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Your Guide to Battery Types

What Types of Batteries Are Available?

By Chris Robertson

Every mobile electronic device we own runs on battery power, yet we take batteries for granted - at least until they run out of juice. No matter what kind of device battery - laptop battery, cell phone battery, camcorder battery, remote control battery - you need, it’s helpful to know the various kinds of battery types and their uses.

Gel Battery - A gel battery is also known as a sealed lead acid (SLA) battery, and its distinguishing feature is that it doesn’t have to be kept upright in order to work. An SLA battery continues to perform in extreme conditions, such as hot temperatures, or under vibration. SLA batteries are often used in wheelchairs, scooters, and uninterruptible power sources. It’s best to keep an SLA battery charged, or to charge it more often than you would other types of batteries.

NiMH - NiMH stands for Nickel Metal Hydride and is the battery of choice for many cell phones, camcorders, digital cameras, GPS systems, PDAs, and other personal electronics. NiMH batteries are also used in hybrid cars. An NiMH is a rechargeable battery that is similar to a nickel cadmium (NiCd) battery, but that has double or triple the capacity of a NiCd battery. It’s best not to overcharge NiMH batteries.

NiCd - NiCd stands for Nickel Cadmium, and is a type of rechargeable battery commonly used in toys, electronic devices, and power tools. Although some people prefer NiMH batteries to NiCd batteries, a NiCd battery provides virtually the same level of voltage throughout its lifetime, and costs less than an NiMH battery.

LiION - LiION stands for Lithium Ion, and is one of the newest rechargeable batteries. Although they are more expensive than other types of rechargeable batteries, LiION batteries have more capacity and are often used in wireless phones, camcorders, and notebook computers. The downside of LiION batteries is that the length of their life commences from the date of manufacture, rather than from the number of times the battery is charged and discharged. It’s best to regularly charge LiION batteries and store used batteries in the refrigerator. (Allow them to warm to room temperature before using them, though.)

Alkaline - Alkaline batteries are not rechargeable with a battery charger, but offer a large current over a long period of time. These batteries are often used in CD players and portable radios.

Carbon Zinc - Carbon Zinc batteries are known for their reliability over long periods of time in low-drain situations, such as for garage door openers or clocks. A Carbon Zinc battery is not rechargeable.



Chris Robertson is an author of Majon International, one of the worlds MOST popular internet marketing companies on the Web. Learn more by visiting Your Guide to Battery Types or Majon’s Electronics directory.


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What is the Biggest Battery and Other Interesting Battery Facts

By Dan Hagopian

We know that a battery is a device that converts chemical energy into electrical energy. We also know that batteries have two electrodes, an anode (the positive end) and a cathode (the negative end). 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, 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?

Here is a short list:

© Dan Hagopian
Dan Hagopian of http://www.batteryship.com is a known electronics author that specializes in portable power gadgets. His work can be found on the BatteryShip blog at http://www.batteryeducation.com He frequently writes about pda batteries, ipod batteries, general battery technology for our mobile world, new fuel cell technology and interesting power related inventions. For further information please visit http://www.batteryship.com where you can also find PDA Battery Replacement Kits, iPod battery, iPAQ battery, Clie battery, Palm Battery, Axim battery, Treos, and Blackberries.


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Battery Voltage

Understanding Electrical Voltage from Batteries

By Dan Hagopian

What is battery voltage? I think we talk around the real definition so much we actually begin to believe that we understand what it means when in reality we do not. For my benefit as well as yours let us go back to the basics of what battery voltage really means and how the work it conducts inside your battery affects the other technical factors of your battery.

Italian physicist Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta (February 18, 1745 - March 5, 1827) grew up with a passion for electricity, though some might call it an obssesion. In 1775 he devised the electrophorus, a device that produced a static electric charge. In 1776-77 he studied the chemistry of gases, discovered methane, and devised experiments that would ignite gases by an electric spark in a closed vessel. In 1800 he developed the voltaic pile, a forerunner of the electric battery, which produced a steady electric current.

The electric pile was a result of an experiment by Volta. The experiment created a make shift cell, a wine goblet filled with brine into which the two dissimilar electrodes were dipped, Volta then placed together several pairs of alternating copper (or silver) and zinc discs separated by cloth and soaked the cloth in brine (salt water) to increase conductivity, and the result was an electrical current. The electric pile ultimately replaced the goblets with cardboard soaked in brine. The number of cells, and thus the voltage the electric pile could produce, was limited by the pressure, and exerted by the upper cells that would squeeze all of the brine out of the cardboard of the bottom cell. The electric pile was the first electric battery.

In 1881 the electrical unit we know today, the volt, was named in Volta’s honor.

From the first battery, mentioned above, we can derive a definition of voltage as:

Volts - or V - are an electrical measure of energy potential.

Voltage can also be thought of as the amount of "pressure" of electrons that pass from a negative connector to a positive connector. Or V can be defined as the measure of the strength of an electrical source of power for a given current level. Voltage can also be defined as Electrical Potential difference - a quantity in physics related to the amount of energy that would be required to move an object from one place to another against various types of force. In the fields of electronics the electrical potential difference is the amount of work per charge needed to move electric charge from the second point to the first, or equivalently, the amount of work that unit charge flowing from the first point to the second can perform.

Mathematically it is measured by V= I x R; where V=Voltage, I=Current, R=Resistance.

What also challenges many about battery voltage is that there does exist in a battery voltage four unique types of voltage measurements. Each voltage measurement type residing in a battery effects battery life to varying degrees.

Float Voltage – is battery voltage at zero current (with battery disconnected).

Nominal Voltage – is battery voltage range 3.7V, 5.2V, 10.2V, 12V etc that says that a voltage range exists depending on the number of cells in the battery. For example a 12 Volt battery is made of 6 cells and has a Float voltage of about 12V.

Charge Voltage - The voltage of a battery while charging.

Discharge Voltage - The voltage of a battery while discharging. Again, this voltage is determined by the charge state and the current flowing in the battery.



Dan Hagopian of Batteryship.com authored this article. http://www.Batteryship.com offers PDA Battery Replacement Kits with tools and instructions for iPod battery, iPAQ battery, Clie battery, Palm Battery, Axim battery, Treos, and Blackberries.


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