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How does an inventor turn their new invention ideas into money? This is probably the single most often asked question I receive from people who have no clue as to how to proceed. They often hope that they can sell their brilliant new idea to somebody who will hand them money. Sorry, it just does not work that way and you often end up handing a fistful of money in the other direction.

The best answer I can give is to get educated in how the whole process works - how to potentially turn an idea into a money making invention. Upfront, you need to know that only a minority of ideas eventually make money. However, that should not stop you from inventing, after all even Thomas Edison had his failures.

How To Use These Money Lessons

This tutorial covers the very basics for people who know nothing at all. However, once completed you will have a good outline of the entire invention process. Each lesson is written in very simple terms (we are writing for beginners) and each lesson includes links to more advanced material.

We would suggest that you read just the lessons once from beginning to end and then later repeat the process and look at the more advanced materials offered in the right hand column. For example on this page we have additional material on how to deal with invention promoters that just might help you keep your fistful of money.

Become an Educated Consumer

While this tutorial can help you do more yourself. You will need to hire professional help for many of the tasks that you cannot do for yourself. However, it is always better not to go shopping in the dark.

You might not have the legal know-how to execute a laptop battery search or fill out a patent application. But there is no excuse for you not to know what a patent is and what searching for prior art means. You need to understand what patenting is all about.

And if you have no money everything you can do yourself or preliminarily prepare saves you money and prevents you from being taken advantage of.

 Chemical Systems
Among the most important factors in designing products around batteries (and batteries themselves) is the amount of power a battery of a given size and weight can produce. After all, the energy source for a device should not handicap the ready use of that device. The chemical reactions in the cell are the most important factor constraining energy density and the usefulness of batteries. In fact, the entire history of battery technology has been mostly a matter of finding and refining battery chemistries to pack more energy in ever-smaller packages.  

Today’s batteries use a variety of chemical systems, some dating from the late 19th Century as mentioned previously, and some hardly a decade old. The diversity results from each having distinct benefits for particular applications. The following battery chemistries are the most popular for portable computer, cell phone, power system, and peripheral applications:

Carbon-zinc
Ground zero for laptop battery technology is the carbon-zinc cell, the heirs of Georges Leclanché’s 1866 invention. Carbon-zinc cells are probably the most common batteries in the world, known under a variety of names including dry cell and flashlight battery. When you think of batteries, it’s likely that carbon-zinc cells first come to mind. One company alone, Energizer, sells over six billion carbon-zinc cells each year. They are the lowest priced primary cells. They also have the lowest storage density of any common battery.

One reason carbon-zinc cells are so popular is that the name actually describes two or three different chemistry systems. These include Leclanché cells, zinc chloride cells, and alkaline inspiron 600m battery.

The name describes the basic chemistry of the cells. In the basic carbon-zinc cell, the “carbon” in the name is a cathode current collector–a carbon rod in the center of the cell. The actual material of the cathode is a mixture of manganese dioxide, carbon conductor and electrolyte. The zinc serves as the anode and forms the metal shell of the latitude d510 battery. The electrolyte is a complex mixture of chemicals that typically includes ammonium chloride, manganese dioxide, and zinc chloride.

The electrolyte is the chief difference between Leclanché and zinc chloride cells. The former use a slightly acidic mix of ammonium chloride and zinc chloride in water. The electrolyte in zinc chloride cells is mostly zinc chloride. Zinc chloride cells produce a slightly higher open-circuit voltage than Leclanché cells, 1.6 versus 1.55 volts.

Although zinc chloride cells typically have a greater capacity than Leclanché cells, this difference shrinks under lighter loads so zinc chloride cells are often termed “heavy-duty.” In any case, the efficiency of any carbon-zinc cell decreases as the load increases–doubling the current drain more than cuts in half the capacity of the cell. The most efficient strategy is to use as large a cell as practical for a given application. That’s why power-hungry toys demand “D” batteries and low-drain transistor radios make do with latitude d500 battery.

Alkaline batteries, no matter the advertised claims, are little more than an enhancement of 19th Century carbon-zinc technology. The biggest change in chemistry is an alteration to the chemical mix in the electrolyte that makes it more alkaline (what did you expect?). This change helps to increase storage density and shelf life of the cells.

The construction (as opposed to chemistry) of alkaline cells differs significantly from ordinary carbon-zinc cells, however. Alkaline cells are effectively turned inside-out. The shell of the alkaline battery is nothing more than that–a protective shell–and it does not play a part in the overall chemical reaction. The anode of the cell is a gelled mixture of powered zinc combined with the electrolyte (itself a mixture of potassium hydroxide–a strong alkaline-and water), and the combination is linked to the negative terminal of the cell by a brass spike running up the middle of the cell. The cathode, a mixture of carbon and manganese dioxide, surrounds the anode and electrolyte, separated by a layer of non-woven fabric such as polyester. The figure below illustrates the construction of a Duracell alkaline latitude d520 battery.

 

Depending on the application, alkaline cells can last for four to nine times the life of more traditional carbon-zinc cells. The advantage is greatest under heavy loads that are infrequently used–that is, something that draws heavy current for an hour once day rather than a few minutes of each hour.

Carbon-zinc cells nominally produce 1.5 volts, but this full voltage is only available when little current is drawn from the cell during its initial discharge. The voltage of the cell diminishes as the load to the cell increases and as the charge of the cell decreases.

Standard nine-volt latitude d600 battery  use carbon-zinc chemistry. To produce the higher voltage, six separate carbon-zinc cells are stacked and connected in series inside each battery. Higher voltage carbon-zinc cells can be made similarly. In the 1950’s, “B” batteries made for vacuum-tube portable radios produced 45 to 90 volts from stacks of carbon-zinc cells.

Ordinarily, alkaline batteries cannot be recharged because the chemical reactions in the cell cannot be readily reversed. If you attempt to recharge an ordinary carbon-zinc cell, it acts more like a resistor than storage cell, turning the electricity you apply to it into heat. Apply too much power to a cell and it will heat up enough to explode–a good reason never to attempt to recharge carbon-zinc or alkaline latitude d610 battery.

The exceptions to this rule are the Renewal dell 312-0068 , dell 6y270  produced under license by Rayovac Corporation. The Renewal design relies on a two-prong attack on carbon-zinc technology. The Renewal cell is fabricated differently from a standard cell. More importantly, Renewal batteries are part of a system that requires a special battery charger. Instead of applying a nearly constant current to recharge the cells, the Renewal charger adds power in a series of pulses. A microprocessor in the charger monitors how each pulse affects the cell to prevent overheating. Even with the novel charger, however, Renewal cells have a limited life, typically between 25 and 100 charge-discharge cycles. In that Renewal cells cost only about twice as much as standard alkaline cells, they can be very cost-effective in some applications.