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Whats that all about then?... just destroyed two Lipos

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I was prepairing everything for garden bashing between having my coffee. As I was plugging in the second battery, I did put both lipos together, instead of charger and battery. Good morning man! :blink:
I was pretty quick and ripped out the battery cables because the bullet plugs where weldet together. Now I have a bit of a problem. One 2s Lipo is on 8,4V and the other one at storage voltage.

How the f.... shall I dispose them? How to get them discharged? Simply destroying them with an axe? :ph34r:

No RC fun today :angry:

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I'm by no means the voice of reason, but, have you tried balance charging them? If the charger is worth its salt, it should give a balance fault if there's an issue.

I've 2 that got shorted when I blew an esc that fault every now and then, and now double bagged in their own ammo box 👀 

If you decide to dispose, run them down as much as you can, run a car headlight bulb etc, then put into a salt bath for a few days until the voltage reaches zero, then I believe you can just put them in the bin.

(Although I'd be tempted with full charge and an axe....💣💥)

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Ahm.... I rippet out the cables, out of the lipo... no ballancing anymore. :ph34r:

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Remove the hardcase or shrink wrap (with caution!). If the pack is not fixable, but you can still temporarily attach some cables (alligator clips?) then hook it up to a load to drain it slowly. I like the idea of a car headlight bulb.

If attaching cables isn't possible, put a big nail on the end of a long piece of wood and pierce the cells from a distance. Stand back and watch the fireworks.

 

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That should be fixable unless the tabs from the cells can't away with the wires. 

Also, what we used to do with robot batteries, bucket of salt water, leave untill fully discharged and stick in the battery disposal bins at the supermarket or take to the tip.

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No way I´ll try to fix em. But you know what? The idear with the salt water came to my head instantly, how funny is this. Can I expect any wild reaction, bubbeling water ect...?

 

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Just ordered new Turnigy 2S LiPo with 5000mAh in a hardcase. They are 50% more expensive as 2 years ago! Lithium is the new inkjet-ink, oh gosh....

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Discharge rates keep going up at least 

£90 for 25c peak 2000mah way back when. Now you can pick up a 5ah 90c peak pack for well under 40. 

You don't get any spectacular fireworks I'm afraid. A little bit of fizz but it's less impressive than an aspirin.

Have disposed of single cells upto 12 cell, 8000mah like this.

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4 hours ago, nbTMM said:

I like the idea of a car headlight bulb.

It's what I used to use in the Nicad days, to stop and chemical memory build up.😎😃

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Just FYI, there is a guy who is posting on most of the "salt water disposal videos" on YouTube.  IMO, it seems like salt water is the safest "home way" to use as any other method has a higher potential for issues, but here's what the posts says:

 

Quote

Salt water LiPo disposal - bad idea, or really bad idea? Friends, Romans, FliteTesters, lend me your ears, I come to bury salt water LiPo disposal, not to praise it.

Yes, my friends, salt water LiPo disposal is a bad, bad idea. Sure, on the surface it seems like a good concept - after all, salt water conducts electricity, so it makes sense that dropping the battery in salt water will discharge it. But the devil is in the details and the detail, in this case, is electrolysis. You see, salt water and electricity have an amazing talent in the field of dissolving metals, including the tabs on the LiPo cells that actually conduct the electricity. And once those tabs are dissolved, no more discharge. That's the real problem - the tabs on the cell tend to dissolve before the cells are completely discharged, leaving you with the worst of both worlds - a cell that's still got a charge, and no way to discharge it.

"But", you ask, "why does everyone recommend using a salt water bath to dispose of LiPos? Where did this recommendation originate?"

To answer that question, we need to take the WABAC machine back to the dark, early days of using LiPos for RC. Days when an 8C pack was an expensive miracle, and to get more than 1300mAH you needed to run packs in parallel. Days when the concept of balance charging was just starting to take hold among enthusiasts, and those who did balance their packs used external balancers after charging with their non-balancing chargers. Days when LiPo fire reports seemed like an almost daily occurrence.

Back in those days a very smart gentleman named Fred Marks (who went on to found FMA Direct and designed the excellent Cellpro series of chargers) wrote a disposal document for Kokam, one of the early high-end LiPo manufacturers. In this document he recommended disposing of the batteries in salt water. BUT, and this is a very big BUT, the document also specified that the envelope of the cells needed to be cut open so the salt water would get inside the pack and neutralize the electrolyte.

Slashing the cell to allow the salt water to neutralize the electrolyte is an effective way to dispose of a LiPo battery. BUT, and this is an even bigger BUT, slashing the cells of a charged LiPo battery is dangerous, as an early RC experimenter found out the hard way. The battery essentially exploded in his face and he was lucky to escape serious injury.

Because of the danger of slashing the cells, Fred Marks no longer recommends using the salt water bath with cell slashing. And he's always been adamant about the fact that a salt water bath without cell slashing is worse than useless (because the cell tabs will dissolve long before the pack is fully discharged). So, there is no good reason to use a salt water bath to dispose of LiPo batteries.

So, what is the safest way to dispose of LiPos? Enter the humble incandescent 12 volt automobile tail light bulb. If you have any skill at all at soldering (and you'll need it anyway if you do anything with electric RC) it's very easy to solder some wire to the contacts of a 12 volt automobile taillight, add whatever your battery connector of choice is to the other end and insulate it with electric tape or heat shrink. To dispose of your battery, just plug the battery into the taillight, put it somewhere where it's safe (I use the holes in a cinderblock with a plastic baggie full of sand above - if the battery blows the baggie will melt and the sand will pour over the battery) and leave it until the bulb goes out. Then leave it for some hours more, check the voltage to make sure the battery is completely discharged, cut of the battery connector, strip the wires and twist them together. Then dispose or recycle the now completely safe battery. A single taillight bulb will work for up to a 3S pack of any size, use two taillights in series for 4S or more.

Hopefully I have dispelled the myth of salt water LiPo disposal, and I hope that this helps people who are looking for a safe way to dispose of their LiPos."

 

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55 minutes ago, Mahjik said:

Just FYI, there is a guy who is posting on most of the "salt water disposal videos" on YouTube.  IMO, it seems like salt water is the safest "home way" to use as any other method has a higher potential for issues, but here's what the posts says:

 

I was reading your post with full attention while I was sitting beside the bucket with saltwater and lipos inside. :blink:

:lol:

Now  I have 4 naked cells in front of me waiting to get connected with the bulb. Going to get some crocos and cables from the workshop tomorrow.

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10 hours ago, Wooders28 said:

I've 2 that got shorted when I blew an esc that fault every now and then, and now double bagged in their own ammo box 👀 

Sounds familiar 

DSC_2689.JPG

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My Lipo desaster is going on. After receiving hardpacks from that Hobby Clown which where announced as replacement for my old one I figured out they where a bit to tall and broad. After half an hour with the chatbot I decided to let them delete my account. :lol:

I still had some 0.5mm lexan and simply cracked the nuts. What does not fit, will be made fitted. ;)

lipo_01.jpg

lipo_02.jpg

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