Most devices require a minimal voltage to continue functioning. When your alkaline battery drops below that threshold, it still has 80% of its voltage left, but it is essentially useless.
This is where Batteriser comes in. It’s essentially a voltage booster that sucks every last drop of useable energy from ostensibly spent batteries. So, instead of using just 20 percent of all the power hidden inside of your Duracells and Energizers, Batteriser makes effective use of the remaining 80 percent.
Voltage boosters are nothing new, but Batteriser scales down the technology to the point where it can fit inside a stainless steel sleeve less than 0.1 mm thick. Roohparvar says the sleeves are thin enough to fit inside almost every battery compartment imaginable, and the combined package can extend battery life between 4.9x for devices like remote controls and 9.1x for various electronic toys.
“The Batteriser has boost circuitry that will boost the voltage from 0.6 volts to 1.5 volts and will maintain voltage at 1.5—which is a brand new battery,” Roohparvar says. “There’s actually no IP [intellectual property] in the boost circuitry. Our technology is really a miniaturization technique that allows us to build the sleeve. We have some IP in some of the IC circuits that are in there, but the key is we’ve been able to miniaturize the boost circuit to a point that no one else has been able to achieve.”
Too good to be true? Snake oil? My gut says, this is the real deal. And the test is simple enough to run. Run down the batteries, then add the sleeve, reinsert. If it works as advertised, we’ve got a winner.
Side note: Read the linked article. There’s a fascinating story about industrial espionage that sounds like it came from the marketing department, but still interesting.
Hi Dave, I read the linked MacWorld article earlier this morning, with interest, and also believe it’s the real deal, not snake oil.
In an interesting twist of fate as a former Ralston Purina Canada employee 6 years, I still own ENR shares from when the RalPur conglomerate split apart prior to Nestle’s 1997 acquisition of only its pet food business.
I follow Energizer closely and note its Board (including Director who hired me in Cda) is splitting it into two companies (battery and household products) a la the RalPur de-conglomeration; so Batterizer may very well be on their radar in making this move to “extract shareholder value”!
Looking forward to hearing more news about this. Hope it doesn’t turn out to be another EV1.
Snakeoil.
First, a good boost circuit is around 90% efficient, so right away assume you lose 10% of the total power by boosting it.
Second, they drastically overestimate the amount of power left in a dead battery.
Third, their usage of 1.3. as dead is crazy considering that lithium rechargeables are fully charged at 1.2v. A device that doesn’t run on 1.2v from a lithium should be considered a broken device.
Look, here’s the datasheet for a Duracell AA: http://media.professional.duracell.com/downloads//datasheets/product/Ultra%20Power/Ultra-Power_AA_MX1500.pdf
Ignore the graphs for constant current, anything interesting more resembles a constant power draw. The 100mW line is a nice typical power curve. So look at the voltage over time for 100mW Constant Power draw on the upper right graph on page 2.
Power used is the area under the graph. I’m not upset when something considers consider a dead battery at the knee in the curve around 1.1v. A lot of systems will run until the power really really dies at .8v to .9v.
At 1.1v there’s less than 5% power left (count the boxes under the curve) from 1.1v to dead. That’s less than the 10% you lost by having a boost circuit on the battery.
Even being generous and accepting 1.2 as dead for an alkaline battery that’s still only about %12 left once you hit 1.2v.
I mis-remembered. It’s rechargeable Nickel-Metal Hydride (NiMH) batteries that are effectively charged at 1.2v. Lithium rechargeables are closer to the battery curve of alkalines
That’s all interesting, but the average person — and even myself — is simply interested in seeing results. Numbers and curves and arcane electrical symbols make their eyes glaze over. Apparently the guy can demonstrate batteries that “come back to life” after putting on this jacket. A device that says the battery is dead or not usable, can suddenly use the battery again. If I even get 2x the battery life rather than the incredible sounding 8x out of them, they will pay for themselves fairly well and keep me from having to run to the store several times to buy those AAAs I forgot to keep stocked in my battery drawer.
I will be interested, of course, in seeing tests by people outside the developer as well as use case in real world examples by normal folk.
Old technology gets new twist. Hopefully, this will succeed. What is not divulged, is the amount of use in mAh that this recovery mode provides.