Technology Overview

Battery Principles and Basics

The smallest working unit in a battery is the electrochemical cell, consisting of a cathode and an anode separated and connected by an electrolyte. The electrolyte conducts ions but is an insulator to electrons. In a charged state, the anode contains a high concentration of intercalated lithium while the cathode is depleted of lithium. During the discharge, a lithium ion leaves the anode and migrates through the electrolyte to the cathode while its associated electron is collected by the current collector to be used to power an electric device (illustrated below).

The electrodes in lithium-ion cells are always solid materials. One can distinguish between cell types according to their electrolytes, which may be liquid, gel, or solid-state components. The electrolytes in gel and solid-state cells represent a structural component and do not need additional separators for the effective separation of electrodes and avoidance of short circuits. Cells come in button, cylindrical, and prismatic forms.

For low-energy and low-power applications, a cell often represents a full battery. For high-energy and high-power applications (such as transportation or stationary storage) a number of cells are packaged in a module, and a number of modules are packaged in a battery.

Lithium ion based battery systems have dominated every market they have ever been introduced into, including cell phones, laptop computers, power tools, and most recently, automobiles. Utilizing newly developed technology, Corvus is now poised to enter the untapped market of large foot print lithium ion batteries. There is a strong demand in many industries to replace the existing lead acid based batteries with smaller and lighter batteries. In addition to being less costly than the existing battery systems, the new Corvus battery system has opened up the doors for new applications. These include hybrid/electric marine propulsion applications such as environmentally sensitive harbor tug boats, pure electric passenger ferries, high performance sailboats, improved personal yachts and submersibles. Corvus lithium ion batteries are also ideal for light weight solar array batteries and portable wind power storage batteries. There are also a number of military battery applications which would benefit from Corvus technology.

The team of engineers at Corvus has extensive experience in battery power design and powertrain development, as well as in the production of battery storage systems for all its applications. This unique combination of experience and capability provides the customer with a seasoned, value-added approach to the integration of high performance battery storage technology to their projects. The various industries can now tap into this resource in order to provide solutions to their world-wide market needs and secure a premier position in their respective fields.

The Technology

Battery storage solutions in most of today’s industries utilize lead-acid based technology. For large scale applications, the size and weight of the lead acid batteries make them too unwieldy and dangerous.

Corvus has taken a number of the most advanced lithium ion cells on the market today, combined them with its’ own proprietary battery management system and packaged it all in a small, standard enclosure. A number of these enclosures can then be connected together to make the large battery packs. Different applications may require different size battery packs. So, with a standardized small enclosure, all that will be required for each different application is to simply increase or decrease the number of small enclosures needed. For each new battery pack, this technique permits faster design times and simpler manufacturing.

Corvus provides its’ own proprietary electronics in every enclosure. In addition Corvus provides its’ own proprietary computer-based, supervisory system to monitor and control the state and health of each of the small enclosures.