The trough battery was a variant of

Alessandro Volta Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta (, ; ; 18 February 1745 – 5 March 1827) was an Italian chemist and physicist who was a pioneer of electricity and Power (physics), power, and is credited as the inventor of the electric battery a ...

voltaic pile upright=1.2, Schematic diagram of a copper–zinc voltaic pile. Each copper–zinc pair had a spacer in the middle, made of cardboard or felt soaked in salt water (the electrolyte). Volta's original piles contained an additional zinc disk at the ...

and was designed by the Scottish professor of chemistry William Cruickshank in 1800.

Disadvantage of the pile

Volta's battery consisted of

brine Brine (or briny water) is a high-concentration solution of salt (typically sodium chloride or calcium chloride) in water. In diverse contexts, ''brine'' may refer to the salt solutions ranging from about 3.5% (a typical concentration of seawat ...

-soaked pieces of cloth sandwiched between

zinc Zinc is a chemical element; it has symbol Zn and atomic number 30. It is a slightly brittle metal at room temperature and has a shiny-greyish appearance when oxidation is removed. It is the first element in group 12 (IIB) of the periodic tabl ...

and

copper Copper is a chemical element; it has symbol Cu (from Latin ) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pinkish-orang ...

discs, piled in a stack. This resulted in

electrolyte An electrolyte is a substance that conducts electricity through the movement of ions, but not through the movement of electrons. This includes most soluble Salt (chemistry), salts, acids, and Base (chemistry), bases, dissolved in a polar solven ...

leakage as the weight of the discs squeezed the electrolyte out of the cloth.

Advantage of the trough

Cruickshank devised a solution to the problem by placing the battery horizontally inside a rectangular box. The interior of the box was coated with

shellac Shellac () is a resin secreted by the female Kerria lacca, lac bug on trees in the forests of India and Thailand. Chemically, it is mainly composed of aleuritic acid, jalaric acid, shellolic acid, and other natural waxes. It is processed and s ...

to provide insulation, and sets of zinc and copper plates, which were welded together, were arranged evenly within the box. The gaps between the plates, known as troughs, were filled with a diluted

sulfuric acid Sulfuric acid (American spelling and the preferred IUPAC name) or sulphuric acid (English in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth spelling), known in antiquity as oil of vitriol, is a mineral acid composed of the elements sulfur, oxygen, ...

. As long as the box remained undisturbed, there was no danger of the electrolyte spilling.

References

{{Galvanic cells Battery types

Disadvantage of the pile

Advantage of the trough

See also

References