Different Types of Batteries

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Batteries nowadays are one of the most important components of electronic appliances and are used in almost every portable electronic device. From Drones to phones, and tablets to automobile EVs, one common electronic component you find is the battery.

The current battery market reached around USD 113.4 billion. And this market keeps increasing with the development of EVs and the expansion of portable electronics and wearable electronic devices.

From a various range of devices like Phones to EVS to drone to Automobile the battery and type also differs and is based on use cases.

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So let’s understand the depth of these battery types.

The first main classification of battery is on two types i.e. primary batteries and secondary batteries.

Primary Battery

Primary batteries are non-rechargeable disposable batteries. Once fully drained, primary cells can’t be recharged and you can say it’s a single-cycle battery. They consist of the chemical inside it that gets consumed with time and use and once it’s fully drained, you need to dispose of it.

Types of Primary Battery

Alkaline Batteries:

This type of battery drives the energy by a reaction of zinc metal and manganese oxide and we named it an alkaline battery because instead of using an acidic electrolyte, we use an alkaline electrolyte like potassium hydroxide (KOH).

Advantages:

More life
Shelf life is more
Small in size
Highly efficient
Low internal resistance so that discharge state in idle state is less
Leakage is low

Aluminum-Air Batteries:

This is the highest energy density battery and produces energy from the reaction of oxygen with aluminum. Once the aluminum is consumed and all aluminum gets reacted with air oxygen, we can’t use this battery further and we need to dispose of it after a single use.

Dry Cells:

This is another type of primary battery and most of us used it in our toys and Tv remote control but these batteries are now getting replaced by alkaline batteries because of their high lifetime and energy density over the dry cells. The dry cell is named after its electrolyte type as we use the dry electrolyte in it instead of liquid or wet electrolyte.

There are many other kinds of primary batteries as well but we mostly use mentioned above batteries.

There are the following other kinds of primary batteries or you can say disposable single-cycle batteries.

Lemon/potato battery
Lithium battery
Lithium-air battery
Magnesium battery
Mercury battery
Molten salt battery
Nickel oxyhydroxide battery
Oxyride battery
Organic radical battery
Paper battery
Pulvermacher’s chain
Silver-oxide battery
Solid-state battery
Sugar battery
Voltaic pile
Penny battery
Trough battery
Water-activated battery
Weston cell
Zinc–air battery
Zinc–carbon battery
Zinc–chloride battery
Zamboni pile

Battery Power Density Comparision Table

Battery Type	Energy Density (Wh/kg)	Life Cycle	Toxicity
Li-Ion	126-190	500-1,000	Low
Ni-Cd	45-80	1000	High
Ni-MH	100	300-500	Low
Li-ion polymer	185	300 – 500	Low
Lead Acid	30-50	200-300	High
Lithium–Sulfur	55	50-100	Non- Toxic

Secondary Battery

These kinds of batteries are multicycle batteries. We can recharge these batteries and use this kind of battery in many cycles of recharge. We mostly use these kinds of batteries in EVs, Phones, Automobiles, Portable gadgets, and in many different areas.

Based on environmental conditions and kind of need and use we further have different types of secondary batteries; one of the most popular secondary batteries that we use in most places is the Li-Ion battery, Li-Polymer Battery, and Lead Acid battery.

Types of Secondary Batteries

Li-Ion Batteries

This kind of battery uses Lithium metal so named Li-Ion battery. These batteries are composed of cells and lithium ions from the negative electrode move to the positive electrode and when we charge, the ions move back to their place; this cycle occurs in each charging and discharging process.

The power density of Li-ion batteries is 126 Wh/Kg.

Also Read: Li-ion Batteries can survive low temperature

Li-Po Batteries

The Li-Po battery lithium polymer battery and we named polymer battery because they use polymer electrolyte instead of liquid electrolyte. The high conductivity gel polymer form of electrolyte is used. These batteries carry high energy density compared to their weight.

These are mostly used in drones due to their lightweight and high density of energy. It has a Power density of 185 Wh/Kg.

Ni-MH Batteries

Ni-MH (nickel metal hydride) battery uses nickel oxide hydroxide and they are quite similar to Nikel cadmium NiCd battery but here they use a hydrogen-absorbing alloy instead of cadmium and have a lower impact on the environment compared to others.

The power density of these batteries is 100 Wh/Kg.

Lead-acid Batteries

The lead acid battery has electrodes submerged in sulfuric acid electrolytes. These batteries are quite bulky and are mostly used in automobiles, UPS, Grid power stations, etc.