Putting a new charge ino batteries

Some believe batteries have been around since antiquity, based on the 1938 discovery of a ceramic vessel near Babylon.

The half-foot-high pot, which may date to as early as 200 B.C., contained a cylinder of sheet copper soldered with a lead/tin alloy, capped with a copper disk and perhaps sealed by an asphalt stopper. This held in place an iron rod suspended in the center of the cylinder, which showed signs of acid corrosion.

Tests showed that with common acidic substances of the time, such as vinegar or lemon juice, that it was capable of producing a volt of electricity. The looming question behind this, of course, is “Why?” For the Parthenians had no known use for electricity.

Today, of course, there seems to be no end to why you need batteries, as our lives are accustomed to hoards of electrical devices of convenience. Common alkaline batteries charge everything from flashlights to remote controls and wireless keyboards and mice, while the lithium-ion battery holds sway in higher-tech devices such as cell phones and laptop computers.

Convenience is a term not lost upon Pure Energy Solutions Inc. in Boulder. The company is seeking to free us all from a spider’s nest of recharging wires with its WildCharge, wire-free technology for recharging hand-held electronics on a recharging tablet about the size of a mouse pad.

The technology requires that the devices are equipped with a WildCharge skin, which plugs into the recharging outlet of the device, and the company already manufactures skins for hundreds of phones and other devices. Perhaps more impressive is the companies that have licensed the product for their own recharging options, including T-Mobile’s mytouch phone and the Palm Pre. Both companies customize their back covers, allowing direct placement on the recharging tablet.

“Things are getting tangled with all the consumer devices people have,” said Greg Wolff, the company’s vice president of product marketing. The recharging technology is already widely used in recharging cordless phones in Australia and is also licensed to Uniden, one of the largest makers of cordless phones in the United States.

“Once somebody’s gets used to using this technology, they don’t want to go back,” Wolff said.

WildCharge is the former name of Pure Energy Solutions, which was changed last year after a joint-operating agreement between the former company and Canada-based Pure Energy Visions, which manufactures North America’s only rechargeable alkaline batteries.

The Ram Cell batteries, which have been sold under the Cyclone brand in Wal-Mart since the mid-1990s, are also one of the most environmentally friendly batteries, as well, using no heavy metals. The company has integrated the batteries into a host of products, including solar-powered guard lights, but it has much bigger plans and much bigger batteries in mind, as well.

“One of the things we are doing behind the scenes is improving the cycle life by 100 percent, and looking at other configurations ? making (the battery) flat,” said Stephen Meldrum, the company’s director of marketing for energy storage. Ultimately, the company wants to manufacture batteries capable of backing up wind and solar farms.

Batteries, of course, were not invented as a means of conveniently transporting electricity. In the beginning — for instance, when Italian physicist Alessandro Volta invented the voltaic pile in 1800 — using a chemical reaction to create electricity was pretty much the way to create electricity.

As such, batteries were incredibly important to early electric devices, such as the telegraph, but once large-scale electrical power was needed, it was usually created by burning fossil fuels, such as oil, coal and natural gas.

Today, as governments look to wean society from reliance on fossil fuels, batteries will play a larger role in storing power. In some ways, batteries will replace the railcars of coals and barrels of oil.

The battery that seems most poised to assume much of that load is the same one that powers our laptops and cell phones, the lithium-ion battery. The technology is fast becoming the favorite to power the next generation of electric vehicles, including the Chevy Volt and Toyota’s hybrids, and a Lafayette company may be poised to add a technological leap that may reduce battery cost — a big stumbling block in the overall costs of these vehicles.

Porous Power Technologies doesn’t want to make batteries. Although it does own a battery-testing plant in Pennsylvania, it wants to supply battery makers with a new separator substance that can dramatically increase the productivity of lithium-ion batteries and may ultimately revolutionize their production.

“We’re in discussion with certainly all the major automotive batteries makers, and working with Ford, GM and Chrysler,” said Porous Power’s president, Tim Feaver. “They are funding development work to prove out this concept.

“We’ve recently got a large a contract with one of the major Japanese battery makers,” he continued. “We’ve met with Toyota in the U.S., and we’re definitely starting to operate with the highest levels in the industry.”

Porous Power’s Symmetrix allows for 80 percent ion-exchange porosity — compared with 40 percent or 50 percent in traditional separators — allowing for faster recharge and discharge of electricity, Feaver said, most notably at low temperatures and high output.

“At low temperatures, you can generate up to eight times more capacity — it allows you to get the energy out of the cell,” he said. “You can get up to four times the capacity at room temperature, especially in cells that are designed to operate at high rates — for low rates, capacity doesn’t change too much.”

However, the increased porosity of the material, a polyvinylidene fluoride, and the fact that electrolyte is more uniformly applied to the electrodes, means the cell creates less heat and should last longer, he said. The fact that the material in so easily laminated to electrodes could simplify how lithium-ion cells are manufactured, leading to a mass production that could vastly reduce cost.

That would be impressive enough in just the electric vehicle market, but flat cells are also a favorite for use in renewable-energy fields, where large-scale storage could replace much of the need for backup peak power generation.

Of course, in the history of electricity, our nation has never been far from the lead, with Edison and others leading the way. In fact, it was founding father Benjamin Franklin who coined the term battery, describing how multiple Leyden jars (an early type of capacitor) were arranged, reminding him of a battery of cannons.

“It’s exciting to see this entire industry taking off like gangbusters,” said Feaver, while noting an upcoming trip to China is even more promising. “It’s at a whole different level over there,” he said.

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