Comments (0)

By admin, March 15, 2010 9:02 pm

Micro Power Electronics, Inc., the global leader in portable power solutions for mission-critical equipment, announced that the U.S. Patent Office awarded it a patent covering a battery charger configuration to reduce thermal conduction.

“This system performs nearly as well as the conventional approach of embedding a fan within the charger enclosure for thermal management.”

The newly issued U.S. Patent No. 7,576,513 describes a method for separating a housing containing circuit charging components from a housing containing battery charging contacts and a rechargeable battery pack for the purpose of minimizing heat transfer from the components of the battery charging circuit to the rechargeable battery pack. This patent ensures that battery does not receive excessive heat while charging, which extends battery pack life and minimizes the risk of battery overheating during charging.

“This innovative and novel use of a passive system architecture is not only very cost effective for our clients, but is a reliable and safe method of minimizing the heat transferred to the battery while charging,” said Ron Pitchel, Vice President of Engineering and Continuous Improvement for Micro Power. “This system performs nearly as well as the conventional approach of embedding a fan within the charger enclosure for thermal management.”

Micro Power supplies custom battery systems and solutions to the portable medical, automatic data collection, and military markets. As a pioneer in the development of lithium battery systems, smart battery packs, chargers, docking stations, and power supplies, Micro Power has more than 20 years of experience developing battery solutions within its domestic and Asian production facilities. The company is ISO 13485 and 9001:2008 certified.

Comments (0)

By admin, December 16, 2009 9:21 pm

Micro Power has secured two patents designed to improve the safety and reliability of portable battery packs used in mission-critical operations. The patents will be used in battery-pack designs for medical and military original equipment manufacturers, the company says.

The first patent is a redundant battery-protection system and method. The enhanced protection system includes a primary protection circuit and a redundant protection circuit as a backup if the primary fails. The patent ensures that battery packs will operate when called into action, even if there is a component failure that would typically fail a conventional battery.

The second patent is for an electrical insulation system and method for power storage component separation. The insulation system uses a polyurethane elastomer material to electrically separate various components of electrical power within battery packs. The polyurethane elastomer can be used to insulate cells, connecting tabs, printed-circuit assemblies, solder joints, nickel strips, and other conductive members within the battery pack. It also ensures performance under abusive conditions such as shock or vibration.

Comments (0)

By admin, December 10, 2009 9:12 pm

Typical chemical batteries just don’t cut it when a device needs to run for years without fail. Enter the betavoltaics, or tiny nuclear batteries that harvest energy from radioactive sources such as tritium.

Now a company called Widetronix has developed new betavoltaics that can run for up to 25 years and perhaps power tiny devices in everything from military hardware to smartphone sensors.

Nuclear in this case does not refer to fission power and splitting atoms, but instead means the natural decay of electrons given off by radioactive sources. A semiconductor such as silicon harvests the decaying electrons in betavoltaics — similar to how semiconductors in photovoltaic cells collect photons from solar energy.