View Single Post
Old 7th Mar 2014, 7:38 pm   #8
Lloyd 1985
Nonode
 
Lloyd 1985's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jun 2008
Location: Coningsby, Lincolnshire, UK.
Posts: 2,814
Default Re: The hidden danger of dead batteries...

Not just alkaline or Nicad batteries, but also those Lithium Ion things, such as old camera/ camcorder batteries, iPod batteries and suchlike.

I have one of those little Sony PSP consoles, and I'd left it for a good few months, then I plugged it in to charge up overnight. I woke up the next morning and noticed the charging light still glowing orange, which means it's still trying to charge. It normally took a few hours, but this had been over 8 hours! When I picked the unit up it was hot to touch around the battery, so it was unplugged very quickly. Upon trying to remove the battery cover I found it a tight fit, and the battery had swollen up! I wasn't taking any chances with it so threw it out the window (the battery, not the whole console!) and left it out to cool down. It did still power the console after that, but only for about 5 minutes before the low battery indicator started flashing. Sony were not interested in it...

I've also had a couple of quite old camcorder batteries start to swell up, which if they are left in the unit are quite difficult to remove, and might damage the unit. They also would not be safe to attempt recharging!

I also have a Panasonic DVD player with a Lithium Ion battery pack, that stopped working and I opened the battery pack and found the individual cells had leaked some nasty smelling white goo. That one went in the bin quickly too!

Regards,
Lloyd.
Lloyd 1985 is offline