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Warning: Exploding Batteries
batlike writes "It seems I have been quite lucky up to this point as I habitually leave my laptop in the trunk of my car - which is just over the gas tank (duh!) . See this article in InfoWorld by Ephraim Schwartz for details. You may want to give it a once over if you currently use lithium-ion batteries."
Of course they don't really explode into a fire ball but rather short circuit, heat up, melt, and leak acid everywhere.
There is or can be built a machine that can simulate any physical object. -Church-Turing principle
So if you buy something where you can't change the battery, expect a finite life out of it!
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
Article was not much more than an advertisement for Valence and their new Battery Technology.
(sigh)Lucky for us they didn't require us to pay for that crap.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
It seems I have been quite lucky up to this point as I habitually leave my laptop in the trunk of my car - which is just over the gas tank (duh!) .
;)
You may want to give it a once over if you currently use lithium-ion batteries."
Considering that I usually keep my laptop in my trunk, i can rest knowing that I can pull it out and replace it with some safer items like a gasoline canister, some fireworks, my blowtorch and some booze (it is new years eve, after all
Join the TWIT army now!
Considering the number of people that use these batteries and number of people that overcharge, I don't see a trend at all, just people that don't know how to use a device properly
so i go to read the story and...
"Because Valence claims to offer a safer alternative"
"Currently, Valence is shipping outboard devices -- N-Charge, weighing just under three pounds"
"The next generation from Valence will be small enough to use as a direct replacement for your current laptop battery and will be available next year."
come on slashdot, infoworld, this isn't news, this is a PRESS RELEASE
replacing it with NEW Folger's Crystals! (lets see if they notice the difference)
The article didnt give any particulary useful information, just stating the obvious. It was nothing more than a small plug for the new types of batteries that are due to be launched. And anyway, it's common sense not to leave batteries unattended in hot conditions, etc. Argh, but saying that, my NEC laptop's battery does get extremely hot during use, usually by conducted heat from the whole laptop. So did my old vaios' too.
Well, any kind of high energy battary poses a kind of danger. The energy density of modern batteries approaches that of nuclear reactors. Any kind of physical damange (also heat) may release the stored energy in a quick fashion. Naturally it will be converted to enormous amounts of heat..
and are a "tiget in a cage." His company is marketing a competitor to Lithium-Ion!
But when I read three stories, all in reputable news outlets, well, that's a trend.
Okay, chicken little. Whatever you say. Three stories in reputable news outlets is a trend. Let's see. If .05% of the 290M+ population of the U.S. owns a laptop, that means what, 2.06 x 10^-6 % of all the notebook owners in the U.S. experienced that in the past several months (someone might want to check my math.. it's really early)? That's a trend? If that's the case, aren't you far more likely to win the lottery several times than have your laptop battery explode?
Imbecile. There's an enormous difference between something being a possibility and being even remotely likely. Sounds like those idiotic news reports networks show to get stupid people to watch ("WILL YELLOW STICKY NOTES KILL YOU? FIND OUT HOW YOU CAN PROTECT YOU AND YOUR FAMILY AT SIX!!!!")
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
They're "venting with flame". (Kudos for the link to the site go to Steve Cowan)
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
when I read three stories, all in reputable news outlets, well, that's a trend.
This reminds me of the shark attack reputable news outlets suffered a few years ago. Nothing much was happening, so they covered the ongoing tragedy of swimmers who are attacked by sharks. Yes, this may happen but I'm no more worried about my cell phone or laptop exploding than I am about being eaten by a shark.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Don't you mean power density (watts per cubic inch)? I would love to have a battery with the energy density of a nuclear reactor.
Of course Batteries have not doubled in capacity every year, but that doesn't mean that thier growth and development is coming to an end. At the end of this article the author claims that in 5 years we will not longer be able to improve on batteries. Though we may not be able to improve capacity or discharge, which I still feel is underestimating our ingeniouity, we will be able to further improve on batteries by finding new sources, find new ways of recycling batteries, or making batteries last longer(in lifetime).
There is or can be built a machine that can simulate any physical object. -Church-Turing principle
"When you heat this material up, it [can] reach an onset temperature that begins to self-heat and progresses into fire and explosion."
You really can't go replacing important words like that. Who knows if the word "can" was to replace something like "has the small possibility to" or "can under extreme and rare conditions"...
Filling in the blank with the word "can" has the possibility of throwing the perspective out of proportion. Even later in the article it states that "explosions and fire happen 'rarely'".
And what really got me...
Long-term fuel cells that convert hydrogen and oxygen to electricity -- don't ask me how -- are a promising alternative.
So replace lithium ion batteries with a HIGHLY combustable mixture... good alternative...
This should come as no surprise to anyone that's ever used a laptop that got "hot". The first time I put a "hot" laptop on my lap, I freaked out at how hot it actually was. I can't believe that more laptops don't just melt from their own heat anyways, much less the battery exploding, catching fire, or whatever's "really" happening here.
stuff |
My laptop gets left countless places unattended....So what can you use as a safety? (Other than removing the battery)
Dude, you don't have to worry about the battery in your laptop exploding.
In fact, you don't have to worry about owning a laptop anymore. Your battery and laptop will be removed.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Wasn't this the cause of all the PowerBook 5300's catching fire and exploding back in '95 when they came out? Or perhaps that was just a charging issue.... I must agree though that article was very clever in its promotion of the Valance Saphion technology.....Bringing in quotes but no actual numbers(probability) of current batteries actually exploding... I know my iBook battery sure gets toasty, heck the whole laptop and charging unit warm up to well over 100F. But I've never heard of a iBook battery(Lithium ion) exploding.....Maybe they're talking about operating these things inside a furnace, or perhaps on Mercury, or even the face of the sun....
-sonic
If you you were in the U.S. Army sometime before 1990, you probably know what that means. These were the standard field radios before the new SINCGARS encrypted/frequency-hopping radios came into use. The old "prick 77" radios that we carried around on our backs used a lithium battery. The radio had a vent on the battery compartment to let out explosive gases (and water if you were dumb enough to get your radio wet). If the vent became blocked the battery could explode! Ouch! Never happened to me personally, but it was legendary among RATELOs.
But I don't watch a lot of TV news... maybe I've missed these stories:
Give the guy a break - he was using Windoze on his laptop, which as we all know is not very secure, that's why he put it in the trunk. If he was running Linux he could have left it on the front seat with the doors wide open....
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
"spray red hot lithium metal all over your legs and genitalia".
....
nice troll, looks like you're getting modded up too. pity there isn't any pure lithium present in the batteries mentioned
Fry: heh, Yakov Smirnoff said it
Leela: No he didn't.
Automotive batteries can vent explosive gases too.
That's why the experts have you make a "jumper cable circuit" by attaching the last ground connection away from the battery. In theory, the spark could ignite gases venting from the battery, resulting in an explosion.
I've never experienced such an explosion.
Most AC adapters max out at something like 400 mW. They'll shut off if they're asked for any more than that. Most laptop ones will only give out 2 or 3 amps at 18 V or a max of 54 W. Not 1.8kW, but pretty scary nonetheless.
-Your friendly neighborhood EE
The previous sig has been removed due to
I habitually leave my laptop in the trunk of my car - which is just over the gas tank (duh!) .
Sir, I don't know the make of your laptop, but I'm pretty sure that if you'll read the user's manual that came with it, you'll find a passage like "do not leave it in locations where the temperature can become unpredictable or extreme - like a car trunk". Such a passage is in mine. I'd say that your horror story boils down do "if you habitually neglect the recommendations of your user's manual, bad things can happen".
One way to avoid problems is to only buy batteries that have been tested and approved by the device's manufacturer. Many of the reported problems with catastrophic battery failure can be traced back to no-name or counterfeit batteries that are missing crucial protective circuits and features.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
shhhhh, don't interrupt the troll's 'red hot lithium on genitalia' fantasy...
signatures are for fools with hands
Hey, most places you have to pay extra for that.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
the article is a blatant advertisement. nice one though.
When is Slashdot going to start allowing us to mod entire stories down ??
defibrillator
You can't, it's often integral to the cell, so a fair amount of surgery is involved.
Nearly perfect bomb and perfectly legal to bring onboard passing all security checks with flying colours.
Oh for chrissakes...no, something that would get really hot, start smoking, and then catch fire. Ever since(and in fact before) the Valuejet incident, planes have smoke detectors and fire suppression systems in their cargo holds, so it's a moot point if it ends up in cargo vs. carry-on. The issue of toxicity is moot because that's why planes have oxygen systems that the pilot can deploy. The mask systems in the cockpits are also usually much better than the paper-cup jobbies the Cattle get.
People- Calm. The. Fuck. Down. Planes don't explode because something inside them catches fire, they don't start crashing because someone shoots a gun, yadda yadda. Cars don't explode because a battery overheats in the trunk. Stop watching so many action movies...
Please help metamoderate.
I often read about how much "Bang-for-the-Buck" that you get from CPUs, Video cards, etc. I think that this might lead to a new system for rating laptops!
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
Upon visiting Sony's support site recently, they had an alert out for just this sort of problem - but they claimed that it would only happen with third-party batteries, not the much more expensive Sony certified batteries. FUD, or is there a real difference between the two types that makes the third-party batteries more dangerous?
--- Bwah?
Yeah, your lowly little AA rechargable would happily dump 6,120A in 1 second if the short circuit had small enough resistance.
You're neglecting the fact that a battery is not a perfect voltage source. To correctly model a battery you must put a resistance in series with the voltage source, since all batteries have a internal resistance.
That having been said.. a standard D NiCd cell can put out almost 1000amps for short periods. This is why fuses and other standard short circuit protection devices were invented. Most battery packs have at least one internal fuse, larger ones will have several to handle the possibility of intra-pack shorts.
I'd love to know the Ah specification for the battery in the back seat of the Honda Hybrids. It absolutely terrifies me to know that idiots are buying them and driving around.
Then look it up.
"a total output of 144 V and 6.5 amp-hours" for the Honda Insight... about 6.0amp/hr for the Civic. The batteries themselves are Nickel Metal Hydride "D" cells.
The batteries are time bombs, hazardous waste and chemical burn nightmares.
Hazardous waste? There are far more Superfund cleanup sites caused by leaking gasoline/oil storage than battery manufacture. Lead Acid batteries are the most recycled item in the United States (more than AL cans). 95% of the battery itself can be recycled (the plastic case is often discarded. Lithium should ideally not be disposed of in the trash, but in a LiOH battery it is pretty stable. Lead Acid does offer the possibility of Acid burns, but the dilute acid is really only a problem is it gets in your eyes.. on the skin it typically only causes irration and a mild rash. And don't forget.. the explosive potential of the gasoline in your car is equal to almost 3 sticks of dynamite.
The charging process is inefficient at best (<50%).
Not sure where you get your numbers... Lead Acid batteries charging in large strings is over 90% efficent. From powerplant to road electric cars are more than twice as efficent as burning gasoline in an internal combustion engine (more than 50% of the energy in the coal burned in the powerplant ends up moving the car, as opposed to only about 11% of the energy of gasoline). Better still if you factor the environmental/energy cost of transporting, and refining the fuel (Think of the fuel it takes to run the tanker that brings the gasoline to you).
A gasoline car will always emit the same, or more pollution during its life. Most powerplants get cleaner everyday from tighter environmental resitrictions. My electric car is powered entirely from renewable energy (wind) and is more or less "zero emmission" because of it.
How many new coal and nuclear power plants are gonna have to be built when 10,000,000 Los Angeles commuters start plugging in their electric cars every night?
Most electric cars will be charged during the evening or early morning hours when demand for electricity is at its lowest. The EPA estimates that over half of the cars in California could be electric, and no additional power generation would be required. Indeed, one company showed a prototype electric car that could be used as battery when plugged in, and provide desperatly needed peaking power to avoid brownouts.
I have actually seen a video (by Valence) of a lithium ion (cobalt) battery being driven into thermal runaway... it goes off like a torch. Not something you want to have happen, but the safety systems in the batteries themselves are excellent. There have been only a handful of battery fires in the millions of currently deployed batteries.
I realize this is slashdot.. but if you want people to believe your college educated it never hurts to do some research before opening your mouth.
some cheap third party batteries leave out short circuit prevention circuitry. If you short one of these batteries out and it doesnt have that circuitry, it will rapidly overheat and likely blow.
There could be other risks involved with different chemical formulas as well. Recall the blown capacitor debacle a year ago or so where the one cheap taiwanese company left out the ingredients to make the electrolyte in capacitors not create hydrogen gas. Gas build-ups blew out capacitors on many devices and motherboards (including a Soltek I owned at the time).
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