Hitachi Maxell Going “Leak-Free”
Coming out on April Fool’s Day 2009, Hitachi Maxell Ltd is setting out to put an end to battery leakage with a “zero-leakage design” addition to their alkaline battery line “Voltage.” The new battery, also being called “Voltage”, is said to have been developed with a new zinc alloy to reduce the amount of residual, undischarged zinc, which is what causes leakage in batteries.
The whole concept behind reducing the leakage is fairly complicated, but the bottom line is that by reducing the amount of undischarged zinc, the life of the new battery is extended by 5%, compared with the existing product released in February 2008.
While they did release a few details surrounding the technology behind this version of “Voltage”, Hitachi was in large part keeping their cards close to their chest regarding the new battery. “Hitachi Maxell made some improvements to pass electrons even when zinc becomes zinc oxide and succeeded in reducing the amount of undischarged zinc,” said Kenichi Sano, the company’s manager of the Planning Department of the Primary Battery Division.”A surface modification is one of the improvements, but we cannot give further information,” Sano continued.
The new batteries will be released first in AA and AAA sizes, with Hitachi Maxell aiming to move 10 million batteries a month beginning in April. They are backing up their product by offering to replace the battery for free and repair/replace the device powered by the battery if leakage occurs within the five year usage period. That’s pretty good, considering there aren’t a whole lot of other companies offering up such a guarantee on their product.
Category: Battery News
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