Duracell alkalines leaking?

Any chance that it wasn't capillary action up the cable but rather condensation of volatized KOH (potassium hydroxide) electrolyte? I've seen the same phenomenon in two seperate compartments where the only method of transferring the KOH was through the air.

KOH is hygroscopic. I use white vinegar or 409 household cleaner for cleanup.

Sales droids will say anything to make a sale. They're usually wrong and usually don't even know it. Electrolux, which owns Frigidaire and other brands, manufactures appliances in the US (TN, NC, SC, and MN).

Except it's not true. I have a lot of tools that were made in Germany.

I grew up on carbon-zinc batteries that leaked like sieve. When the alkalines came out I had a very good run with them, until recently, when I had several leak, including new ones that were just sitting in unused equipment. Did the formulation change recently? Outsourced overseas? I'd like to know...

Why do you have to plate the contact? Just neutralize any potassium hydroxide with vinegar. The water in vinegar will convert any potassium carbide to acetylene gas which is harmless in small amounts.

Once the contact is clean and neutralized, dry it, and then dab with a liberal coating of vaseline. The vaseline will protect the surface from corrosion and oxidation. When the battery is inserted, the microscopic asperites on the contact surfaces will punch through the vaseline and provide a true metal to metal contact with very low contact resistance.

The spring at the negative terminal is a bit more difficult to clean, but hopefully the battery shell will prevent leaks at that terminal. Add vaseline anyway for corrosion protection and low contact resistance.

I should mention that Deoxit, a popular contact cleaner, is mostly mineral oil, which is closely related to vaseline. But mineral oil has a tendency to evaporate over time so the protection fades. Vaseline doesn't evaporate.

How are you doing the silver plating? I can't see anything less than a cyanide bath working to plate silver onto steel.

Nickel electro plating onto damaged contacts ought to be fairly easy though. I just scrape them clean to bare metal of whatever sort.

I don't thnk that could have happend in this particular case. The battery box and the switch compartment were independently mounted on the outside of the equipment and well separated. Both of them were fairly air-tight, although they were not fully hermetically sealed. The cable joining them was single-core screened with twisted, rather than woven, braid. The braiding wires and the central flexible were well rotted.

You can solder to stainless steel with the right flux. (nasty stuff.)

George H.

Solder is a terrible contact surface. It is subject to fretting corrosion that will eventually make the contact useless. For example, see

I once had a Kenmore front-load washer that worked fine for a couple of years. Then it started throwing all kinds of fault conditions that rendered it useless. It had ordinary lead coated connectors that began to show the effects of fretting corrosion. I removed each connector and applied vaseline to the contacts. This cured the problems and the washer ran fine until I got rid of it several years later.

Another example is the ignition on my 4-cylinder wagon started acting up. It would cough and sputter and often die when backing up. I got new Champion ignition wires but they had no effect. I finally removed the power plug to the ignition coils and lathered in some vaseline. This completely cured the problem and the engine has never run so good.

The connector was well protected against incoming contamination and the contacts were bright and clean. My guess is fretting corrosion destroyed the contact resistance to the point where the engine would barely fire. The vaseline cleaned the contacts and gave a very low contact resistance. This improved the spark so it is running better than it ever has before.

Vaseline solved both these problems, as well as many others.

Not a big deal, though, if you use tin/silver solder. Tin oxide and silver oxide aren't gonna hurt the electrical connection.

Aha, that could be the reason why leakage happens more now. It doesn't explain the difference mention by two posters between Panasonic and others, where th Panasonic cells still don't leak. They seem to cost about twice as much as others but if they do not leak that is well invested money.

Cycling? You aren't s'posed to cycle alkalines :-)

I used white vinegar most of the time because that takes it off without scratching the surface. It also cleaned up a NiCd leakage mess in expensive test gear quite nicely.

I'm not so sure. I had severe problems with fretting corrosion on tin/lead contacts, where the products are supposedly tin and lead oxides. These are supposed to be conductive, but they sure were not in my Kenmore washing machine.

Also, the problem with tin/silver may be the heat rquired. Ordinary 60/40 solder melts at 188C (370F), and you might get away with a quick application. Silver solder may require temperatures up to 450C (840F), which requires a gas flame.

This could melt the battery compartment. However, the antidote to fretting corrosion is lubrication, and ordinary vaseline is an excellent lubricant for electrical contacts provided there is no arcing.

Still, I'd avoid using tin/lead or tin/silver as a contact surface.

I had never heard of the potassium carbonate reaction, so I did some research. From basic high school chemistry, combining potassium hydroxide (KOH) with carbon dioxide (CO2) to form potassium carbonate (K2C2) would take the form

However, this equation is unbalanced since there is one extra oxygen left over.

I tried to find anything related to this on the web and found nothing. Also, trying to balance it in

gave the error "equation KOH+CO=K2C2+H2O is an impossible reaction"

I come to the conclusion that this reaction cannot occur. This problem is not uncommon. I have come across a number of chemical reactions in Wikipedia that are false and cannot happen.

This means the white substance from alkaline battery leaks is plain potassium hydroxide, which is extremely corrosive. It can be neutralized with the fundamental neutralization reaction of

base + acid --> salt + water

In this case, plain white vinegar will neutralize the potassium hydroxide with minimal damage. Of course, you want to prevent the vinegar from entering the electronics where any residue could cause contamination.

That was mostly about ball bearings.

I can imagine that solder contacts would pit and stuff with arcs. Still should be good for a few (hundred?) cycles, say it was a washer switch plate, a few hundred is a few years.

If it's a battery contact there are not many switch cycles. Still, I know little about contacts. When I want to put a AA in the circuit I just solder wires onto the end caps.

George H.

I had never heard of the potassium carbonate reaction, so I did some research. From basic high school chemistry, combining potassium hydroxide (KOH) with carbon dioxide (CO2) to form potassium carbonate (K2C2) would take the form

However, this equation is unbalanced since there is one extra oxygen left over.

I tried to find anything related to this on the web and found nothing. Also, trying to balance it in

gave the error "equation KOH+CO=K2C2+H2O is an impossible reaction"

I come to the conclusion that this reaction cannot occur. This problem is not uncommon. I have come across a number of chemical reactions in Wikipedia that are false and cannot happen.

This means the white substance from alkaline battery leaks is plain potassium hydroxide, which is extremely corrosive. It can be neutralized with the fundamental neutralization reaction of

base + acid --> salt + water

In this case, plain white vinegar will neutralize the potassium hydroxide with minimal damage. Of course, you want to prevent the vinegar from entering the electronics where any residue could cause contamination. ======================================================

Potassium carbonate is K2CO3, and carbon dioxide is CO2 as you have correct in one place and wrong in the next. Potassium hydroxide reacts with carbon dioxide to produce potassium carbonate and water: 2KOH +CO2 = K2CO3 +H2O

That is disturbing. What happens if there is some arcing?

The last change that I know about was the elimination of mercury in alkaline cells in 1993. Mercury is used to absorb any hydrogen gas produced inside the cell.

Yes, you have. They are labeled as 'Heavy Duty'.

On 11/30/2017 10:51 PM, Steve Wilson wrote: ...

This suggests the coating of contacts of new equipment - all equipment for that matter - as a preventative before any corrosion has occurred.