on contact with water. Its solubility is 17 % in propylene carbonate (25°C) about 35 wt.-% in water;  (hydrolysis) good solubility in carbonate mixtures, carboxylic esters, glymes, ketones, and lactones.

A chemical analysis reveals that C4BO8Li is 97.4% assay (a procedure for measuring the molecular structure of an organic sample); 0.03% water; 2.5% insolubles; 10 ppm of Cyanoacrylate; 10 ppm of Iron; 20 ppm of Sodium; 20 ppm of Chlorine.

So how important is C4BO8Li and is there enough available resource? Current available lithium reserves is estimated at 28,000,000 tonnes. Current worldwide demand is estimated at 23,000,000 tonnes. So there is enough no and for the foreseeable future as long as mines like the Silver Peak mine in Nevada continues to operate.

Until next time, Dan Hagopian – www.batteryship.com
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Advances in Battery Development

The history of the battery industry can be succinctly boiled down to the following:  we have been seeking to increase capacity, develop longer lifecycles, generate zero emissions, source low-cost raw materials, develop enhanced safety techniques, and of course to design and manage high energy density power packs that reduces the size and weight of all other batteries before.

If you are a electrochemical engineer then the above scenario would be your nirvana.

But what advances are being researched and what can consumers expect in terms of the commercialization? We are familiar with the SCiB and Lithium Air batteries but are there other developments? Let’s look at a few of the recently researched and tested including: NAS and ZEBRA.

NAS

In August 2008, Presidio, Texas began installing a backup power source for the city. The backup source is an $8 million dollar NAS battery located on the outskirts of the city. NAS gets its name from Na for sodium and S for sulphur.  This power supply provides the city 4 mega watts of storage to provide temporary backup power, operational power to run the city for approximately 6-8 hours. A sodium sulfur battery is a type of molten metal constructed from sodium (Na) and sulfur (S). This type of construction has a high energy density, high efficiency of charge/discharge (89–92%) and long cycle life, and is fabricated from inexpensive materials. However, operating temperatures reach in excess of 300 degrees Celsius and the sodium polysulfides are highly corrosive, thus an NAS is only suitable for large-scale non-mobile applications like the one in Presidio.

ZEBRA

The ZEBRA battery gets its name from the Zeolite Battery Research Africa Project (ZEBRA) group that began developing it in 1985. It’s technical name is Na-NiCl2. The ZEBRA battery is also known as the Zero Emission Battery Research Activities. What makes the ZEBRA so attractive is the specific energy and power it can store (90 Wh/kg and 150 W/kg).  The other aspects to the ZEBRA that makes it attractive is that the primary elements used Na, Cl and Al have much higher worldwide reserves and annual production than the Li used in Li-ion batteries. Also the ZEBRA has lifecycles of over 1500 cycles and five years have been demonstrated with full-sized batteries. Vehicles powered by ZEBRA batteries have covered over 1 million miles.

There are other promising technologies being developed for a wide array of power source applications including military, space, energy, and mobility. It will be interesting to see just what the next nirvana battery will be but one thing is for certain: it will have increased capacity, a longer lifecycle, zero emissions, low-cost raw materials, enhanced safety techniques, and a high energy density.

Until next time, Dan Hagopian – www.batteryship.com
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Super Charge Ion Battery

Over the last several years Toshiba has been working on a new battery technology that was called the super-charge ion battery (SCiB). The first battery of its kind was shipped in March of 2008. The SCiB battery is touted as a safe, high-performance, long-life, rechargeable battery for a wide array of solutions. The first time we saw it was at the 2007 Consumer Electronic show where Toshiba was displaying it on an electric bike.

Toshiba announced in November of 2009 that they would be building a second production plant to provide for additional capacity as sales ramp up.  Also earlier this year rumors surfaced that Toshiba is building a new 13 inch netbook that will incorporate the new SCiB battery. The netbook will weigh in at just over 2 pounds.

The key advantages that an SCiB battery has is:

  • Excellent Safety
  • Long Life Cycle
  • Rapidly Rechargeable
  • High Power

Excellent safety

The SCiB battery utilizes a new negative-electrode material called lithium titanate that offers a high level of thermal stability and a high flash point electrolyte. The separator is also highly resistant to heat. These features allow for a resistance to internal short circuiting and thermal runaway. This benefit makes the possibility of bursts or combustion very low.

Long-life cycle 

The SCiB battery has capacity loss after 3,000 cycles of rapid charge and discharge is less than 10%. That right after 3000 cycles (lithium ion batteries today taper out after about 500 cycles). Thus the SCiB battery has an excellent long lifecycle, and is able to repeat the charge-discharge cycle over 3,000 times. This means that the SCiB battery can be continuously used for more than 10 years with a once-a-day recharge-discharge cycle.  A standard lithium ion battery during that same time period will have to be replaced 3-5 times.  Imagine a laptop battery lasting 10 years!

Rapidly Rechargeable

One of the neat features is that the SCiB battery can be recharged to 90% of full capacity in less than ten minutes. 

High Power

The SCiB also has a input-output performance equivalent to that of an electric double layer capacitor. This makes the SCiB battery suited to high power applications like electric automobiles, fork lifts, motorcycles, and wind and solar power generators.

The SCiB battery has some other really neat features like the ability to perform in very low temperature extremes, but what concerns me is the price point for customers and commercially viable a new device with an SCiB battery will be?

If the device is priced beyond what your everyday consumer would be willing to pay then it will take a long time to be adopted by the marketplace. It is true that new technologies will change the way people live life but right now when people are so price conscience it just might take a few years before the new SCiB battery will be accepted universally.

Until next time, Dan Hagopian – www.batteryship.com
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Lithium Air Batteries

Researchers at Argonne National Laboratory are developing a new battery technology that by some estimates would pack 5 to 10 times the amount of energy today’s lithium ion batteries hold. This incredible improvement would be enough energy to allow electric cars to travel up to 400 miles before recharging.  The new battery technology is called lithium air (li-air).

A li-air battery makes electricity by transferring oxygen through a porous carbon electrode where it reacts catalytically with li-ions and electrons to form a solid lithium oxide.  The solid lithium oxide fills the pore spaces inside carbon electrodes as the battery discharges. Then when the battery is recharged, the lithium oxide decomposes again, releasing lithium ions and freeing up pore space in the carbon.  The remaining oxygen is released back into the atmosphere.

The four main challenges to li-air battery technologies are:

  • Safety
  • Cost
  • Battery Life
  • Performance

Safety

In terms of safety the great challenge is a materials one. Li-air batteries currently incorporate metallic electrolytes. When you recharge lithium electrodes they become highly reactive with respect to the metallic electrolyte and if these highly charged electrodes are not managed safely the chain reaction could be highly explosive. This is of particular concern when we consider the realities of roadway driving and the potential for car crashes. How would a li-air battery stand up to severe impact?

Cost

With research costs well into the tens of millions and the expectation by a consensus of researchers that a safely designed li-air battery would not be commercially viable for another 20 years the development costs will be extremely high and will the battery life and performance for consumers warrant the investment costs?

Battery Life

The other aspect to this is how long with the battery lasts. How many charge-discharge cycles will a li-air battery have? We know the current li-ion batteries have a charge –discharge cycle between 300-500 will li-air be comparable? Will it offer more? Are we talking 1 year of life or 5 and what variables would affect this range differential?

Performance

What does 5-10 times the amount of energy stored equate to in terms of real application to a potential user? Can we expect to get up 400 miles is li-air electric car before we have to recharge?

These four challenges to Li-air battery technology are enough of an obstacle to make the possibility of this promising technology to take up to 20 years to come to market. The idea is good and perhaps the theories will pan out someday, however that someday will have to wait for future generations.

Until next time, Dan Hagopian – www.batteryship.com
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Recycling Seal Lead Acid Batteries

Seal Lead Acid batteries have a long history of being one of the most environmentally friendly resources on the free market and are actually “greener” then soft drink cans, beer cans, newspapers, glass bottles, and tires. Indeed lead-acid batteries are an environmental success story of our time. More than 97 percent of all battery lead is recycled. This is almost twice as much as aluminum soft drink and beer cans, newspapers, glass bottles and tires. In fact lead-acid batteries are the most recycled consumer product of our time. How are lead acid batteries recycled and reused in brand new batteries. What is the recycling process of lead acid batteries? Let’s find out.

Lead acid batteries are transported via trucks to recycling centers. Once at recycling centers batteries are broken apart in a hammermill, which is a machine that hammers the battery into pieces. At its most basic level a hammermill is a steel drum that contains a cross-shaped rotor. On the rotors are mounted hammers that pivot when the rotor spins. When the rotor spins the hammers swing and when the battery fed into the drum the batteries broken into pieces.

Once broken the batteries components are separated into 3 categories:

Plastics

Broken pieces of polypropylene plastic are collected, washed, blown dry and sent to a plastic recycler. At the plastic recycler the broken pieces of polypropylene are melted at the plastics correct melting point (or glass transition temperature (Tg), which is the temperature at which a polymer changes from hard and brittle to soft and pliable). Then the molten plastic is passed through a machine called an extruder that shapes the molten plastic into pellets which are then sold back to battery manufacturers to begin the new battery’s manufacturing process.

Lead

The lead acid batteries lead grids, lead oxide and other lead parts are cleaned and then heated to 621.5 degrees Fahrenheit – leads melting point. After the lead reaches its melting point the molten lead is poured into ingot molds. The leads impurities, known as dross, floats to the top and subsequently scraped away and then the ingots sit there thill they are cooled. After cooling the ingots are sold back to manufacturers for use in new lead plate production.

Electrolyte – Sulfuric Acid

Spent battery acid can be neutralized using an industrial grade baking soda compound. After neutralization the acid turns into water, treated, cleaned to meet clean water standards, and then released into the public sewer system. Or another option would be to convert spent battery acid into sodium sulfate, which is used in laundry detergent, glass and textile manufacturing. Considering that a typical battery recycling plant recovers 10,000 tons of lead, about 4000 tons of sulphuric acid, and can produce about 6000 tons of sodium sulphate – there is definitely some merit into this conversion process.

Until next time – Dan Hagopian www.batteryship.com
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Lithium ion Batteries Explode?

"A cellphone exploded in his living room last year, causing up to $100,000 in damages. Ortega and his family had to live in a trailer for a few months while their house in California was fixed" as reported in the Chicago Tribune back in 2006.  Without question the impact that the fire had on this family is devastating but what is alarming about that fire is that through the fire and insurance investigation the cause was found to be due to a cell phone's lithium-ion battery failure and subsequent spontaneous combustion. What? How is that possible?

If you have a PDA, MP3, MP4, Laptop, Cell Phone, Smartphone, DVD player, or other electronic device then more likely then not the battery within your device is a high capacity smart battery pack (the chemical base being lithium ion). What is a high capacity smart battery pack? A high capacity smart battery pack is a complex battery system designed to power high tech consumer electronic products.

What differentiates smart batteries from standard batteries is the specialized hardware that provides calculated on demand current as well as predicted information.

This specialized hardware includes:

  • the connector
  • the fuse
  • the charge and discharge FETs
  • the cell pack
  • the sense resistor (RSENSE)
  • the primary and secondary protection ICs
  • the fuel-gauge IC
  • the thermistor
  • the pc board
  • the EEPROM

Each of these components working in concert allows electrical current to be created, controlled, and transferred to your individual electronic device on demand. Your battery in effect was purposely designed to be an energy dense power pack, which used within its properly designed purpose you can feel comfortable that your battery will not explode.

How can I say that you will “feel comfortable” because statistically your battery will not explode or even become defective! The report about the fire at the Ortega’s family house is one of 339 battery-related overheating incidents tracked by the Consumer Product Safety Commission since 2003. 339 overheating cases sounds like a lot but when compared to the well over 100,000,000 battery related devices that have been bought by consumer since 2003 it represents a very small percentage (.000003) of all battery related devices on the market.

However when smart batteries do explode, bubble, or warp the cause is due to an internal cell short that may cause the battery to overheat and explode, posing a potential hazard to consumers.

To isolate the ultimate cause of the short circuit a study of every aspect of the smart battery development and customer use must be considered including:

  • the specialized each of the hardware components
  • the cell design
  • the manufacturing processes
  • battery operation in extreme conditions
  • intentional battery abuse
  • unintentional abuse through the use of the battery in any device, product, and or in any conceivable manner other than what the battery was specifically designed to be used for and in

So yes it is possible to have high capacity smart battery pack explode and cause unexpected damage but as we have seen it is very unlikely considering the sheer quantity of lithium ion based batteries on the market.

Until next time, Dan Hagopian – www.batteryship.com
Copyright © BatteryEducation.com. All rights reserved.

Battery Types

We know that a battery is a device that converts chemical energy into electrical energy. Batteries have two electrodes, an anode (the negative end) and a cathode (the positive end). Collectively the anode and the cathode are called the electrodes. What is positve and what is the negative terminal? It would be great to simply say that the anode is negative and the cathode is positive, however, that is not always the case. Somtimes the opposite is true depending on battery technology.

In between the battery’s two electrodes runs an electrical current caused primarily from a voltage differential between the anode and cathode. The voltage runs through a chemical called an electrolyte (which can be either liquid or solid).  We also know many attributes about batteries the different types of voltage, capacity, chemical make-up and other technical aspects.

But one fascinating consideration that is fun to look at has nothing really to do with the technical ratings, or how long a battery can power a PDA or other device for, or any other technical feature.  It is perhaps more journalistic in nature, more inquisitive, more to do with interesting little facts then anything else!

So let’s dive into this fact finding article and discover some of the hidden facts about batteries:

When was the first battery made and who made the first battery?

The first inclination that an electrical path-way from an anode to a cathode within a battery or in this first instance “a frog” occurred in 1786, when Count Luigi Galvani (an Italian anatomist, 1737-1798) found that when the muscles of a dead frog were touched by two pieces of different metals, the muscle tissue twitched.

This led to idea by Count Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta (Feb. 18, 1745- March 5, 1827), an Italian physicist who realized that the twitching was caused by an electrical current that was created by chemicals. Volta’s discovery led to the invention of the chemical battery (also called the voltaic pile) in 1800. His first voltaic piles were made from zinc and silver plates (separated by a cloth) put in a salt water bath (brine). Volta improved the pile, using zinc and copper in a weak sulfuric acid bath and thus invented the first generator of continuous electrical current.

How many batteries are there in the world today?

If you take into consideration every conceivable place a battery can be used it is highly probable that the number would be hundreds of billions. That number of batteries would shrink if you start including certain parameters that would further qualify a family or group of batteries. But without question a lot: children toys, gaming machines, digital cameras, hearing aids, watches, computers, cars. When you start thinking in the broadest possible sense there are quite a bit of batteries being used in the world today.

What is the biggest battery in the world?

ABB, the global power and automation technology group, built the world’s largest battery energy storage system in Fairbanks Alaska. The energy storage system includes a massive nickel-cadmium battery, power conversion modules, metering, protection and control devices and service equipment. This battery provides continuous voltage support during normal operation, as well as energy back-up – to quickly provide power during system disturbances. The battery’s purpose is to be used as an electrical bridge during emergency power outages for customers of the Golden Valley Electric Association Inc (GVEA) in Fairbanks, Alaska.  In operation, the battery will produce power for several minutes to cover the time between a system disturbance and when the utility company is able to bring back-up generation on line. The battery is a high performance nickel-cadmium storage battery made up of 13,760 energy cells. Each cell measures 16 in. by 21 in.  This NiCad battery is approximately 21,520 square feet in size and weighs approximately 2,866,009. This big battery provides 40 megawatts of power – enough electricity for 12,000 people – for up to seven minutes.

What is the smallest battery in the world?

The smallest battery in the world measures 2.9 mm in diameter and 13 mm in length (about the size of a pencil tip). The cylindrical device is only 1/35 the size of a standard AA battery. The battery can, with recharging, last up to 10 years. The battery is made of a polysiloxane polymer, a material that has the highest conductivity ever reported for an electrical conductor. Recharging the battery is done wirelessly by an external electrical field, which is of great benefit since these batteries are designed to stimulate damaged nerves and muscles inside the human body.

What types of batteries are there?

  • Alkaline battery
  • Aluminium battery
  • Atomic battery
  • Lemon battery
  • Lithium battery
  • Optoelectric nuclear battery
  • Organic radical battery
  • Oxyride battery
  • Silver-oxide battery
  • Water-activated battery
  • Zinc-carbon battery
  • Lead-acid battery
  • Lithium-ion battery
  • Lithium ion polymer battery
  • Nickel-cadmium battery
  • Nickel metal hydride battery
  • Molten salt battery
  • 9V battery
  • A battery (vacuum tubes)
  • AA battery
  • AAA battery
  • AAAA battery
  • B battery (vacuum tubes)
  • Backup battery
  • C battery (vacuum tubes)
  • C battery
  • D battery
  • Atomic Battery

Until next time, Dan Hagopian www.batteryship.com
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