Priest's Battery

Father Edmundo Almeida, Spanish Jesuit priest, has invented a new type electric storage battery. U. S. students who had heard him lecture on his battery at Cadiz, Seville and San Sebastian, Spain, during the spring, last week said that it was more efficient than the common acid battery or the Edison alkaline battery. The Argentine magazine Estudios gave details.

Electric Battery. An electric battery is a collection of electrolytic cells. The action of such cells depends upon the fact that different metals and their salts have different electric potentialities. When pieces of different metals or of a metal and its salt are touched together, there is a momentary passage of electricity between them. When the pieces are in a suitable electrolytic solution the current is continuous.

Acid Cell. The usual type of storage cell contains sheets of spongy lead separated from sheets of spongy lead peroxide in a weak solution of sulphuric acid. During discharge, the acid forms sulphate of lead on both plates; during charge, lead and lead perioxide are again formed on their respective plates.

Alkaline Cell. Lighter, but giving less than one and a half volts, is the alkaline cell which Thomas Alva Edison perfected. This contains a caustic potash solution; thin sheets of nickelplated steel contain shallow pockets. Pockets of the positive plate are filled with nickel peroxide mixed with a finely flaked metallic conductor. In pockets of the negative plate finely divided iron is mixed with the same metallic conductor. (Originally, in both plates, the conductor was graphite.)

Almeida Cell is neutral. The negative plate contains zinc crystals, the positive graphite mixed with silver. They rest in a solution of zinc chloride and zinc bromide. Batteries made up of these cells, said the inventor priest, are 93% efficient, whereas alkaline batteries are 50% efficient, acid batteries 72%.