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Gold/Mining/Energy : Pacific Rim Mining V.PFG -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Elizabeth Andrews who wrote (9219)	3/22/1998 3:16:00 PM
From: Bill Jackson	Respond to of 14627

Elizabeth, Silver has been used for rechargeable for decades. It has the higest energy density of all, except possibly lithium, but the tendency to dendrites gas prevented is widespread use. After 100 or so charge cycles the dendrites pierce the separatots and short the cell, (catastrophically at times). It was big in military choppers for years. Now the Nickel metal hydrides have replaced it as the newer choppers have more efficieny. SPacecraft used silver batteries, portable video cams used them. All in the past. I do not know what this fellows reference was to, buy if they have solved the dendrite problem then a small silver battery might take the place of a heavy lead or nicad in weight critical cars. Ballard systems are economic for trucks and busses in flat areas, where it is all lower speed traffic. Not yet good for hills or higher speed. But a few more years and they will extend this to cars, perhaps. The old battery tech based on lead works well and has been perfected. But the weight of lead defeats it. It does give a good 2 Volts per cell. The nicad are better, but only 1.2 V per cell. Lithium are best at 3V per cell and are light, but the rate of charge and discharge of lithiums are not good enough for cars where you need large start currents. The lithium electrolyte has too muc internal resistance under heavy loads and their voltage falls off enormously. Fuel cell are steady burn devices and you are stcu to a certain max current, so an adjunct battery is needed for acceleration. There is a lot more like this on ballards thread. Bill