Li/CFx-MnO2 primary packs battery product

The Li/CFx-MnO2 primary packs is a battery from EaglePicher with aerospace-grade and li-cfx-mno2-primary-non-rechargeable chemistry. The Li/CFx-MnO2 primary packs from EaglePicher are non-rechargeable lithium batteries for unmanned aerial vehicles, built on a lithium carbon monofluoride and manganese dioxide hybrid chemistry. They are supplied as complete battery packs rather than single cells, and the maker presents them for military unmanned aircraft missions where the battery is used once.

The maker describes this chemistry as well suited to expendable, one-time-use missions. Three priorities are named for these missions: low weight, extended run time and the ability to support payloads that demand high power. For a systems engineer this places the pack in the role of a single-mission energy source, such as for a loitering or one-way platform, in which the mass saved by omitting charging provisions and the longer run time per kilogram are more valuable than the ability to reuse the battery.

Because the packs are primary, they are delivered fully charged. According to the maker this gives them a long, stable shelf life and removes the recharge maintenance associated with lithium-ion solutions in the same applications. For logistics planning, this means packs can be held in storage and issued without a conditioning or top-up cycle before flight, which simplifies handling for fleets that are stocked in advance and used on demand.

Integration of a primary pack follows the same engineering path as any custom aerospace battery: the cell arrangement, protection circuitry and thermal management are selected at system level to match the voltage, current and mounting envelope of the airframe. EaglePicher offers custom packaging and battery management systems across its product lines and states that it can develop products across a broad range of chemistries, so the electrical and mechanical interface of a pack is agreed with the maker for the platform in question.

EaglePicher links its experience in this field to lithium-ion battery systems supplied for the RQ-4 Global Hawk, for the Aurora Excalibur VTOL airframe and for the Northrop Grumman X-47B demonstrator. Typical applications for the Li/CFx-MnO2 primary packs are expendable military UAV missions, payload power for one-way flights, and other single-use unmanned systems where recharging is not required. Capacity, voltage and mass figures depend on the pack configuration and are obtained from the maker.