Can lead acid battery be used with cell phones?

Batteries are always talking about when the new products are launched by many brands worldwide ranging from car firms and cellphone brands. You will find lead acid battery in the car like Ford, Nissan, BMW, Hyundai, Honda, Maruti SUZUKI etc. However, the lithium ion battery is found together with mobile phones like Apple, HTC, Blackberry, Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericson etc. As most of you know cars equip with lead acid battery and cell phones equip with lithium ion battery, have you ever imagined why former is better for the cars and the latter for cell phones? Why does a car use lead acid battery rather than lithium ion battery?

In this type Lead and Lead Dioxide are used for making the anode and cathode submerged in 1/3rd Sulphuric Acid acting as the Electrolyte. Chemical Reactions taking place inside converts the two electrodes into Lead Sulphate and when one recharges the discharged battery the process is partially reversed in order to bring back the initial reactants starting the reaction i.e Converting Lead Sulphate to Lead and Lead Dioxide.

It is one of the oldest types and are big & bulky owing to the Lowest Energy-to-Weight and Energy-to-Volume ratio design currently existing in this world. The reason for them to be used in cars is they have a tremendous Surge-to-Weight ratio eventually supplying high surge of power required in car starters and other machines as well. Another important fact is that these batteries are very cheap to produce but lack the quality of imparting steady, low or middling supply of electricity over a long period of time along with longer recharging time.

Comparing to lead acid batteries, lithium ion battery has High Power-to-Weight and Power-to-Volume ratio and they even provide steady supply for longer periods, which uses a variety of substances with Graphite being the anode while lithium cobalt oxide, lithium iron phosphate or lithium manganese oxide or others as cathode. Lithium migrates between the electrodes through an Electrolyte mixture of lithium salt in an organic solvent, during the electricity producing reaction. Recharging revert the chemical processes subsequently bringing lithium back to the terminals. Batteries with high surge currents are also available. Apart from all above qualities they have certain drawbacks as well which include: High Production Costs; Inability to hold Charge Decays when not in use where on the other hand Lead Acid batteries go on working with appreciable performance for several years.

On the ground of the different mechanism, lithium ion battery couldn’t replace lead acid battery to be used in a car. And lead acid battery can not be designed to the same size with a li-ion battery which is equipped with cell phones. At present, the technology is not that mature to concentrate the energy of a lead acid battery. Therefore, they each have their own field which is difficult to be changed at least not now.

Source: www.leoch.com