From the article, I didn't get a good appreciation for the Silver-Zinc batteries. It seemed like only the limitations prevailed. I'm wondering about the advantages of this technology and what specific application it should be used in.
Stephen, thanks for the definitions. I understand the contrasts between the military and consumer usage scenarios you mention, but how they apply to batteries wasn't clear; now it is. So it sounds like batteries have to stand up to this extreme "wait and hurry up" model.
On single use & military vs. civilian: Military applications cited appear to require shelf life of years to decades (presumabily in severe environmental conditons followed by total lifetimes of minutes to hours, possibily at extreme pulse currents and/or physical contitions, with extremely high reliability.
Civilian uses tend to have somewhat less severe storage life requirements, e.g. less that 1 decade, and longer duration (hours to years), less severe discharge requirements for primary (i.e. non-rechargable) battery systems, in far less severe environmental conditions.
Jack, military everything has to be more rugged and last longer--a lot longer. It also has to be fixable on the spot if at all possible. (That last probably doesn't apply to batteries.) Military vehicles now carry a ton of electronics and other stuff that needs to be powered, as mentioned in the first paragraph: advanced product designs for avionics, navigation systems, ordinance fuses, missile systems, GPS tracking and emergency/safety devices, shipboard, and oceanographic devices.
What I'd like to know is how "single-use" is defined as applied to batteries.
Does anybody know what the technical reasons are for the the differences between military and cilivian uses? Obviously, there are the harsh environment considerations, but I never realized there was such an underlying difference in basic technology.
I had the same thought as Beth: there might be some crossover apps possible from military uses to civilian uses, since there are a lot of parallels. Battery technologies have lagged for so many years, if not decades. It's great to see the military spearheading efforts to take a crack at improvements. It's also interesting to see thermal storage battery techniques--I just read something about thermal storage applied to solar energy.
I think such military technologies have to go for mass production in sake of public. We all are experienced energy crunch in our daily life at different instances in portable devices like Smartphone, Camera, laptops etc. So such long durability cells can yield more power for a long duration. By sharing such technologies to the public, I don't think there may be any security issues.
I know this battery technology isn't the same as the lithium ion batteries that the automotive industry is consumed with trying to find the best solution for EV vehicles. However, the thought occurs to me that there has to be synergies/best practices each side could bring to each other to advance innovation and future battery development. I'm wondering if there are open source communities or standards bodies promoting cross-pollination of ideas or research. Clearly advancing the cause of alternative battery design has huge implications, not just for the EV set.
UK-based Plastic Logic and French company ISORG have created what the pair tout as a first in flexible printed electronics: a large area, conformable, organic image sensor printed on plastic.
For 3D printing to make the jump from rapid prototyping to manufacturing, engineers will need to find easier ways to move products from their CAD screens to their printers.
Gigabit and PoE are two networking technologies moving ahead in tandem as industrial users power remote Ethernet devices such as IP security cameras at 1,000 Mbps over existing CAT5 cable.
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For industrial control applications, or even a simple assembly line, that machine can go almost 24/7 without a break. But what happens when the task is a little more complex? That’s where the “smart” machine would come in. The smart machine is one that has some simple (or complex in some cases) processing capability to be able to adapt to changing conditions. Such machines are suited for a host of applications, including automotive, aerospace, defense, medical, computers and electronics, telecommunications, consumer goods, and so on. This radio show will show what’s possible with smart machines, and what tradeoffs need to be made to implement such a solution.
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