Recharging Primary Batteries

The price of the fuel cell stack is determined by the cost of the materials and the production technology. These costs are strongly determined by the number of units produced. For various components a strong decrease in the price can be expected as the demand increases. As a consequence, reliable cost estimations are difficult. However, the material expenses and some estimates of production costs can be compared with the actual market prices of the competing technologies, namely primary batteries, rechargeable batteries and the internal combustion engine. The comparison shows that fuel cell systems are still too expensive for most applications and a reduction of the cost by a factor of 10-50 is necessary to achieve competitiveness. 

Primary battery Rechargeable battery Solar array output ... 

There are two major types of electrochemical cells primary batteries and secondaiy, or storage, batteries. Primary hatteiy construction allows for only one continuous or intermittent discharge secondary hattei y construction, on the other hand, allows for recharging as well. Since the charging process is the... 

The classification into primary and storage batteries is not rigorous since under certain conditions (in the laboratory) a primary battery may be recharged, whereas storage batteries are sometimes discarded after a single use. 

There are two major types of household batteries (a) Primary batteries are those that cannot be reused. They include alkaline/manganese, carbon-zinc, mercuric oxide, zinc-air, silver oxide, and other types of button batteries, (b) Secondary batteries are those that can be reused secondary batteries (rechargeable) include lead-acid, nickel-cadmium, and potentially nickel-hydrogen. 

The mechanisms and reasons of catalytic activity of polyaniline (PANI)-type conducting polymers toward oxygen reduction in acidic and saline solutions are investigated by electrochemical and quantum-chemical methods. The PANI/thermally expanded graphite compositions were developed for realization of fully functional air gas-diffusion electrodes. Principally new concept for creation of rechargeable metal-air batteries with such type of catalysts is proposed. The mockups of primary and rechargeable metal-air batteries with new type of polymer composite catalysts were developed and tested. 

The compositions of composites are different for primary and rechargeable variants of batteries. In rechargeable variant it is necessary to have considerable mass of PANI for charging of battery without oxygen evolution. In primary variant it is enough to have a relatively small amount of PANI for creation of its quite thin layer at the conductive and stable graphite collector. Thus we have developed two main types of composite materials based on TEG and PANI (Table 4). 

Anode Primary Batteries Mechanically Rechargeable Batteries Electrically rechargeable batteries... 

A primary battery is nonreversible, like a dry cell. A secondary battery can be recharged and reused. 

A dry cell battery stops producing electricity when the reactants are used up. This type of battery is disposable after it has run down completely. A disposable battery is known as a primary battery. Some other batteries are rechargeable. A rechargeable battery is known as a secondary battery. The rest of this section will deal with primary batteries. You will learn about secondary batteries in section 11.3. 

Although primary batteries of various types based on Agl complexes are at present available commercially, no substantial success has been achieved with rechargeable SBs with Ag compounds conducting at ambient temperature (although Ag/complex/Ag coulometers capable of being cycled many thousands of times are readily available). After a decade of studies, cells based on Agl complexes have not yet been made which are rechargeable to any extent the complex tends to break down into islands of the y-Agl, which is very poorly conductive at room temperature. 

Batteries are divided into primary batteries (used only once) and secondary batteries (rechargeable). The estimated 1989 U.S. market was 2.3 billion for primary... 

Nickel-cadmium sealed cells are now a commercially important consumer product. They find use, both as button and cylindrical cells, in portable cordless appliances such as power tools, electric razors and photoflash apparatus, and increasingly in hybrid mains/battery equipment such as portable tape recorders, radios and television receivers. Many of these cells are readily interchangeable with primary batteries. In recent years, advances in design have increased recharge rates cylindrical cells with sintered electrodes can now be fast charged from full discharge at up to the C/l rate of 80% of capacity. 

In the following we adopt the usual distinction between devices that convert chemical in electrical energy but cannot be electrically charged again (primary batteries), metabolistic cells in which active masses are continually supplied and removed by gas flow (fuel cells) and cells that can be recharged electrically (secondary batteries). In all these cases great technological advances have been made and there exists a rich literature on these topics. 

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