The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
May. 14, 2002
Filed:
Jul. 11, 2001
Takayuki Hidaka, Tokyo, JP;
Toshio Okamura, Tokyo, JP;
Mitsubishi Denki Kabushiki Kaisha, Tokyo, JP;
Abstract
In cell shunt circuit sections provided as overcharge protective measures for a plurality of individual cells of a lithium ion battery which are connected in series with one another so as to be charged with a constant current in a batch manner, the present invention is intended to suppress the generation of heat, which would be caused by shunting a charging current to a cell shunt. In each of the cell shunt circuit sections, an energy reservoir acts as a bypass path for bypassing a charging current supplied to a corresponding one of the battery cells so as to be input to the following battery cell, which is provided at a downstream side of the one battery cell, so as to reserve surplus energy obtained from the charging current thus bypassed and regenerate the thus reserved surplus energy to a batch charging line connected with the serially connected battery cells. A switching element is inserted in the bypass path for opening and closing thereof. The energy reservoir regenerates the surplus energy to the batch charging line when the switching element opens the by-pass path.