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Technology Stocks : VALENCE TECHNOLOGY (VLNC) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Robert Cohen who wrote (8088)	2/9/1999 9:30:00 AM
From: Greg McDaniel	Respond to of 27311

Yesterday S&P re-iterated their accumulate status of TNB(Thomas and Betts) . In their statement they noted that TNBs LPI battery revenues is expected to triple. I forgot if this was expected for the quarter or for the year. I believe it was for the quarter.

To: Robert Cohen who wrote (8088)	2/9/1999 1:15:00 PM
From: Rich Wolf	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 27311

Hi Robert, Hesitated since chemistry is not my field. I'm just an EE reporting what I heard. All I think I know is: The bi-cell sandwich has a cathode w/ electrolyte containing lithium ions, which are shuttled between the two anodes that 'sandwich' the cathode. It appears this electrolyte is gel-like, but I'm not sure. They showed them 'injecting' it into the cathode with syringe-like devices. I'd also read that the Bellcore patent used some microscopic honeycomb-like structure to contain the gel, but again this could be wrong. The anode materials, and how well they accept and release the lithium ions, are a key component. The lithium ions are shuttled back and forth between the two anodes, hence the name 'rocking chair battery' (there's an old link to an article describing this; anyone have it handy?). Two materials which apparently work well are cobalt and manganese. Valence uses manganese dioxide. Lev mentioned that the cobalt implementation 'contains twice the lithium it needs,' while their manganese formulation only has exactly the amount of lithium it needs. Valence does have a public patent using vanadium in the anode, and possibly other patents are pending. The head of R&D, Joe Lundquist, spoke first, and he said their research is focusing on needs for higher energy density. He said the customers were satisfied with their improvements in the area of the number of recharge cycles. To attain higher energy density, he said they would be working to develop new cathodes. This tells me it might involve moving away from the Bellcore patent. I'd be pulling a 20 year old chemistry book off the shelf to say more, or speculate on what this means. I was hoping someone else would be able to step up to the plate. Regarding Valence patent protection in the manganese polymer arena, Lev indicated that the Japanese were likely sticking with cobalt so as to 'work around' the Valence patents. Also, their safety regulations are not as strict as in the US, so they can sell the product there more easily. ULBI has some form of manganese, but their process didn't work right when scaled up to their production machinery (they were relying on outside vendors for the laminate, like valence had been doing initially, he said). The only other potential competitor using manganese would be Moli Energy, he thought. Everyone else was using cobalt oxide. And yes, Lev made clear that the problem was in using the cobalt formulation for the bigger batteries. The reason was that they require more stringent temperature regulation. They can be dangerous when they are overheated or overcharged (he said they had no overcharging problem with their cells, making the charging circuitry simpler), something about the lithium plating onto the anode, and how it can explode. He mentioned that he knew the problems well, because in their joint venture with Alliant, they also make cobalt-based batteries for the government (which has less stringent safety requirements). Conversely, Lev stated that they tested their manganese batteries at three temperature ranges: 25 degC, 45 degC, and 60 degC. He said that 45 deg the battery may lose up to 3-5% and at 60 deg up to 7-8% of its storage capacity. He said customers were very pleased with this, as it was comparable to what the liquid electrolyte batteries get, but without the safety problems. Hope this was somewhat useful. Best regards, Rich