{"id":514,"date":"2014-03-31T23:43:20","date_gmt":"2014-03-31T22:43:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/phoenixgamedevelopment.com\/blog\/?p=514"},"modified":"2014-03-31T23:50:11","modified_gmt":"2014-03-31T22:50:11","slug":"p-139-nickel-iron-battery-edison-battery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/phoenixgamedevelopment.com\/blog\/p-139-nickel-iron-battery-edison-battery\/","title":{"rendered":"P-139 Nickel-Iron Battery (Edison Battery)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>While working on one of my new projects, the DataVault, I realised that many current day battery technologies are sorely lacking. The objective of this project was to design a repository for data that would last for 100 years. Most rechabatteries have a lifespan of 5 years, maybe a little more. I discovered one type of<a href=\"http:\/\/www.gizmag.com\/city-labs-nanotritium-betavoltaic-battery\/23720\/\"> atomic battery<\/a> that can produce a small current for 20 years, but this is still just one-fifth of what I need (Actually, the power rating of atomic batteries is a &#8220;negative exponential&#8221;, which means the power output is not uniform. The battery will likely continue to output current after 20 years, it will just become steadily less).<\/p>\n<p>The simplest battery system that I could use for the DataVault project would be a lead acid battery connected to some kind of solar panel, or other current source.<\/p>\n<p>The problem is that lead acid batteries:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>are toxic,<\/li>\n<li>are harmful to the environment,<\/li>\n<li>have a short lifespan,<\/li>\n<li>cannot be discharged more than 40% of their capacity (for a standard automotive battery)<\/li>\n<li>are quite susceptable to over-charging or unreliable charging,<\/li>\n<li>can only be charged and discharged a relatively small number of times (since the plates of the battery actually physically disolve in the electrolyte during use),<\/li>\n<li>and are also susceptible to cold conditions, causing reduced performance (requiring lead acid batters to have a &#8220;cold cranking amps&#8221; rating, to indicate their performance under these conditions).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>However, the great Thomas Edision, one of history&#8217;s finest inventors, created an alternative to this battery in 1901, calling it the &#8220;Nickel-Iron&#8221; battery, or the Edision battey.<\/p>\n<p>Nickel-Iron Batteries:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Can last up to 100 years ,<\/li>\n<li>Can be recharged many times, (Since the electrolyte is an alkaline, not an acid, and the plates do not physically dissolve during use)<\/li>\n<li>can be discharged to 95% of their capacity,<\/li>\n<li>are far less toxic and harmful to the environment,<\/li>\n<li>suffer no significant reduction in performance in cold conditions,<\/li>\n<li>and are much more tolerant to poor charging conditions (in solar power applications, a nickel-iron battery bank may not even need a charge controller!)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I intend, therefore, to create a concept prototype of a Nickel-Iron Battery, and evaluate it for use in this and other projects. The best description of how to make one is <a href=\"http:\/\/opensourceecology.org\/wiki\/Nickel-Iron_Battery\/Prototype\/P004\">here<\/a>. Most of the ingredients are very easy to get, with the exception of the iron and nickel mesh screening. I cannot find any sources of either of these that are not restricted to large, commercial orders. However, I believe you can use copper mesh (much easier to obtain) for the Iron electrode, and it is also possible to use nickel-plated mesh instead of pure nickel mesh for the nickel electrode (Due to the fact that the nickel electrode will not be physically broken down during use, unlike a lead acid battery).\u00a0 So, I could electroplate some copper mesh with nickel, and use that.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While working on one of my new projects, the DataVault, I realised that many current day battery technologies are sorely lacking. The objective of this project was to design a repository for data that would last for 100 years. Most rechabatteries have a lifespan of 5 years, maybe a little more. I discovered one type [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-inventions","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"aioseo_notices":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/phoenixgamedevelopment.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/phoenixgamedevelopment.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/phoenixgamedevelopment.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phoenixgamedevelopment.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phoenixgamedevelopment.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=514"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/phoenixgamedevelopment.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":517,"href":"https:\/\/phoenixgamedevelopment.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514\/revisions\/517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/phoenixgamedevelopment.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phoenixgamedevelopment.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phoenixgamedevelopment.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}