Recovery of deep discharged Lithium Ion cells safely on the workbench
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- Опубликовано: 12 сен 2024
- A quick video about how I recover deep discharged Lithium Ion cells (could be applied to LiNMCO, lithium manganese cobalt oxide or LIFEPO4 type chemistry). Many times these cells are recovered from 0v by dumping current into them. This is not a good idea. Using some very basic bench equipment, I demonstrate a dead cell being revived with care and caution - it's the only correct way :)
A plethora of new videos are on the way, but it will take a while to get there. Please note due to eye problems I cannot reply to comments reliably. Sorry about that :\
#lithiumbattery #workbench #electronics #lithiumionbattery #lithium_ion_battery #safety #safetyfirst
Another thing to be careful with some cells come with a battery management system built in and some do not relying on the management built into the device which is something beware of because if you leave one with out it built in it will keep charging till it explodes
@errolfoster1101 Right on!
Thanks. I had an over discharged cell and I own a nice power supply. The EE degree helps too but you’re right, you can learn anything on the internet. You don’t need a degree, just a skill. An EE degree definitely pays for itself though. A good (not to say expensive) educator will provide access to all sorts of expensive tools and people to show you how to use them.
:)
Great video man...I was wondering what is the brand & model of the bench charger your using?
Hello, thanks a lot! That charger is quite old and I am having difficulty finding the exact same model. It's a generic brand. If you type "adjustable DC converter" in ebay or amazon, very similar products come up, as well as some even better ones that have more features. For example ebay item # 224915998073 (search that # on ebay it will come up). Anything like this can be used as a current limited supply to charge batteries. One problem with some of these is they have screw-down terminal blocks. Those are terrible so it's better to solder wires straight on. I hope that helps, please let me know if you have problems finding one I can get some links.
Thanks man, Just ordered one from eBay.
Great! welcome
Get it to 2.25v on .1 amp just keep checking temp using hand
at 2.3v i usually use 0.5 amps to get up to 4.15 (keep checking the the temp on the cell)
I then leave it charge for a week and see if it holds its charge. If it does its fine. If its dropped below 3.7v its bad.
After 2V the cell should not be too fragile. But at 0V extremely vulnerable. The ones I recovered gently have some internal resistance but not too bad, hold their charge and were salvageable.
a constant voltage charger... does this just mean that it turns off when it reaches a certain voltage? so i could just use a "higher than the cell max voltage"-charger and cut the connection when it reaches a certain voltage? or is there more to it...
Hi, by setting let's say a 3 Amp power supply to a safe voltage (maybe 4.2v) and connecting it to an empty cell that is 2.9v, it will start charging the cell in constant current (CC) first. This means it delivers all the current it can, regardless of voltage.
Eventually, the cell reaches 4.2v, and the current starts to fall off. This is constant voltage (CV) and eventually the current drops to zero as the cell is full. In fact it does not require a special charger. You can use a properly configured power supply with the proper current limit to charge a lithium cell.
Note: you are correct - if using a higher than cell voltage charger - it has to be cut at the right voltage. So if I connect a 5v 3A supply, it can still work. But then I need a circuit to turn it off at 4.2v or it gets risky. Hope this helps! DD
i scavenged a li-po battery from a disposed vape, it is 2500mAh cell .. it had literally 0V .. i gave it a chance and charged it slowly, i applied around 50mA current, but the voltage was climbing extremely slow ... that could mean only two things, either it has internal short circuit, or it had still a good capacity and preserved it's low internal resistance ... i waited couple tens of minutes until the cell climbed to 1,5V, then i increased the current to 100mA .. as soon as it climbed to 2,5v i rose the current again to 250mA(i was little impatient) .. then waited until it gets to 3v ..I noticed the cell getting slightly warm, but nothing concerning.. then i unplugged the charger for half an hour and checked the voltage if it stays or drops ... it was stable ... and then since it had 3V i left it charging with 1A to 3,8V and left it disconnected overnight .. it holds the voltage and it had very little V drop under load ... probably only 0,01 or 0,02V when connected to 5w light . looks good to me
Right on man! I use these recovered cells in my LED flashlights if they hold charge. Got quite a few now, maybe 3 didn't hold charge but that's expected
@@solarpoweredge yeah they are plenty everywhere and people just throw them to the bin.. i went to local vape shop and they gave me whole box of these used one-use vapes free.. so i am testing and charging 67 cells for last 2 days and i am only half way in 😂 they vary from 400mAh to 1,5 Ah .. one piece was 2,5Ah and luckily 90 percent of them had over 3 volts
That's a score! nice :D
I have an off brand power station that will only charge by a 12v car charger and not a wall charger. Why is this?
It's possible the wall charger isn't putting out any voltage. If you have a multimeter, just check the output while it's plugged in. It should read the same voltage as printed on the label. If it's not working, sometimes a replacement or similar wall charger can be found for sale online. All that matters is it has the same voltage and same current output. (The connector should match too)
@@solarpoweredge Thank you so much! I have tried buying another regular charger and that also didn't work so I thought I had a 200 dollar paperweight for 6 months 🤣🙏🏽. I just thought to try a car charger from another power station I had and it's charging now perfectly but just not with any wall plug. Weird. But thanks so much for getting back to me so quickly. I will just have to charge it with a car charger for now.
@1dyrfullymade You're welcome! Some guesswork here, but one more idea...
Process of elimination: if the Car charger and Wall charger use a separate connection on the device, then it's possible the input circuitry or connection port for the Wall charger input stopped working.
The car charger accepts a 12-14v DC input from the car battery... probably much the same thing the wall charger puts out. You could theoretically connect any 12-14 volt DC supply to the car charger port. If you search on Amazon for "12v cigarette lighter adapter" you will see various adapters that might work. One is only 9 bucks, can't say it would work but who knows. It's at least worth looking into. Hope this helps :)
@@solarpoweredge Thank you will buy that. Can never have too many cords just in case! The name of this power station is SBAOH T101 Portable power station 155WH got it off of Amazon. 😊
Just looked at the picture on Amazon... 1 DC input port for both wall and car charger. Bad plug connection perhaps. One of my power stations had a similar problem. Only certain cords would actually connect. I hope the adapter works for you. Otherwise, like you said - can't have too many :)
'The brand is probably just generic'
Brand means absolutely NOTHING. The actual factory in which it was made tells one significantly more when you combine it with the weight of the cell.
I see what you're saying. LG, Molicel, Samsung, Panasonic, Sanyo etc. are examples of quality brands with good QA and higher standards, as they have a name to back up, higher stakes customers and higher cost. And you can probably find out which factory. In fact I prefer their cells in most cases. It's very possible cheap generic (might as well say Chinese) cells could originate from from the same factories as quality cells but not all of them, I am not sure how to track those and don't need to. I don't trust the generic brand cells because usually no one stands behind them regardless of which factory or manufacturing line or country of origin. But for a small solar light it's not an issue to me. Of course every single one of these cells I've pulled out of small solar devices are very lightweight and have low capacity, as expected, but they are extremely cheap so.
I have a dual set of 18650 totalling to 3000mah, my tp4056 does not charge it and shows blue light when connected. They are at 0.66v. I tried to jump up the voltage for 10-20 secs but the voltage quickly drops to the same when disconnected. What does this tell u. I am curious because I have seen people recovering their 18650s with even lower voltage than mine.
Hello, it's possible the cells are shorted internally. When this happens it tends to discharge itself. You can try 2-10ma of current for 1 day and see if it can hold a charge. If it doesn't I'd recycle the cell, they will probably just cause you a lot of trouble. Also if it's 2 cells in parallel, they should be separated and charged individually. Sometimes 1 of the 2 cells will be short, pulling the other down. Hope this helps
@@solarpoweredge did a cid reset and now internal protection is gone I guess. The external bms will take care though.
Hmm yeah hopefully BMS will guard the cell. 18650 can emit extremely toxic gas if anything goes wrong, so must use caution. I should have mentioned, if you have a suspicious cell, charge it carefully to like 3.6v and leave it over night completely disconnected. If the voltage collapses to ~2V, it is 100% a dead cell (shorted) and can never be recovered or repaired - in fact it's unsafe to keep. (but again cells in parallel must be separated to test properly)
@@solarpoweredge charged for w hrs with voltage at 4.15v then played music in speaker for 1 hr...still battery 80 percent. Will keep checking though
@@solarpoweredge im trying to revive a dead ebike battery. and it has all these groups making it a 72v48ah battery(it's 300 cells). im measuring 0.4v across one cell(or one parallel cell group or what its called from - to +). i guess its not possible to charge this cell group individually because its connected to another cell group? but if i could - let's say i wanted to give each cell 50ma each - i could just do 50ma*number_of_cells_in_group(10)=500ma and each cell would receive 50 ma and everyone would be happy and nobody would be poor? or does it not work like that, maybe the chemistry on one battery makes it less charged or it blows up or def never do that for some other reason... ?