San Jose, Calif. — Disposable batteries are criminally inefficient in their transfer of available power — often thrown away with 80 percent of their power still stored — but one company is marketing a solution.
Start-up Batteroo has introduced a reusable sleeve, the Batteriser, that slips over new or used batteries and instantly taps into whatever remaining energy left in the cell.
“When we get a new battery it is 1.5 volts, [and] when we use it in a device it goes down to 1.3 volts under load condition. At that point we consider it to be dead and throw it away,” said Dr. Kiumars Parvin, physics professor at San Jose State University. “We tested the Batteriser sleeve in our lab and we confirmed that it taps into the 80 percent of energy that is usually thrown away.”
Batteriser is made from stainless steel and is less than 0.1mm thick. It incorporates an intelligent voltage-management and delivery mechanism inside the sleeve that makes contact with the positive and negative ends of a battery to access untapped remaining energy at a steady state system voltage. The result is a battery that can last up to eight times longer, according to the company.
Batteriser will be available for AA, AAA, C and D batteries upon launch with retails starting less than $10 for a four-pack of Batteriser sleeves.
“Batteriser pays for itself with the very first purchased pack,” said Batteroo founder Bob Roohparvar. “Why throw away perfectly good batteries, or waste money buying new batteries, when we now have a technology that saves money, saves energy, and can cut the number of batteries that end up in landfills by more than half?”
Roohparvar holds more than 20 patents and is a 30-year veteran of the technology space. His career spans power management, semiconductors and consumer products. He is also a professor at California State University, East Bay, teaching computer science and computer engineering courses.
