First Silver-Zinc Battery From ZPower: Longer-Lasting, Greener Cell Phone Battery?

Lithium-ion batteries are so yesterday (at least according to a company called Zpower).

Instead, the company thinks cell phones, smartphones and notebook computers will all benefit significantly from newer silver-zinc rechargeable battery technology.

Zpower announced on Monday that it’ll be proving its belief in person from Aug. 19 to 21 at the upcoming Intel Developer Forum (IDF) in San Francisco.

The company said on Monday: “A silver-zinc battery option will be rolled out in a major notebook computer in 2009. The battery is slated to be released as a premium, extended-life battery.”

Zpower says the 2009 notebook computer will be “dual-chemistry enabled,” which means it will be compatible with both silver-zinc and lithium-ion batteries.

Is the new name in battery technology merely a new name that’s being pushed on the world as marketing hype or are significant improvements actually being made in silver-zinc battery technology?

Zpower claims its battery “offers up to 40 percent more run time than traditional lithium-ion batteries”. As for why it’s “greener,” Zpower says more than “95 percent of [our] key battery elements can be recycled and reused”.

The company added: “The raw materials recovered in the recycling process of silver-zinc batteries are the same quality as those that went into the creation of the battery. Environmental impact is lessened since the need to mine for new materials is minimized.”

Because people often need a financial incentive to encourage them to do the green thing, ZPower says it’ll be among the first companies to offer one for the action of recycle their silver-zinc batteries.