Heat can make Li-Ion batteries explode. Or restore their capacity, say Chinese boffins Researchers at China’s Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology and Engineering have found a way to restore the energy density of old Lithium-Ion batteries by heating them to over 150°C. Rechargeable Lithium-Ion (Li-Ion) batteries are already ubiquitous and are increasingly in demand for applications like powering electric …
one: That was obviously a joke - If anyone here is daft enough to think it wasn't, then the reg needs a disclaimer on the article to say "don't try this at home" - heating up a battery that wasn't designed for it is obviously a terrible idea, hence my IT crowd reference to the fire brigade
two: "LiPo" (with a lowercase 'o') refers to Lithium Ion batteries with a polymer electrolyte (Lithium Polymer) -usually these are NMC chemistry and commonly used in drones, RC cars, e-bikes and the like. Typically unfused pouch cell stacks with taps for balancing, and they tend to 'puff up' when they expire, as they evolve Hydrogen internally. They are probably the most flammable/dangerous sort of lithium battery.
"LiPo" (with a lowercase 'o') refers to Lithium Ion batteries with a polymer electrolyte (Lithium Polymer)
You saved me a Google. I was looking at "LiPo" in full confidence it couldn't possibly refer to lithium-polonium batteries (presumably popular with certain Russian intelligence agencies and definitely not to be tried at home), but my mind was blocking on what it actually meant.
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Can it be done to a phone battery?
One of the reasons phones now have fixed batteries is because basically everything inside that's not electronics is battery. So removing them isn't really possible. This was supposedly to increase capacity.
Of course another reason was that if your battery dies you have to get a new phone instead of a new battery. The phone manufacturers were never enthusiastic about making replacement batteries so this market was quickly taken over by third parties. Which was another reason to make it impossible to switch them out.
"heating the batteries to between 150-250°C can cause them to shrink rather and see their internal structure return..."
Err.. maybe that should read:
"heating the batteries to between 150-250°C can cause them [?!] to shrink rather [than expand] and see their internal structure return..."?
maybe there are more than 2 words missing? Especially with the ambiguous "them": do the exterior dimensions of the batteries actually shrink?
(Generally, one expects things to expand when heated, hence, the counter-intuitive aspect, which the author seems to be going for.)
Although, it would seem that this is an over-simplification: surely, [sorry, I'm not calling you that] some internal or exterior structures do expand, when heated, but possibly, some substrates / internal structures do shrink?
If them does refer to the exterior dimensions, then, maybe things can be fixed with the addition of a few commas:
"heating the batteries to between 150-250°C can cause them to shrink, rather, and see their internal structure return..."
Although, "them" might also refer to dendrites, or some internal flaw, which grow with age?
More elaboration seems needed. Unfortunately, provided link goes to "This is a preview of subscription content"
TANSTAAFL - There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.*
* Thanks, Robert A Heinlein
20-or-so years ago, there were lots of clickbait articles on the web about curing dendrites in NiCad batteries by zapping them with a chunk of charge (basically using a welding transformer rather than a battery charger). I wondered if this was a similar thing so did a quick search on "dendrite battery" and found many many links to Li dendrite research over the last few years. Could this be another similar piece of research?
Incidentally, on the subject of stuff shrinking when heated (and running off topic from the original article). Steel changes from body centered cubic crystals to face centered cubic crystals, a more compact structure. The steel therefore contracts at the phase change temperature. Whilst an engineering student, I had this demonstrated to me by a lecturer running a current through a steel wire that was fixed at both ends. It expanded as it heated up, causing it to droop and droop and then suddenly shrink and (almost) straighten, then droop again. Allowing it to cool naturally reversed the process, quenching would have kept the structure.. And that's one of the forms of heat treatment
We did that with Camera Batteries (i.e. the large NP1b batteries used for Betacam SP and Digital Betacam shoulder mount TV NEWS camcorders!) and our specialty-reprogrammed battery charger system (i.e. a CADEX battery charger - look it up at their site since they still exist 30 years later!) was able to do that by cycling and recycling the battery at low and high charge voltages and currents to "refurbish" a NiCAD battery. We usually got about 3x the rated charge cycle life when we used that charger because at the time a high-end NP1b battery was $250 CDN each! It also worked for NiMH (Nickel Metal Hydride) NP1b batteries which were even MORE expensive ($350 CDN each!) at the time!
V
My aging 25" CRT color TV had a dim picture, so I dragged the monster to the local TV shop to have the picture tube "rejuvenated". The guy there explained that they overheated the CRT filament which would "broil electrons off of the anode, giving the picture tube extra life". Damn, it really did greatly improve the picture brightness for a few years.
I hope this has at least a vague similarity to the subject of this story.
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