dead battery

I have a dead AA Coppertop battery. I think there are things one can do with the rod in a battery, e.g. carbon arcs, although I don't know how. I won't ask about experimenting with the chemicals in the battery since I've already directed that question to sci.chem.

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Ignorantly,
Allan Adler 
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Allan Adler
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Take it apart first.

The times I've done it, it wasn't a particularly easy task, and I recall breaking a number of the rods.

There must be easier ways of getting the rods if you really have a need for them.

Michael

Reply to
Michael Black

Besides, I'm pretty sure that you want to go with a "plain" (carbon-zinc) battery, rather than an alkaline (which is what Duracell/Coppertops are) if you want to find a proper carbon rod.

Taking them apart is easy - just apply hacksaw around one end or the other of the can.

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Don Bruder - dakidd@sonic.net - If your "From:" address isn't on my whitelist,
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Don Bruder

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http://www.nationalwholesaletools.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=789
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John Fields

Thanks for the helpful suggestions on how to open the battery. I looked at the materials safety data sheets for MnO2 and KOH, which are in the battery. Does anyone worry about hazards of working with them?

I was informed that one can recharge these alkaline batteries, even though the manufacturer advises against doing so.

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Ignorantly,
Allan Adler 
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Allan Adler

It is true. All alkaline batteries can be recharged.

The reason manufacturers strongly warn agains recharging stems from the fact that recharging alkaline batteries tend to explode without any warning. So, either save a dime or save your face.

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Gerard Bok
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Gerard Bok

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Yep.... Thats exactly what I would use!

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Best Regards:
                     Baron.
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Baron

hi, you can get a dc supply , connect a wire up to the rod , and the other end to a spanner etc...... and "arc" your name into it. mark k

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mark krawczuk

Just remember to wear your welding helmet when you do - The arc may be physically smaller, but it throws plenty of UV that can flash-burn your eyes or "sunburn" you just as bad as any "real" arc-welder can.

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An ordinary pencil lead works easier... John Ferrell W8CCW "Life is easier if you learn to plow around the stumps"

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John Ferrell

If you want carbon arcs it is cheap and easy to use the graphite from a lead pencil.

Or just go to an industrial supply store and pick up some electrodes for a carbon arc torch - they are copper plated for a good connection and about 3/8" in diameter and 8" long, not terribly expensive. The copper is just a thin layer on the body not the pointed end - it burns away easily.

It used to be possible to go to movie theaters and get the carbon rod remnants from the projector lamps for free.

The battery chemistry is reasonably safe - just wash your hands and don't eat the stuff.

I used to take apart the old #6 "telephone" batteries for the carbon rods. They were about an inch in diameter and 6" long. They were good for easily machined rocket nozzles, using just an electric drill to shape the nozzle venturi.

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Someone here said that the MnO2 is thoroughly mixed with powdered carbon, from which it can't be separated. According to the Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, pure mangangese was originally discovered by reducing manganese oxide with carbon. So, maybe the mixed in carbon is an advantage if one wants to use the battery to produce pure manganese.

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Ignorantly,
Allan Adler 
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Allan Adler

I should perhaps explain that I got interested in the battery as a result of keeping my promise to purchase a multimeter. I didn't buy batteries for it because I was outraged that AA alkaline batteries cost so much. They get cheaper in quantity, but I don't need a dozen AA batteries and may not for some time. So, I went home and decided to use whatever batteries might be lying around, which led me to the dud I'm presently considering dissecting.

I have a couple more. I know one is supposed to use a fresh battery in the multimeter (Radio Shack Cat. No. 22-223) but, for the present purpose of measuring connectivity on a mouse breadboard, even an old battery with a little life left in it should be adequate. I have a couple more old batteries to try out on it.

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Ignorantly,
Allan Adler 
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Allan Adler

They told you get a voltmeter to measure voltage. You can learn a lot, such as that thing you thought was a diode, by measuring the circuit while it's live.

If all you needed was a continuity tester, you could have pulled the beeper out of an old printer, put it in series with a battery, and used two nails as probes. Because for tracing, you only need a yes or no, and it often is a whole lot easier to hear when a connection is made than have to look up at a meter.

One could do the same thing with an LED and battery, for a visual indicator, so long as one puts the LED on one of the probes so you don't have to look away.

If that's a digital meter you bought, bad batteries will affect the readings, in ways that aren't necessarily obvious.

If it's an analog meter, you should have bought a cheap digital meter, likely no more expensive. At the very least, when measuring voltage it would load the circuit far less than a cheap analog meter. But if it is analog, the battery is only used to supply voltage for the ohm range, which means so long as the battery puts out some reasonable voltage it won't matter for continuity readings. Measuring resistors likely won't be accurate unless the battery is decent, though.

Michael

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Michael Black

You are familiar with the expression - "beating a dead horse?"

Replace what batteries you can with rechargeable or use small switching power supplies solar panels etc.. Replace AA batteries with D size - they supply ~4X the power at ~2X the cost. Use a buck-boost converter to make one battery do the work of several.

When using several batteries in series - replace the series when one starts to go. Most of the time it is false economy to put a weak battery in with a new one. Stay with one date code and manufacturer in the same pack.

Or just wait for the technology to catch up with you.

Sounds to me like you're embarking on a project that will waste more resources than it saves.

You can save loads of money by limiting electric heating - for water cooking etc., than you can expect to save worrying about AA batteries.

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As in "beating a dead battery"?

If you can use D size, why do they tell you to use AA batteries, apart from the fact that the D size are bigger and won't fit in the allocated space?

Does the terminology "buck-boost" converter mean something other than using a D size instead of an AA?

Is it cheaper to use a microwave to cook or a gas stove?

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Ignorantly,
Allan Adler 
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Allan Adler

There's no reason not to use a D cell in place of an AA except size.

Some led flashlights which depend on the internal resistance of the battery to limit current will shorten the life of the leds when supplied from a larger battery - that's the exception and only holds for the el cheapo led flashlights coming out of China that work on 3 AAA or AA batteries.

Relative capacity of alkaline batteries in ampere/hours: AAA 1.25 AH AA 2.85 AH C 8.35 AH D 20.5 AH

So a D should last some seven times longer than an AA.

Sorry. No. buck-boost converter is a power supply (electronic circuit) that is capable of taking one voltage in and putting another voltage out - usually with pretty good efficiency (90% of POWER makes it out, 10% wasted as heat) Power is voltage times current.

Buck converters lower voltage and boost converters raise it. Buck Boost does either as conditions demand - you might need 3 volts for instance, a new battery may output 3.4 volts and a buck boost converter may be able to output three volts when the input battery is down to 1.2 volts. Uses more of the available power in the battery when low, and conserves power when the input voltage is higher than normal.

Depends on other factors like the cost of gas and electricity and how you are using it.

An electric slow cooker may be better than a microwave for that type of cooking for instance - simply because a microwave oven wastes some power to light the magnetron filament which doesn't contribute to output power. So cycling on and off to use a 1KW magnetron to produce

100 watts of heat is better left to a slow cooker with a resistance heating element.

Gas is the only way to cook in my opinion if you care about food - but I have to figure that in most cases it is better to take a fuel like gas and burn it to produce heat than it is to take a fuel like coal and burn it to produce heat, to boil water, to turn a turbine, to spin a generator, to produce electricity, so you can send it hundreds of miles through a lossy transmission system, so you can convert it back to heat.

The gas stove will be unvented so the heat you produce will stay in the house - in winter that is good in summer if you pay for air conditioning that is bad.

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Thanks for the explanations about buck boost converters and about batteries. I've started downloading information about buck boost converters.

When I originally read your phrase "buck boost converter", I thought the word "buck" referred to dollars and thought the phrase referred to a way of amplifying the purchasing power of a dollar.

They charge me for a certain amount of gas whether I use it or not, while for electricity they only charge me for what I use. So, it makes sense to use at least some gas, from the standpoint of cost.

If you cook for yourself in a microwave, you can cook your meal in the same dish you will eat it from. If you cook on a stove, you have to use pots and pans and then you also have to wash them, instead of just washing one dish. I use hot water to wash dishes, so they have to burn coal to produce heat to heat the water I use to wash dishes, and the more dishes and pots and pans I wash, the more coal I use. On the other hand, maybe they will burn the same amount of coal no matter how many dishes I wash.

I don't really know how to compute these things. I have a similar problem with economics: goods and services get translated into dollars or some other currency, and then the different currencies have different relative values which are always changing, so I don't know whether it is meaningful to speak of making or saving money.

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Ignorantly,
Allan Adler 
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Allan Adler

The battery turns out not to have been dead. I was stupidly measuring resistance with the dial set to the AC voltage on the multimeter. However, the questions raised by the prospect of having a dead battery to study are sufficiently interesting that I will keep thinking about it. For example: (1) When you recharge an alkaline battery and it explodes, why does it explode? Is it because of a build up of hydrogen gas from action of KOH on the Zn powder? (2) Whatever the reason, the amount of gas (whatever it is) built up is limited by the strength of the steel jacket of the battery. Suppose you put the battery inside a tightly fitting steel container with much greater strength and recharge it. The outside container will raise the threshold for the battery to explode, even if the battery jacket itself suffers some damage. So, that changes the question to this: what is the maximum pressure that can be built up by recharging the battery if it is placed in a sufficiently strong container? Strange as it might sound, the tendency of the battery to pop when recharged might be a safety feature which releases the gas and thereby prevents a much larger explosion. (3) Is there any online account of the details by which Gahn, in 1774, first isolated manganese from manganese dioxide by reducing it with carbon? (4) Although various websites describe the chemicals that are supposed to be in an alkaline battery, in fact there should be more compounds due to reactions among these chemicals. The most important ones are described as part of the working of the battery, but is there any complete inventory of all the chemicals that can be found in a battery? Also, is there a book on this kind of thing?

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Ignorantly,
Allan Adler 
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Allan Adler

You are probably running enough current through it to boil the water in the paste.

I use a Ray-o-vac brand of battery charger and the AA or AAA alkalines will recharge about four or five times before I have to throw them out

- they start to leak so I have to watch them. They don't explode or even get very warm.

The charger is designed for rechargeable alkalines, but most alkalines will work, it also does NiCad and NiMH types.

The alkaline recharge only really works well for a battery you use every day. My MP3 player takes one AAA battery and I use it for 2-3 hours, recharge overnight and use it again the next day. It won't hold a recharge for weeks but works fine on a daily basis.

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