Cordless Phones Battery as electrochemical cells

Cordless Phones Battery as electrochemical cells

Cordless phone batteries are specifically designed for each cordless phone brand and model. Cordless phone batteries are portable rechargeable batteries. These portable rechargeable batteries include several "dry cell" types, which are sealed units. Cells of this type include nickel-cadmium (NiCd), nickel metal hydride (NiMH) and lithium-ion (Li-Ion) cells. NiMH & NiCd batteries are interchangeable in cordless phones. Quality cordless phone battery can give a cordless telephone handset longer battery life, for more talking and longer standby time away from the charging cradle.

A battery is two or more electrochemical cells electrically interconnected in an appropriate series/parallel arrangement to provide the required operating voltage and current levels. Under common usage, the term "battery" is often also applied to a single cell. Lithium Ion (Li-Ion) battery is one of the newer rechargeable battery technologies, Li Ion batteries can deliver 40% more capacity than comparably sized NiCd batteries and are one of the lightest rechargeable batteries available today. They are also one of the more expensive rechargeable technologies. Nickel Cadmium batteries are one of the most proven and historically most widely used rechargeable batteries. Very dependable and "robust" but contain cadmium and have relatively low capacity when compared to other rechargeable systems. Nickel Metal Hydride (NiMH) batteries are interchangeable with most NiCd batteries. The nickel metal hydride batteries generally deliver 10-25% greater capacity than NiCds and are environmentally friendlier than NiCd batteries since they do not contain cadmium.

Several types of rechargeable battery systems, including those of lead–acid, nickel–cadmium, nickel–metal hydride, and lithium ion and lithium-ion polymer exist in the market. A rechargeable battery having accurate and reliable state-of-charge (SoC) will improve the performance and reliability, and will ultimately lengthen the lifetime of the battery. However, many examples of poor accuracy and reliability can be found in practice.

The different types of electrochemical cells include fuel cell, galvanic cell, electrolytic cells, flow cells, or voltaic cells. A battery management scheme using an array of electrochemical cells, improves the energy efficiency of radio communication devices such as cordless phones. This is implemented to achieve a further improvement in the battery performance. Results indicate that the proposed battery management techniques improve system performance no matter which parameter values are chosen to characterize the cells' behavior.

The need to regularly recharge batteries in cordless phones, mobile phones, laptops, and other portable terminals may be eliminated in the future with the use of fuel cells which are one type of electrochemical cell.

A fuel cell is an electrochemical cell in which the energy of a reaction between a fuel, such as liquid hydrogen, and an oxidant, such as liquid oxygen, is converted directly and continuously into electrical energy. While any chemically suitable fuel, including metals such as lithium (Li), sodium (Na), aluminum (Al), and zinc (Zn), may be used in a fuel cell, hydrocarbons will not react at a significant rate in low-temperature fuel cells. Liquid-fueled methanol cells find applications in simple low-power units and liquid-fueled hydrazine cells have also found specialized applications. When considering cost and hazardous factors, hydrogen seems to be the only suitable general high-performance fuel for fuel cell.

STMicroelectronics (Geneva, Switzerland) has developed fuel cells that are reportedly small enough to fit inside a mobile handset and are able to generate all the electrical energy needed to power the phone from liquid methanol, a low-cost and easily available organic fuel.