blue-green battery corrosion cleanup

Jan 06, 2006 5 Replies

I had seen other posts here about using and have used vinegar to clean the corrosion left from batteries leaking in battery powered devices. The problem this time was corroded battery contacts in a remote control. Since I was able to completely remove the board and had the contacts dangling off one end I decided to heat the vinegar to boiling as I have done for other projects. When I dipped the contacts into the hot vinegar the corrosion bubbled right off in a matter of seconds. (Do this in a well ventilated area). After a thorough rinsing and light buffing the contacts were very clean albeit missing some material. Richard



Baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) is good.

"Charles Schuler" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@comcast.com:

No,it is not;the leakage from alkaline cells that are most commonly used these days will not respond to another alkaline(base) like sodium bicarb.

That is why VINEGAR works so well,it's a mild acid,and easy to obtain. Acid counteracts the alkaline battery electrolyte.

Jim Yanik jyanik at kua.net

Not for a leaking alkaline battery, baking soda will only make that worse. For acid batteries obviously the reverse is true. One size does not fit all.

Yah I think that's right Mike and it wasn't just the plating it had eaten holes in the phosphor bronze? itself But only if you leave leaky batteries in there. One reason to really get all that corrosion out of there was that when I metered the batteries they were really loaded down. 3 Volts dropping to under a volt. Richard

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