A Field Guide to Batteries

The first battery was the Baghdad Battery, a simple clay pot with a copper sheet inside which is wrapped around an iron rod. They were discovered in 1936 in the village of Khuyut Rabbou'a, near Baghdad, Iraq, and have been dated to between 250 BC and AD 224. Ancients would have used them by pouring an acidic liquid inside, such as lemon juice, grape juice, or vinegar. this would have served as an acidic agent to trigger the electrochemical reaction with the two metals. And now you understand a battery at its simplest terms!

All batteries work on the same principle, generating current from electrochemical reactions. We can switch and swap different metals, acids, elements, and oxides to produce different reactions at different rates. The rechargeable kind of battery in fact exploits the fact that certain electrochemical reactions are reversible. Here, we will show some recent advances in battery science.

Barium-titanate powders -  A few research companies are looking into cells made with barium-titanate, in the hopes that they will outperform lithium-ion batteries in energy density, price, charge time, and even safety. They also look like they could pack ten times as much power of a lead-acid battery at a cheaper cost, and will also replace batteries with a battery-ultracapacitor hybrid. These so-called "ultracaps" have already been known to withstand decades of use, but so far the problem has been in packing enough power, since traditional ultracaps have less power than lithium-ion. But barium-titanate could at last overcome this limit. These new units have applications in everything from mobile phones to hybrid vehicles.

Improved rechargeable batteries - The latest nickel-metal hybrid batteries to hit the market have been improved to the point where they can be sold fully-charged without having the self-discharge problem, have four times the lifetime of a regular dry cell battery, and can be recharged up to 1000 times before experiencing degraded performance. But best of all, they can be recycled, relieving some of the pressure of electronic waste on the environment.

Universal battery chargers - Gone are the days when you had to find the specific charger for your device's unique batteries, leading to several chargers scattered around the house for each device. Deluxe chargers these days can handle AAA, AA, C, D, and 9V batteries all in one handy unit, and can also recharge both NiCad and NiMH batteries. Not only that, but some of them are even taking into account the world-wide house current situation, being able to run from either 120 or 240 volt current.

Nano-batteries - What, you might ask, is a nano-battery? A battery constructed at a microscopic scale, using nano-technology! Researchers at the legendary Massachusetts Institute of Technology have already succeeded in building batteries at the microscopic scale. Now for the scary-sounding part: they do this with genetically-engineered viruses. The viruses are designed to attract individual molecules of cobalt oxide from a solution, forming thin wires and electrodes as they do so. Really, these are not so much living organisms as they are small factories for producing raw materials, which just happen to be made of protein.

You'll score points around your trivia circle with this one: who came up with the name "battery"? Benjamin Franklin, that's who! He picked that name when observing how a row of Leyden jars resembled a battery of cannons. Leyden jars were then a primitive form of capacitors, which were made to store large amounts of static electricity. The Leyden jar was invented by Pieter van Musschenbroek in 1745.

That wasn't even the first invention of the concept of a battery, however. That goes back to the recently-discovered "Baghdad Battery", which was in use in ancient Mesopotamia. This was a terracotta jar with a copper and iron core, used to electroplate gold onto silver objects.

In today's world of tech gadgets, batteries have come a long way. Nobody could have foreseen that we'd want to take every invention of the Industrial Age and shrink it down to portable, personal size. As a result, we've had to figure out how to get these devices to be efficient enough to run on the least available amount of electricity.

Devices we power with batteries include iPods, GPS devices, digital cameras, portable game consoles, mobile phones, and of course laptop and notebook computers. Though they come in all shapes and sizes, all batteries break down into two classes: primary, which have one charge, and secondary, which are designed to be recharged. However, even though we think of rechargeable batteries as being infinitely usable, they do wear out over time due to dissipation active materials, loss of electrolytes, and internal corrosion.

The disposable kind of batteries typically are made with either zinc-carbon or alkaline. Zinc-carbon ones have a lower energy density, but are just fine for small, simple usage where the demand isn't too high. The alkaline variety have a longer shelf life and can provide higher energy density for more demanding usage. But in either case, both are disposable and should not have attempts made to recharge, as they can rupture or leak.

The rechargeable kind of battery ranges from the lead-acid liquid battery under the hood of your car to the dry cell kind found in your typical mobile phone and laptop computer. These run to nickel-cadmiums, which are the cheapest and weakest, nickel metal hydride, which are in the middle for price and performance, and lithium-ion, which are the most expensive and the longest-lasting.

Disposable batteries may be cheap, but they're also not very efficient. Even if you never take one out of the package, it can still loose anywhere from ten to twenty percent of its charge per year. This is an unavoidable limit of the technology. Disposed batteries are being seen as an environmental hazard in many places, where there's growing concern over electronic waste and hazardous metals.

As for the rechargeable batteries, they typically run down faster than the disposable kind, as much as three percent per day. This again is an unavoidable limitation in battery technology, which is at the mercy of chemistry, after all. Rechargeable batteries have a wide variety of quirks as well, since some kinds of chargers can't tell when the battery is fully charged, some types of batteries are hurt by overcharging or by recharging them when they aren't fully discharged, and so on.

Though we are far from a perfect solution for all mobile powered device needs, the technology makes leaps and bounds every year. Because of the demand for portable electronics, we can be sure that there is a great deal of research done in the industry, always incrementally improving the methods we use. Since none of us are ready to give up our iPod tunes on our subway commutes or our web surfing from our laptops in our backyards, we'll just have to drag the technology along with us wherever we go.

1. Turn down the brightness on your monitor. - Seriously, your computer is not a sunlamp. I've seen people using laptops where the monitor is turned all the way up until they're getting a tan from using it. Your screen should have the brightness turned down until you can just read the text.

2. Minimize external devices. - Whenever you aren't using something external, unplug it. This goes for USB and PC-Cards, EVDO cards, USB mouse and printer, and anything else plugged in. It pulls power, even when you're not using it.

3. Strip unnecessary processes and programs. - Today's computer manufacturers are more extravagant with their pre-installed services than ever, but all of this extra functionality adds up to using more power. You can shut down tray icons you're not using, turn off WiFi if you aren't using a wireless connection, shut down the camera if you aren't recording or video-chatting, and close instant messengers, e-mail notifiers, and other extra background processes.

4. Defrag your hard drive on Windows. - This doesn't affect non-Microsoft systems, but Winodws still needs to be defragged at least once a week. Defragmenting the hard drive will result in quicker access times for all of your programs.

5. Cut back on the pretty graphics. - For instance, you can run hibernate instead of a screen-saver, and you can set the desktop to work in 16-bit color mode. Set your window style and theme to something simpler like a solid black background and plain styling. Yes, your machine will not look as fancy, but after all, you need it for work, don't you? When you're just doing something like editing text, you really don't need anything but a text window open anyway.

6. Consider running Linux. - Many laptops are now being sold with the Linux operating system, which has advanced to the point where any child can run it. The best distributions of Linux for beginners are Ubuntu, Linspire, and Suse, and these are all available from major computer dealers. What is the benefit of Linux? It's smaller, more efficient, more secure, and faster, which adds up to using about one-tenth the memory that Microsoft Windows uses! In fact, Linux is typically deployed in cell phones and GPS devices, so small are its requirements. Linux won't be for you if you're a heavy gamer or Photoshop user, but for plain web, office, web design, and email use it can't be beat.

7. Choose light programs. - Even if you don't run Linux, you can still use Free and Open Source Software which often runs much lighter on memory requirements, even on Windows. Use Firefox for web browsing, ABIWord for word processing, Inkscape and Gimp for graphic design, and if you're really feeling frisky... try out vi or Emacs for text processing! You'd also be amazed at what you can do from a command line, and the Services For Unix (SFU) suite of tools allow you to do just that. Even learning a DOS command or two for moving and copying files will save you a few minutes starting and navigating in Explorer.

8. Keep your battery in good shape. - Check the manufacturer's recommendation for charging cycles. Rechargeable batteries often need to be fully drained before they recharge, or they wear out faster. To prevent this, keep two sets of batteries and when you switch to a fresh pair, leave the old pair aside for a day to fully discharge.

9. Use your AC adapter! - This is so obvious, but so few people think of it. Whenever you're near an outlet, plug in and save your battery.

Since the very dawn of the Industrial Age, people have worked to harness the natural forces of power to do our work for us. Producing, storing, using, and recycling energy is the key cornerstone of our industrial technology. We keep making improvements as we study deeper into the science of energy management, and perhaps someday we will even finally solve the ultimate problem - producing infinite, inexhaustible energy.

Of course, the ultimate power source - perpetual motion - is proved to be impossible. But we can get close to the next best thing by combining inanimate objects to generate a current. You can actually build a primitive battery at home; all you'd need is a small jar of sulfuric acid with two rods dipped in it, one zinc and one carbon, with a wire connecting the two. A current will generate through the wire, as electrons jump from the zinc to the carbon, until the acid eats up the zinc rod. OK, maybe playing with sulfuric acid and pure element rods isn't safe to do at home, but it illustrates the principle!

All batteries work on the same principle, generating current from electrochemical reactions. We can switch and swap different metals, acids, elements, and oxides to produce different reactions at different rates. The rechargeable kind of battery in fact exploits the fact that certain electrochemical reactions are reversible. Here, we will show some recent advances in battery science.

barium-titanate powders

A few research companies are looking into cells made with barium-titanate, in the hopes that they will outperform lithium-ion batteries in energy density, price, charge time, and even safety. They also look like they could pack ten times as much power of a lead-acid battery at a cheaper cost, and will also replace batteries with a battery-ultracapacitor hybrid. These so-called "ultracaps" have already been known to withstand decades of use, but so far the problem has been in packing enough power, since traditional ultracaps have less power than lithium-ion. But barium-titanate could at last overcome this limit. These new units have applications in everything from mobile phones to hybrid vehicles.

improved rechargeable batteries

The latest nickel-metal hybrid batteries to hit the market have been improved to the point where they can be sold fully-charged without having the self-discharge problem, have four times the lifetime of a regular dry cell battery, and can be recharged up to 1000 times before experiencing degraded performance. But best of all, they can be recycled, relieving some of the pressure of electronic waste on the environment.

universal battery chargers

Gone are the days when you had to find the specific charger for your device's unique batteries, leading to several chargers scattered around the house for each device. Deluxe chargers these days can handle AAA, AA, C, D, and 9V batteries all in one handy unit, and can also recharge both NiCad and NiMH batteries. Not only that, but some of them are even taking into account the world-wide house current situation, being able to run from either 120 or 240 volt current.

nano-batteries

What, you might ask, is a nano-battery? A battery constructed at a microscopic scale, using nano-technology! Researchers at the legendary Massachusetts Institute of Technology have already succeeded in building batteries at the microscopic scale. Now for the scary-sounding part: they do this with genetically-engineered viruses. The viruses are designed to attract individual molecules of cobalt oxide from a solution, forming thin wires and electrodes as they do so. Really, these are not so much living organisms as they are small factories for producing raw materials, which just happen to be made of protein.

These are just some of the developments of the past year in portable energy technology. Any or all of these could be powering your GPS or laptop before you know it, and many more new advances beyond these are sure to follow.