Posts Tagged ‘aa’

1.5V AA Duracell Alkaline Battery Tests

6, Aug 2013

1-5v-aa-duracell-alkaline-battery

The 1.5V AA Duracell Alkaline batteries we are testing are the typical Duracell Copper Top batteries that you can find pretty much everywhere in a shop or a gas station. The batteries we’ve got for testing are under warranty until 03-2019 and Duracell mentions that these are guaranteed for 10 years in storage. Duracell’s website does not have detailed information about the specs of these batteries or the capacity they are supposed to offer, so we’ve decided to test them so that yo will be able to compare the results to other Alkaline batteries.


1-5v-aa-duracell-alkaline-battery-capacity

The Open Circuit Voltage (no load voltage) of the 1.5V AA Duracell Alkaline batteries is 1.6V, though it quickly drops to 1.5V under load. We are testing all Alkaline batteries with a constant current load of 0.1A, 0.2A, 0.5A and 1A and measuring what capacity they can provide at these levels, and these Alkaline cells from Duracell are no exception. The Duracell batteries are able to handle quite well higher current drain for a while and although there is an expected drop in the useable capacity you get even at 1A constant current load we got a decent performance out of them.

What we got out of the 1.5V AA Duracell Alkaline batteries in our tests:

– 2348 mAh at 0.1A load
– 1808 mAh at 0.2A load
– 1050 mAh at 0.5A load
– 506 mAh at 1.0A load

– 2.913 Wh at 0.1A load
– 2.189 Wh at 0.2A load
– 1.194 Wh at 0.5A load
– 0.564 Wh at 1.0A load

Common Consumer Batteries and the Names Used

4, Aug 2013

standard-battery-types-alkaline-rechargeable

There are multiple battery sizes that are the most commonly used ones, these are the AAA, AA, C, D and 9V batteries that can be either primary (single use) as well as rechargeable. But these batteries also have many other names, some of which are used by different manufacturers and in some countries the other names may be more popular than the typical types mentioned above.

AAA Alkaline Battery – MN2400, LR03, E92, 4203/4003, K3A, AM4, 824, LR03, 24A, R03 (carbon–zinc), 24D (carbon–zinc)
AAA Rechargeable Battery – HR03 (NiMH), MIGNON, MINI-STILO, 4003, E92, K3A, R0, UM4, KR03 (NiCd), ZR03 (NiOOH)

The typical capacity of an AAA size alkaline battery is around 1000-1200 mAh, for Carbon-Zinc batteries the capacity is around 500 mAh and the rechargeable AAA batteries of the NiMH type usually offer abound 800-1000 mAh capacity.

AA Alkaline Battery – MN1500, LR6, E91, 4206/4006, KAA, AM3, 815, LR6, R6 (carbon–zinc), 15D (carbon–zinc)
AA Rechargeable Battery – HR6 (NiMH), MICRO, STILO, 4006, E91, KAA, R6, UM3, KR6 (NiCd), ZR6 (NiOOH)

The typical capacity of an AA size alkaline battery is around 1500-2500 mAh, for Carbon-Zinc batteries the capacity is around 500-800 mAh and the rechargeable AA batteries of the NiMH type usually offer abound 1600-2900 mAh capacity.

C Alkaline Battery – MN1400, LR14, E93, 4014, KC, AM2, 814, LR14, R14 (carbon–zinc), 14D (carbon–zinc)
C Rechargeable Battery – HR14 (NiMH), BABY, MEZZA-TORCIA, 4014, E93, KC, R14, UM2, KR14 (NiCd), ZR14 (NiOOH)

The typical capacity of a C size alkaline battery can be up to about 8000 mAh, for Carbon-Zinc batteries the capacity can be up to about 4000 mAh and the rechargeable C batteries of the NiMH type usually offer abound 4500-6000 mAh capacity. Alternatively there are also special plastic adapters that can be used together with an AA battery to make a C size cell, though the capacity would be lower in this case than what a C size battery would normally provide.

D Alkaline Battery – MN1300, LR20, E95, 4020, KD, AM1, 813, LR20, 13D (carbon-zinc), R20 (carbon-zinc)
D Rechargeable Battery – HR20 (NiMH), HR20, MONO, TORCIA, 4020, E95, KD, R20, UM1, KR20 (Ni-Cd), ZR20 (NiOOH)

The typical capacity of a D size alkaline battery can be up to about 12000 mAh, for Carbon-Zinc batteries the capacity can be up to about 8000 mAh and the rechargeable D batteries of the NiMH type usually offer abound 2000-12000 mAh capacity. Alternatively there are also special plastic adapters that can be used together with an AA battery to make a D size cell, though the capacity would be lower in this case than what a D size battery would normally provide.

9V Alkaline Battery – MN1604, 6LR61, 522, 4022, K9V, 6AM6, A1604, 6LR61, 1604D (carbon‑zinc), 6F22 (carbon-zinc), 1604LC (lithium)
9V Rechargeable Battery – HR9V (NiMH), HR9V, E-BLOCK, TRANSISTOR, 422, 4022, 6F22, K9V, 6HR61, 6KR61 (NiCd), 11604 (NiCd)

The 9V batteries essentially consists of multiple cells to bring up the voltage higher – 6x 1.5V cells for carbon-zinc; 3 cells for Lithium; 6, 7 or 8 cells for NiMH (7.2V, 8.4V or 9.6V) using 1.2V cells. Alkaline batteries can go up to about 500-600 mAh capacity, 400 mAh for the carbon‑zinc, up to about 1200 mAh for lithium (non-rechargeable), 200–300 mAh for NiMH and about 100 mAh for NiCd.

1.5V AA GP Super Alkaline Battery Tests

2, Aug 2013

1.5v-aa-gp-super-alkaline-battery

The 1.5V AA GP Super Alkaline batteries are the mid-range model that offers high capacity for alkaline batteries from GP, so we were quite interested to see how these compare to other high-end alkaline batteries. These batteries are supposed to offer up to 7 years shelf life and the ones we’ve tested were marked for use up to 01-2019. GP offers also an Ultra lineup of Alkaline batteries that are supposed to offer even higher capacity than the Super lineup that we are testing here, so we should also check these models as well in the future. Bit for now let us see how the 1.5V AA GP Super Alkaline batteries can perform. GP’s website does not have a lot of useful information about the actual capacity that the Super Alkaline batteries should offer, so we are off to test to see what we can expect to get from them.


1.5v-aa-gp-super-alkaline-power-profile

Starting with the power profile test of the 1.5V AA GP Super Alkaline batteries we can see that they can handle pretty high loads before reaching the cutoff voltage of 1V that we are using for our tests. We’ve managed to reach up to 1.55A current draw before the batteries hit the cutoff voltage and values over 1 Amp are not that common to find with alkaline batteries, so these batteries from GP are handling pretty well actually up to this point. The open circuit voltage of the 1.5V AA GP Super Alkaline batteries we’ve tested with was 1.58V, though of course that value decreases when the battery is under load.


1.5v-aa-gp-super-alkaline-capacity

Moving on to the constant current draw tests we are performing and starting with a 0.1A load tests for the 1.5V AA GP Super Alkaline batteries we’ve managed to get 2231 mAh capacity which we consider to be quite good. Going for 0.2A constant current draw form the batteries the useful capacity you can expect is 1839 mAh and going even higher the useful capacity gets pretty much in half in our tests at 0.5A and 1.0A as compared to the previous rate. Nevertheless the 1.5V AA GP Super Alkaline batteries still manage to perform very well even under higher constant current draw rates, though as usual for such situations we would still recommend to go for rechargeable NiMH batteries instead as the better choice.

The performance of the 1.5V AA GP Super Alkaline Batteries in our tests:

– 2231 mAh at 0.1A load
– 1839 mAh at 0.2A load
– 991 mAh at 0.5A load
– 458 mAh at 1.0A load

– 2.765 Wh at 0.1A load
– 2.197 Wh at 0.2A load
– 1.122 Wh at 0.5A load
– 0.504 Wh at 1.0A load


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