Discount-Battery Blog

Over 75 million Nickel Cadmium (NiCd) batteries were sold in the US during the year 2000. Market predictions indicate that the demand of NiCd batteries will rise six percent per year until 2003. The demand for other chemistries such as Nickel Metal Hydride (NiMH) and Lithium Ion (Li ion) is increasing at a more rapid pace. Where will the mountains of batteries go when spent? The answer is recycling.

The lead acid battery has led the way in recycling. The automotive industry should be given credit in organizing ways to dispose of old car batteries. In the USA, 98 percent of all lead acid batteries are recycled. Compared to aluminum cans (65 percent), newspaper (59 percent) and glass bottles (37 percent), lead acid batteries are reclaimed very efficiently, due in part to legislation.

Only one in six households in North America recycle small rechargeable batteries. Homeowners have the lowest return ratios, but this should improve once more recycling repositories become available and better environmental awareness is emphasized.

The NiCd battery is one of the more hazardous batteries in terms of disposal. If used in landfills, the cadmium will eventually dissolve itself and the toxic substance will seep into the water supply, causing serious health problems. Our oceans are already beginning to show traces of cadmium (along with aspirin, penicillin and antidepressants) but the source of the contamination is unknown. Under no circumstances can batteries be incinerated as this can cause them to explode.

Although NiMH batteries are considered environmentally friendly, this chemistry is also being recycled. The main derivative is nickel, which is considered semi-toxic. NiMH also contains an electrolyte that, in large amounts, is hazardous to the environment.
If no disposal service is available in an area, individual NiMH batteries can be discarded with other household wastes. If ten or more batteries are accumulated, the user should consider disposing the batteries in a secure waste landfill.

Lithium (metal) batteries contain no toxic metals, however, there is the possibility of fire if metallic lithium is exposed to moisture while the cells are corroding. Most lithium batteries are non-rechargeable and are used by defense organizations. Cameras and other commercial products also use primary lithium batteries. For proper disposal, these batteries must be fully discharged in order to consume all metallic lithium content. Li ion batteries (rechargeable), on the other hand, do not contain metallic lithium and the disposal problem does not exist. Most lithium systems contain toxic and flammable electrolyte, however.
In 1994, the Rechargeable Battery Recycling Corporation (RBRC) was founded to promote the recycling of rechargeable batteries in North America. RBRC is a non-profit organization that collects batteries from consumers and businesses and sends them to Inmetco and Toxco for recycling. Inmetco specializes in recycling NiCd, but also accepts NiMH and lead-based batteries. Toxco, focuses on lithium metal and Li ion system. Currently only intended to recycle NiCd batteries, RBRC will expand the program to include also NiMH, Li ion and SLA batteries.
Programs to recycle spent batteries have been in place in Europe and Asia for many years. Sony and Sumitomo Metal in Japan have developed a technology to recycle cobalt and other precious metals from Li ion batteries. The rest of Asia is progressing at a slower rate. Some movements in recycling spent batteries are starting in Taiwan and China, but no significant infrastructure exists.
Battery recycling plants require batteries to be sorted according to chemistries. Some sorting is done prior to the battery arriving at the recycling plants. NiCd, NiMH, Li ion and lead acid are often placed in designated boxes at the collection point. Sorting batteries must be done manually, an operation that adds to the cost of recycling.
If a steady stream of sorted batteries were available at no charge, recycling would be feasible with little cost to the user. The logistics of collection, transportation and labor to sort the batteries make recycling expensive.
The recycling process starts by removing the combustible material, such as plastics and insulation using a gas fired thermal oxidizer. Gases from the thermal oxidizer are sent to the plant’s scrubber where they are neutralized to remove pollutants. The process leaves the clean, naked cells, which contain valuable metal content.
The cells are then chopped into small pieces, which are heated until the metal liquefies. Non-metallic substances are burned off; leaving a black slag on top that is removed with a slag arm. The different alloys settle according to their weights and are skimmed off like cream from raw milk.
Cadmium is relatively light and vaporizes easily at high temperatures. In a process that appears like a pan boiling over, a fan blows the cadmium vapor into a large tube, which is cooled with water mist. This causes the vapors to condense. A 99.95 percent purity level of cadmium can be achieved using this method.
Some recyclers do not separate the metals on site but pour the liquid metals directly into what the industry refers to as ‘pigs’ (65 pounds) or ‘hogs’ (2000 pounds). The pigs and hogs are then shipped to metal recovery plants. Here, the material is used to produce nickel, chromium and iron re-melt alloy for the manufacturing of stainless steel and other high end products.
Current battery recycling methods requires a high amount of energy. It takes six to ten times the amount of energy to reclaim metals from recycled batteries than it would through other means. A new process is being explored, which may be more energy and cost effective. One method is dissolving the batteries with a reagent solution. The spent reagent is recycled without forming any atmospheric, liquid or solid wastes.
Who pays for the recycling of batteries in bulk? Participating countries impose their own rules in making recycling feasible. In North America, some recycling plants bill on weight. The rates vary according to chemistry. Systems that yield high metal retrieval rates are priced lower than those that produce less valuable metals.
The highest recycling fees apply to NiCd and Li ion batteries because the demand for cadmium is low and Li ion batteries contain little retrievable metal. The recycling cost of alkaline is 33 percent lower than that of NiCd and Li ion because the alkaline cell contains iron. The NiMH battery yields the best return. Recycling NiMH produces enough nickel to pay for the process.
Not all countries base the cost of recycling on the battery chemistry; some put it on tonnage alone. The average cost of recycling batteries is $1,000 to $2,000US per ton. Europe hopes to achieve a cost per ton of $300US. Ideally, this would include transportation, however, moving the goods is expected to double the overall cost. For this reason, Europe is setting up several smaller processing locations in strategic geographic locations.
Significant subsidies are sill required from manufacturers, agencies and governments to support the battery recycling programs. These subsidies are in the form of a tax added to each manufactured cell. RBRC is financed by such a scheme.
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In the measurement of battery technology, there are four kinds common method (open-circuit voltage measurement, Coulomb calculation, impedance measurement, integrated look-up table method), usually using a combination of methods to one of the main method of supporting the rest of the way computing power.

First, impedance measurement, measuring its resistance to get the remaining battery capacity value.

Second, open circuit voltage measurement, this method is that measuring the battery voltage under static values to calculate the remaining battery capacity, but as a result of stationary lithium-ion battery voltage and remaining capacity relation is non-linear, so this method measured valueis not accurate, the vast majority of mobile phone batteries are calculated using this method

Third, comprehensive look-up table method, by setting up a related form, the voltage, current, temperature and other parameters, you can query the remaining battery capacity.

Fourth, Coulomb calculation, the method is by measuring the Toshiba laptop battery charge and discharge current, the current value and time value After the calculation of product integration has been carried out by filling the battery into the power and the release of electricity, Coulomb’s method is a accurate method of calculating power.
Laptop batteries can be 6-cell or 4-cell, meaning that there are that number of battery cells inside the battery. The batteries cells conenect together, the battery capacity reduce reason is that: all the batteries quality and discharge rate can not be in the same level. After discharge, one battery cell capacity in substantial reduction, in order to maintain voltage stability, the battery management chip will be according protection of core power as the “bucket principle”, so after the electricity charge will decrease.

Now everybody has used battery,what is the battery?A battery, which is actually an electric cell, is a device that produces electricity from a chemical reaction.

History of the Electric Battery

Strictly speaking, a battery consists of two or more cells connected in series or parallel, but the term is generally used for a single cell. A cell consists of a negative electrode; an electrolyte, which conducts ions; a separator, also an ion conductor; and a positive electrode.

Timeline of Battery History

•1748 - Benjamin Franklin first coined the term "battery" to describe an array of charged glass plates.
•1780 to 1786 - Luigi Galvani demonstrated what we now understand to be the electrical basis of nerve impulses and provided the cornerstone of research for later inventors like Volta.
•1800 - Alessandro Volta invented the voltaic pile and discovered the first practical method of generating electricity. Constructed of alternating discs of zinc and copper with pieces of cardboard soaked in brine between the metals, the voltic pile produced electrical current. The metallic conducting arc was used to carry the electricity over a greater distance. Alessandro Volta's voltaic pile was the first "wet cell battery" that produced a reliable, steady current of electricity.
•1836 - Englishman, John F. Daniel invented the Daniel Cell that used two electrolytes: copper sulfate and zinc sulfate. The Daniel Cell was somewhat safer and less corrosive then the Volta cell.
•1839 - William Robert Grove developed the first fuel cell, which produced electrical by combining hydrogen and oxygen.
•1839 to 1842 - Inventors created improvements to batteries that used liquid electrodes to produce electricity. Bunsen (1842) and Grove (1839) invented the most successful.

Last year,Stanford University researchers have made a discovery that could signal the arrival of laptop batteries that last more than a day on a single charge.

And that,The researchers have found a way to use silicon nanowires to give rechargeable lithium ion batteries--used in laptops, iPods, video cameras, and mobile phones--as much as 10 times more charge. This potentially could give a conventional battery-powered laptop 40 hours of battery life, rather than 4 hours.

The new batteries were developed by assistant professor Yi Cui and colleagues at Stanford University's Department of Materials Science and Engineering.

"It's not a small improvement," Cui said. "It's a revolutionary development."

Citing a research paper they wrote, published in Nature Nanotechnology, Cui said the increased battery capacity was made possible though a new type of anode that utilizes silicon nanowires. Traditional lithium ion batteries use graphite as the anode. This limits the amount of lithium--which holds the charge--that can be held in the anode, and it therefore limits battery life.

Silicon anodes have the "the highest theoretical charge capacity" according to Cui's paper, but they expand when charging and shrink during use: a cycle that causes the silicon to be pulverized, degrading the performance of the battery. For 30 years, this dead end stumped researchers, who poured their battery life-extending energy into improving graphite-based anodes.

Cui and his colleagues looked at this old problem and overcame it by constructing a new type of silicon nanowire anode. In Cui's anode, the lithium is stored in a forest of tiny silicon nanowires, each with a diameter that is a thousandth of the thickness of a sheet of paper. The nanowires inflate to four times their normal size as they soak up lithium, but unlike previous silicon anodes, they do not fracture.

Cui said there are a few barriers to commercializing the technology.

"We are working on scaling up and evaluating the cost of our technology," Cui said. "There are no roadblocks for either of these."
Cui has filed a patent on the technology and is considering formation of a company or an agreement with a battery manufacturer. He expects the battery to be commercialized and available within "several years," pending testing.

For the Battery Research Altairnano Awarded Department of Energy The Grant.In the RENO, NV, Jun 07, 2010 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) -- Altair Nanotechnologies, Inc. (Altairnano) /quotes/comstock/15*!alti/quotes/nls/alti (ALTI 0.47, -0.04, -8.42%) , a leading provider of energy storage systems for clean, efficient power and energy management, today announced it received a grant award of $100,000 from the Department of Energy under the Small Business Research and Small Business Technology Transfer programs. As we known the battery Research under the grant is expected to begin the week of June 20th and continue for a six month period.

Under the grant, Altairnano will conduct research relating to the surface modification of electrode coatings in battery cells with the objective of increasing temperature and cycle life performance by decreasing reaction rates with the electrolyte.

"This grant represents an important milestone in our work with the Department of Energy and demonstrates the agency's commitment to advancing domestic energy storage solution technologies," said Terry M. Copeland, Ph.D., Altairnano's chief executive officer. "Altairnano's energy storage and battery systems already perform at some of the highest temperature ratings and life cycles."

Forward-Looking Statements This release may contain forward-looking statements as well as historical information. Forward-looking statements, which are included in accordance with the "safe harbor" provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, may involve risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the company's actual results and performance in future periods to be materially different from any future results or performance suggested by the forward-looking statements in this release. These risks and uncertainties include, without limitation, the risks that use and performance of the battery modules referenced in this release will differ from those anticipated because of use, configuration, environmental and other factors within the control of Proterra or purchasing municipalities or that exist in real-world usage that were not anticipated in a testing environment; that full commercialization of the advanced lithium ion-based batteries and related products described herein will not be completed for technical, political, strategic or other reasons; that any products developed will not perform as expected in future testing or real-world applications because of design, materials or configuration issues within the control of Altairnano; that even if full commercialization occurs, product sales may be limited and costs associated with production may exceed revenues; and that Altairnano may experience unexpected additional delays in securing purchase orders and, as a result, will not experience anticipated revenue growth.
In addition, other risks are identified in the company's most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K and Form 10-Q, as filed with the SEC. Such forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this release. The company expressly disclaims any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements found herein to reflect any changes in company expectations or results or any change in events.
About Altair Nanotechnologies, Inc. Headquartered in Reno, Nevada with manufacturing in Anderson, Indiana, Altairnano is a leading provider of energy storage systems for clean, efficient power and energy management. Going beyond lithium ion, Altairnano's Lithium-Titanate based battery systems are among the highest performing and most scalable, with applications that include complete energy storage systems for use in providing frequency regulation and renewables integration for the electric grid, battery modules and cells for mass transit applications, and battery packs for several different military applications.