Battery Life, Recycling and Disposal
11-09-2021, 12:47 PM
#1
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Battery Life, Recycling and Disposal
Hello fellow RCers. I’ve been gone from the hobby for sometime and not quite back yet but I wanted to at least ask a quick question about batteries. I have several lipos and some NiMH batteries that have basically been sitting idle in my basement for several years. Not sure if they’re any good anymore but I am at least going to assume that the lipos aren’t cuz I’m probably too scared of explosions to stick a charger on them at this point and I’m betting I shouldn’t. The NiMH may be a different story, not sure.
So how should I dispose of these if that’s what I should do? Recycle? Salt water? I want to do whatever is responsible.
So how should I dispose of these if that’s what I should do? Recycle? Salt water? I want to do whatever is responsible.
11-10-2021, 10:19 AM
#2
Get a 12v automotive / trailer brake / tail light bulb and the replacement fixture (with wires) from your local auto parts store. They are right out in the open on the store's automotive accessory rack.
Add some small alligator clips to the ends of the fixture's wires and plug in the bulb.
Clip the alligator clips from the fixture to the LiPo packs main discharge lead (any LiPo that is 1S to 6S is fine) and leave it until the light goes dark. If they are already dead, then the bulb will not light up in the first place.
At this point, when the bulb is dark, the LiPo pack a basically dead (less than 1v showing on a DVM)
Cut the pack's main and balance connectors off and strip about 1" or insolation of the red/black main leads and twist the bare wires together.
Take the dead packs to Home Depot or Batteries Plus and drop them in the recycling bin.
I do this for all my "retired" LiPo packs.
If the pack has a significate charge on it when you start, it will go through a period as the voltage gets down around 3v per cell where it will start to heat up. Don't worry about that. The heat wont be high enough to start the cells on fire.
See the attached PDF for the full description
Add some small alligator clips to the ends of the fixture's wires and plug in the bulb.
Clip the alligator clips from the fixture to the LiPo packs main discharge lead (any LiPo that is 1S to 6S is fine) and leave it until the light goes dark. If they are already dead, then the bulb will not light up in the first place.
At this point, when the bulb is dark, the LiPo pack a basically dead (less than 1v showing on a DVM)
Cut the pack's main and balance connectors off and strip about 1" or insolation of the red/black main leads and twist the bare wires together.
Take the dead packs to Home Depot or Batteries Plus and drop them in the recycling bin.
I do this for all my "retired" LiPo packs.
If the pack has a significate charge on it when you start, it will go through a period as the voltage gets down around 3v per cell where it will start to heat up. Don't worry about that. The heat wont be high enough to start the cells on fire.
See the attached PDF for the full description
Last edited by ticedoff8; 11-10-2021 at 10:35 AM.
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init4fun (11-12-2021)
11-12-2021, 11:11 AM
#4
Moderator
A bucket of plain water works too. It will discharge the pack and dissipate any heat. There's no need to add salt, as pretty much any municipal water has enough minerals in it to make it slightly conductive.
Last edited by jester_s1; 11-12-2021 at 11:16 AM.
11-12-2021, 01:55 PM
#5
Yep, ticedoff8 has you covered, do exactly as he said and you'll be fine. Also, skip any method involving buckets of water, salted or not, those are old holdovers from when LIPO wasn't all that well understood by the masses and have long ago been discredited by the experts, as detailed in the PDF that ticedoff8 has enclosed in his post.........
