If your heating and air conditioning unit is more than fifteen years old, you may certainly be looking at replacement. First, though you should look at the options.

Before troubleshooting your thermostat

, check to see if all filters are clean and all hoses to and from the units themselves are free of wear.

If these are not causing problems, then it is time to look at specific issues and possible solutions. Your thermostat could have aging wiring that is faulty or the transformer may require replacing.

Always check the owner’s manual for the system first, if it is available.

For a wireless system, make sure you are using the correct batteries: AA Lithium. If the system is running at inconsistent times, then you may have inadvertently installed alkaline batteries. Regular batteries will run out of juice quickly in a wireless system, especially if the backlight is on or used frequently to check the readings.

Does the heater or air conditioning fail to come on when the home’s temperature is too cold or too warm? Or does it trigger on when there is no need? There are several different reasons for this to occur.

First, study the location of the thermostat. Is it in a drafty hallway? Is it too near a heat source? If no outside sources are to blame, you will need to check behind the thermostat and in the wall itself.

Thermostats run on very low voltage, but it is always a good idea to turn off power, both to the unit and to the thermostat. Remove the thermostat cover by either prying off or removing the screws, depending on the model. When the cover is off, can you detect any unusually cool or warm air coming through from the wall space? If so, remove the entire unit and caulk or add extra insulation around the opening.

If you have a regular, house-type thermometer that you know to be accurate, hang it next to the thermostat. Check the readouts every hour or so for a comparison. This will help you to determine its operation, both before and after trying simple repairs and cleaning.

Give the thermostat’s interior a light dusting with a small, soft paintbrush. Be sure to clean the contacts, which are small metal plates within the unit. The wires coming from the transformer attach to the contacts. Do not touch any of the interior parts with fingers.

You may need to test the transformer if nothing seems wrong with the thermostat. You can use a voltmeter or a multitester. If you are using a multitester, set the dial to ACV 50 and connect a probe to each of the terminals. This step will allow you to test for current. If there is none, one final step should be to check power coming in to the transformer. Use the multitester or voltmeter to probe the hot wires and the neutral wires and tighten the contacts if necessary.

If the problem is with an older thermostat, and the system is not on a heat pump

, you should consider replacing the thermostat with a digital model. It will increase the efficiency of your unit and many styles are available that can be programmed to suit your daily schedule.

If you are not comfortable working on the inside of your thermostat, do not hesitate to call a professional. Certainly, if these suggestions do not seem to help, then it is time to place that call.

Even if your system seems to be having problems not listed here, try the troubleshooting tips first. You may be able to solve the problem and avoid the expense of calling an outside professional

Waste materials: Recycling worn-out batteries from electric cars produces a mix of finely shredded metals, consisting of cobalt, aluminum, nickel, and copper (show on the left), and a slurry that is processed into a cobalt cake (on the right).

As more and more products concern about environment friendly, one of the best energy solutions is using batteries. So the batteries will be used in large-scale now and much more in the future.

Shrewd businessmen will be soon aware of the opportunities inside the implication. Battery recycling industry and battery consumption industry are complementary industries. Experts predict that lithium battery recycling will get a boost. The US Department of Energy has granted $9.5 million to a company in California that plans to build America’s first recycling facility for lithium-ion vehicle batteries.

Experts say that having a recycling infrastructure in place will ease concerns that the adoption of vehicles that use lithium-ion batteries could lead to a shortage of lithium carbonate and a dependence on countries such as China, Russia, and Bolivia, which control the bulk of global lithium reserves. “Right now it hardly pays to recycle lithium, but if demand increases and there are large supplies of used material, the situation could change,” says Linda Gaines, a researcher at the Argonne National Laboratory’s Transportation Technology R&D Center.
This can be seen as a beginning, the more action will be taken in the future. If you take the chance, you can make big profits.

Waterproof power: This protective casing envelops a functioning lithium-metal battery electrode, excluding water but letting lithium ions pass. It’s part of a prototype battery made by PolyPlus Battery of Berkeley, CA.

Also good news in battery industry: IBM Research is beginning an ambitious project that it hopes will lead to the commercialization of batteries that store 10 times as much energy as today’s within the next five years. The company will partner with U.S. national labs to develop a promising but controversial technology that uses energy-dense but highly flammable lithium metal to react with oxygen in the air. The payoff, says the company, will be a lightweight, powerful, and rechargeable battery for the electrical grid and the electrification of transportation.

IBM is pursuing the risky technology instead of lithium-ion batteries because it has the potential to reach high enough energy densities to change the transportation system, says Chandrasekhar Narayan, manager of science and technology at IBM’s Almaden Research Center, in San Jose, CA. “With all foreseeable developments, lithium-ion batteries are only going to get about two times better than they are today,” he says. “To really make an impact on transportation and on the grid, you need higher energy density than that.” One of the project’s goals, says Narayan, is a lightweight 500-mile battery for a family car. The Chevy Volt can go 40 miles before using the gas tank, and Tesla Motors’ Model S line can travel up to 300 miles without a recharge.