Uses of Batteries

• Battery Use in Home

Disposable batteries power things like remote controls, torchlight, etc. Rechargeable batteries such as alkaline batteries are used in digital cameras, handheld video game consoles, cellphones, and many more. Advanced batteries like lithium batteries power appliances draw too much power, example: laptops and other devices.

• Battery Use in Health Instruments

Artificial limbs, hearing aids, insulin pumps, valve assistance devices use batteries. Mercury batteries can be useful for photographic light meters and electronic devices such as real-time clocks in appliances.

• Battery Use in Medical Sector

ECG heart monitor is hooked up with a battery so that it can be moved with the patient and is always ON for showing the patient’s vitals. In hospitals, rechargeable batteries such as lithium-ion batteries and nickel-cadmium batteries are used.

• Battery Uses in Logistics and Construction

Heavy-duty batteries are used to power devices such as forklift because exhaust fumes and carbon monoxide while combustion might prove dangerous in confined work areas. The lead-acid battery is used for starting, lighting, and ignition of automobiles.

• Battery Use in Firefighting and Emergency Response

Batteries are used in radios which is very important for emergency response. These radios use large batteries in order to hold large charges. ECGs, flashlights, and even metal or fire detectors use batteries. Every day these devices help to save lives.

• Batteries Uses in Military Operations

Batteries power the radios which are used to communicate. Even infrared goggles are powered by batteries. Lithium provides much longer life to devices, and silver oxide batteries are used in military and submarines.

• Batteries Use in Vehicle

Electric-Vehicle Battery (EVB) is commonly used in vehicles. This E-Vehicle Battery is used to power the electric motors of electric vehicles. The batteries of electric vehicles are usually rechargeable. Generally lithium-ion batteries are used in electric vehicles.

Lithium future

The first challenge for researchers is to reduce the amounts of metals that need to be mined for E Vehicle Lithium Battery. Amounts vary depending on the battery type and model of vehicle, but a single car lithium-ion battery pack (of a type known as NMC532) could contain around 8 kg of lithium, 35 kg of nickel, 20 kg of manganese and 14 kg of cobalt, according to figures from Argonne National Laboratory.

Analysts don’t anticipate a move away from lithium-ion batteries any time soon: their cost has plummeted so dramatically that they are likely to be the dominant technology for the foreseeable future. They are now 30 times cheaper than when they first entered the market as small, portable batteries in the early 1990s, even as their performance has improved. BNEF projects that the cost of a lithium-ion EV battery pack will fall below US$100 per kilowatt-hour by 2023, or roughly 20% lower than today (see ‘Plummeting costs of batteries’). As a result, electric cars — which are still more expensive than conventional ones — should reach price parity by the mid-2020s. (By some estimates, electric cars are already cheaper than petrol vehicles over their lifetimes, thanks to being less expensive to power and maintain.)

In order to make lithium-ion batteries cheaper, scientists at Pennsylvania State University in the US are looking at lithium iron phosphate batteries, which use different electrode elements. This E Tricycle Lithium Battery model is much cheaper and safer than the widely used lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxide batteries, and has the potential to power a car 250 miles on as little as ten minutes’ charge.

Anxiety around the range fully charged EVs can cover is also driving carmakers to develop batteries that use a solid component that separates the electrodes, rather than a liquid one. These are safer and can power EVs further than 300 miles on a single charge.

But lithium batteries have a problem. Lithium is a relatively rare element on Earth compared with most minerals in common use. As demand for batteries increases, the price of lithium will increase sharply. This has prompted geologists to search for new sources of lithium worldwide, often with their own high costs. For example, the extraction of lithium from salt flats in Chile consumes lots of water, which is in short supply there. Cobalt is also scarce compared with similar metals like iron, and ores are concentrated in the politically unstable Congo region of Africa.

One solution may be to get more use out of what we already have. With more than a million electric cars sold worldwide in 2017, a number increasing rapidly, scientists are studying how to recycle lithium on a massive scale. Some are considering whether bacteria could help them achieve this.

In future, it will be important to design Energy Storage Battery that can be easily disassembled, to reuse the metals they contain. Lithium is also a very reactive metal, presenting challenges for people tasked with handling it.