FRIWO | UK
Perhaps the biggest drawback of all the various types of Lead Acid battery is their large size and weight, meaning they are not suitable for integration into portable products (unless your target demographic happens to be Olympic weight lifters) Alternatively in products where ballast is considered a positive, a large lead acid battery definitely fulfils that need – meaning an installed product can be more stable in inclement weather and is less easy to remove without consent.
Lead Acid batteries are very robust in terms of their tolerance for temperature, and can withstand overcharging better than other chemistries (although every care should be taken to avoid overcharging any battery) they also have a very low self discharge level. This combination means Lead Acid batteries are ideal for low duty cycle, standby type applications – although there are ‘cylic’ models of lead acid batteries designed for more intense use, they are still limited to a few hundred full discharge/charge cycles before beginning to lose a significant amount of their stated capacity.
The other consideration is that, unsurprisingly, these batteries contain Lead so are not environmentally friendly in terms of manufacture or disposal at the end of their life. Many other heavy metals (see Cadmium) were removed from batteries by the RoHS directives. While these batteries are still the de-facto choice for starting combustion engines there seems little room for manoeuvre. As electric vehicles increase their market share pressure will increase for the restriction of the manufacture of Lead Acid batteries, with the resultant decrease in their universal availability and a potentially significant increase in cost.
We offer a full range of Lead Acid battery chargers HERE
The first Nickel based batteries to achieve prominence were Nickel Cadmium chemistry, NiCd batteries have a number of extremely useful properties, they were happy with very high charge and discharge currents and could be stored for a long time and still used (once they had been ‘woken up’)
on the downside NiCd suffer badly from memory effect if not fully discharged regularly .
Also cadmium is a highly toxic metal, and following the RoHS directive NiCd batteries are now only allowed to be used in a limited range of approved applications.
Nickel Metal Hydride (NimH) batteries are much more environmentally friendly, and this is the default Nickel chemistry available for consumer and industrial batteries today. NimH batteries have been developed to have much higher capacity than the equivalent NiCd, and are available in a very wide range of standard case sizes from hundreds of manufacturers, meaning inter-operability is straightforward and cost to change is low. One of the most significant drawbacks of NimH batteries is their lack of thermal efficiency, high charge and discharge currents create a large amount of heat, potentially damaging the battery and reducing cycle and shelf life, combined with the fact that NimH has relatively high self discharge to start with, these batteries must be managed correctly in order to achieve their stated performance.
Haredata Electronics partner with a number of factories to provide a full range of NimH battery packs
In addition FRIWO have developed a full NimH/NiCd battery charger range with chemistry specific control algorithms to ensure Nickel based batteries maintain optimum performance!
Additionally the shipment of Li-Ion battery packs is regulated,
UN38.3 specifies the required packaging and labelling requirements (example above), and it should not be assumed that compliance with this standard guarantees that every shipping company is happy to transport large quantities of Li-Ion cells, particularly via Air Freight. As a result the options for changing from one manufacturer of cell or pack to another, even if nominally of the same construction are limited, may require additional testing and approval and can take considerable time.
FRIWO have a wide range of standard Li-Ion battery packs in the most common configurations, they all feature UN38.3 and IEC62133 safety approval and have SMBus communication as an option. FRIWO also offer a sophisticated range of dedicated Li-Ion chargers, designed to ensure safe charging of a wide range of Li-Ion battery packs, from 1 cell through to 10 in series, and with charge currents up to 4000mA.
We use Lithium Ion technology for our electric vehicle battery canisters.
24/7 continuous operation requires a robust battery management system (BMS) to ensure high safety and availability. Since FRIWO have developed 100% of the BMS electronics and software, we can react flexibly to special customer requirements and special functions!
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