Household battery
The size, type, and manufacturer
Today household batteries have become a part of life. In the US alone, more than two million house hold batteries are purchased every year. These batteries are used to power appliances like, radios, clocks, toys, computers, power tools, and other home electronics. Since these batteries are for one time use, after use they usually land up in landfills or incinerators. Disposal of the used batteries in the landfill is of concern, since they contain toxic materials such as, mercury, cadmium and nickel. The batteries thrown in the landfill have the danger of leaching into drinking water. These unused batteries land up in incinerators as well, and when they do, it may cause vaporization of metals like, mercury into the air. Incineration of the batteries will further cause other metals, such as, cadmium and lead, concentrate in the ash formed.
In order to reduce the risk of mercury leaching into the drinking water from the used household batteries thrown in the landfills, one way is to reduce the use of mercury in the batteries. While it is difficult to eliminate mercury content from button cells, the manufacturers of alkaline batteries have promised to do away with mercury from the cells. As for button cells, mercury forms an integral part and cannot be done away with. The other way would be to make the users aware of the dangers, and while choosing a battery they have the option to choose alkaline batteries with less mercury contents, rechargeable cells, which can be recycled when they can no longer be used, or battery-free toys and appliances whenever possible. To avoid the contaminations, you should look for solar powered devices where-ever applicable.
The danger of contamination might be averted when you recycle the used batteries, and keep them out of the garbage. But then again, in some, the metallic part is too small to have a cost effective recycling. Presently, the cost of removing mercury from the used alkaline cells and carbon-zinc batteries exceeds the cost far more than the recovered metal itself. The house hold batteries are processed for metal recovery, which are mercury, silver oxide batteries, and nickel-cadmium batteries as well.
House hold alkaline batteries are manufactured by Duracell in many common sizes, such as, AAA, AA, C, D, and 9V. Duracell also manufactures certain sizes, which are not used commonly, such as, AAAA, which has applications in Pagers, penlights, and blood glucose meters, and the J series batteries, which are primarily used for hospital devices. The company has a range of button batteries in its production run, which uses Zinc-air chemistry. This type of battery is mostly used in calculators, hearing aids and other small mostly medical related devices.
Energizer is the other well known company who manufactures household batteries, and the products include, AAAA size cell, the E96, which is an unusual size cell commonly used in torches and electronic pens. In addition Energizer manufactures AAA, AA, C, D, and 9V batteries. A91 photo Lithium AA cell is also one of the products of Energizer, which provides excellent long lasting power to your Digital camera, some five times more than ordinary alkaline cells.
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