What is it?

Hundred millions of electric batteries are thrown away each day because their voltage is not enough to be used. Although with lower voltage, these batteries still contain a lot of energy. In this way millions joules remain unused and are forever lost. The idea of this device is to try to extract as much as possible energy of these batteries and to help in this way keeping our planet alive.

The principle of work of the device called further Joule thief power bank (JTPB) is based on the parallel work of multiple Joule thieves. The reason to use this approach is the following : There a lot of different step up DC/DC converter on the market, but all which I found work with voltages over 0.8V. Some of the Joule thieves (JT) I made was able to work at voltage close to 0.2V.

The main idea is to force multiple JT to work in parallel. The PCB supports 6 JT's.

Their output voltage should be applied to the input of combined step down/step up 5V converter, which could supply or charge some external device.

Why did you make it?

The main purpose was to create a device able to extract as much as possible energy from the exhausted batteries and to reduce in this way the costs and to improve the energy efficiency.

What makes it special?

Compared with the devices available on the market working with 0.8V its main advantage is that the device is able to work lower as 0.2v.