Page 2 - Battery News

As our technology devices keep getting smaller and smaller, so do many of the batteries that power them up. A special concern to emergency room doctors is an increase in the number of tots swallowing the small, flat, so-called “button” batteries that can have tragic results.

Every three hours a child shows up in a U.S. emergency room with a battery that’s been swallowed or placed in the mouth, ears or nose, a new study shows. Most cases involve a child under the age of 5, with incidents peaking around 2. That number of cases is almost double what it was 20 years ago, according to the report just published in Pediatrics.

The main culprits are “button batteries,” which account for almost 85 percent of the ER visits, researchers found. These flat, coin-shaped batteries are used in a wide variety of electronic devices, from toys, remote controls, calculators, miscellaneous gadgets, hearing aids, and watches. Many of the toys youngster play with are powered up by these tiny batteries, making

In honor of Earth Day on April 22 and all the rightly-deserved emphasis on helping to reduce our carbon footprint and keep Mother Earth safe and healthy for future generations, we want to use this blog to promote recycling—specifically batteries.

Most types of batteries can be recycled, and thanks to efforts of individuals and businesses, more batteries are being recycled than ever before. Certain batteries are recycled more readily than others, and today nearly 90 percent of lead-acid automotive batteries are now recycled.

Lead-acid batteries include golf cart, motorcycle, UPS, industrial and commercial batteries, to name a few, and can be the regular type, sealed lead acid, gel type, or absorbent glass mat (AGM) batteries. They are recycled through a process that involves grinding them, neutralizing the acid, and then separating the polymers from the lead. The reclaimed materials are then reused in a variety of applications, including making new batteries. By recycling the lead it is

Johnson Controls Inc. is planning to invest $138.5 million to convert its battery plant near Toledo, Ohio, into an Absorbent Glass Mat (AGM) battery facility for start-top and other high efficiency vehicles.

Alex Molinaroli, president for Johnson Controls Power Solutions, said that the company sees the start-stop vehicle technology market growing to 35 million batteries globally by 2015—including batteries not put into new vehicles—with the United States as an important piece of the market. By 2020, JCI projects, demand for start-stop systems in new vehicles will reach 70–92% in Europe, North American and China—essentially supplanting conventional internal combustion engine vehicles.

Johnson Controls’ Toledo investment will add 6 million in AGM battery capacity to the company’s North American AGM footprint by 2013.

Start-Stop is a technology applied to a standard gasoline-powered vehicle that automatically shuts the engine off during idle, reducing fuel use and emissions by 5–12 percent,

It’s far from being on the marketplace, but Science News is reporting that a battery is being tested with a three-dimensional nano-structure for battery cathodes that allows for dramatically faster charging and discharging without sacrificing energy storage capacity.

Batteries that can store significant energy and release it fast and then recharge quickly are desirable for the up-and-coming electric vehicles. In addition, they are sought after in the medical field for equipment, lasers and in military applications.

The performance of traditional lithium-ion (Li-ion) or nickel metal hydride (NiMH) rechargeable batteries degrades significantly when they are rapidly charged or discharged. Making the active material in the battery a thin film allows for very fast charging and discharging, but reduces the capacity to nearly zero because the active material lacks volume to store energy.

The test design essentially wraps a thin film into three-dimensional structure, achieving both high active