Extending battery life. Scientists have found that heating AA batteries brings them back to life. What can you do to make batteries last longer?

Imagine what happened: you started an electrochemical experiment, assembled a circuit - and the battery suddenly died, and there is no spare battery. What should I do? But that's not so bad. It’s much worse when a flashlight goes out on a dark evening, especially in the forest. And what a shame if the batteries of a transistor radio fail just at the moment when your favorite song is broadcast on the radio, or during a broadcast of a football match. But what can you do about it...

In the meantime, something can be done. If you don’t have a spare battery, don’t rush to throw away the old one, but try to “revive” it.

Many modern batteries - Krona, Mars, Saturn, KBS and others - consist of elements of the manganese-zinc system. During operation, the negative electrode of these batteries - the zinc cup - gradually, but very slowly, dissolves, and the positive electrode - manganese dioxide MnO 2, is reduced to trivalent manganese hydroxide (its formula can be represented as MnOOH). It gradually covers the oxide grains, penetrates deep into the grains and blocks access to the electrolyte. Even half of the manganese oxide has not been used, and the element has already stopped working; By that time, even more zinc remains, up to four-fifths! In short, an almost usable battery has to be thrown away.

But if you remove the “shell” of MnOOH, the electrolyte will again be able to flow to the grains and the battery will come to life. But how to remove it? The easiest way is to tap the battery firmly with a hammer or stone. Then the grains inside the cells will split, and the electrolyte will again be able to penetrate them. This method is not so good, but in the forest, perhaps, you won’t find a better one...

If the battery fails at home, then manganese dioxide can be activated much more effectively. Punch a hole in the zinc battery cup with a nail and lower the battery into water. The electrolyte in the cell is not liquid (that would be inconvenient), but thickened. It soaks in water, liquefies, and makes it easier for it to penetrate the manganese dioxide grains. This simple trick allows you to increase the battery life by almost a third. But it can be simplified even more.

There is no need to fill the battery with water. All you have to do is punch a hole in the zinc cup. Manganese oxide in the element is mixed with graphite powder - this is necessary in order to increase electrical conductivity. As soon as air begins to flow inside, graphite will absorb oxygen, and along with manganese dioxide, another positive electrode will appear - the so-called air electrode, on which oxygen is reduced. In short, a simple nail transforms a manganese-zinc element into an air-zinc element!

To be fair, let’s say that after such a procedure the battery will be discharged with a low current - such are the properties of a homemade zinc air cell. But it will serve for a very long time.

And the last thing: we will make the old battery almost exactly like a new one. To do this, the battery must be charged with electric current, i.e., treated in the same way as a battery. The reaction taking place in the battery is reversible, and MnOOH can again turn into MnO 2.

Please note that not all batteries can be recharged, but only those in which the paste has not dried out and the case is not damaged. And it is not necessary to charge with ordinary direct current, as batteries are charged. In this case, zinc will begin to deposit on the battery body in the form of branched filaments-dendrites, and very soon this will lead to a short circuit and the battery will fail. It must be charged using the so-called asymmetric current. To get it, you need to rectify the alternating current not completely, for example: insert a rectifier diode into the circuit and parallel it with a resistance (about 50 Ohms). The source voltage should be about 12 V, so you cannot use current directly from the network; you need a step-down transformer.

Manganese-zinc cells can be charged up to three times, while their capacity drops very slightly. And small, so-called button cells (they use a mercury-zinc system) can be recharged up to ten times. But there is no point in punching them with a nail or hitting them with a hammer - there are practically no active substances left in these elements after the discharge.

O. Holguin. "Experiments without explosions"
M., "Chemistry", 1986

You will need

• - an awl or sharp nail;
• - syringe;
• - distilled water;
• - table vinegar 9%;
• - 10% hydrochloric acid solution;
• - plasticine or resin;
• - small hammer;
• - hot water;
• - battery charger.

Instructions

The process of restoring battery functionality is called regeneration. Practice shows that not every element is suitable for restoration, but only those whose capacity and voltage have not dropped below a certain value (for a 1.5 V AA battery this value will be 0.7-0.8 V).

Please also take into account that batteries that operate at high load currents (pocket flashlights, children's toys, portable radios, etc.) are most easily restored; much worse - elements operating on low currents (watches, portable radios, cameras, etc.)

If the AA battery has been stored for a long time and has dried out, make two holes with an awl or a thin nail along the central rod, midway between it and the edges of the battery. Punctures should be made to a depth of approximately ¾ of the height of the galvanic cell.

Inject a few drops of water (preferably distilled) into one of the holes using a medical syringe. At this time, the displaced air will escape through the second hole. As soon as water appears in the second hole, the syringe is removed. After “filling” the battery, cover the holes with plasticine or hot resin.

Another, more reliable option for filling the battery is not water, but a 10% solution of hydrochloric acid or a double dose of table vinegar.

You can also revive the battery by immersing it in hot water for about 10 minutes.

Mechanical stress can also extend the life of the battery by 2-3 days. Try gently tapping the body of the elements with a small hammer.

There are charger options for different types of batteries. Schemes of such devices can be found on the Internet.

note

Keep in mind that it is better not to take risks and, if possible, still replace the “updated” batteries with new ones, since there is a risk that liquid may leak from the old batteries and damage the microcircuits of your equipment.

Sources:

• battery fluid

Many motorists are familiar with the situation when one frosty morning the engine refuses to wake up after a cold night. Then it becomes clear that the battery is dead. But don’t rush to run out and buy a new one. After all, you can restore a dead battery. If you charge it correctly, it will last for a long time.

Instructions

Remember that you need a battery at a certain speed. If, for example, your battery capacity is 50 amp-hours, it needs to be charged for 10 hours at 5 amps. When charging, be sure to remove the covers.
If you try to charge the battery faster, this may result in overheating or boiling of the electrolyte. And if the plates become warped, the battery will die. If the battery is sealed, it must be charged even more slowly. On average, no more than 2.5% of ampere-hour. However, keeping the battery charged for too long is also not a good idea.
There are chargers equipped with a fast charging function. It must be used

only in extreme cases. After all, such a procedure reduces the life of the battery.

If your battery is dead and you urgently need to start it, the easiest way is to charge the battery from an external source. Typically, car enthusiasts help each other out by letting their car recharge a dead battery. However, for this you need to have a starter cable. They are very different. But it’s better not a “left-handed” one made by hand, but a factory one. After all, the wrong cable can melt the first time you use it. Because of this, it will heat up and lose energy. So it's not far from the fire.

If you have a starter cable, first you need to connect the red cable to the (+) terminal on the charged one. Then you need to connect the other end of the red cable to the (+) terminal on the dead battery. Then connect the black cable to the (-) terminal on the charged battery and the other end to a clean ground point on the engine block or chassis. The main thing is that it is away from the battery, carburetor, and fuel hoses. A small spark may occur during connection.
Care must be taken to ensure that both cables do not touch moving parts. Now you can start the car with a charged battery. It must run for at least one minute. Then try starting the car with the dead battery. If the engine does not start, wait a few minutes and try again. When everything works out, you can turn off the donor car. When you disconnect the starter cable, repeat the entire procedure in reverse order.

Video on the topic

Helpful advice

The battery requires care. It is necessary to regularly check the electrolyte level. Low will indicate overcharging. If only one of the cells lacks electrolyte, the battery will soon die.

Every motorist sooner or later faces a situation where the battery “dies,” and this problem is especially acute when frosts begin. There are many reasons why a battery may lose its functionality, it could be a door that is not closed completely, or an interior light that is turned on for a long time, or a forgotten working radio. In general, this is caused by any energy consumer that remains in working condition for a long time.

Instructions

However, in addition to forgotten electrical appliances, the cause of failure can also be a faulty one that supplies insufficient charge, or the electrolyte level is too low. To restore life, first check the electrolyte level - if it is lower than required, add distilled water to the jars.

Try to evaluate your capabilities, that is, decide which way is easiest for you to start the battery. It may be possible to start with “ ”, which is only done in cars with manual transmission, but it is not recommended, as this may cause damage, such as belt slippage.

One of the easiest ways to bring a battery back to life is to use a “cigarette lighter” from the battery of another running car. To do this, you just need to stop a car passing by and ask the driver for help.

In the event that there is no possibility of “lighting a cigarette”, you do not dare to start it from the “pusher”, all that remains is to remove the battery to bring it back to life. If the problem occurs at a time when the temperature outside is sub-zero, that is, more than minus 5 degrees Celsius, bring the battery into a warm place so that it warms up.

But before that, make sure that when you turn the ignition key, at least the dashboard lights up, only in this case, after heating the battery to 20 degrees, a charge will appear in it that will be able to turn the starter and start the car.

The ideal option is to charge the battery for a day if you have a charger, which can be purchased at any auto store. After you start the car, you should leave it idling for at least 15 minutes - then the battery will finally “come to life”. In the future, to avoid unpleasant situations, fully charge the battery and contact a service station to detect energy leaks and determine the serviceability of the generator.

Video on the topic

note

The battery charger produces a higher starting current, which leads to the resuscitation of the vehicle's power source.

Helpful advice

The cold season reduces the battery's performance by a quarter, which is why one morning it turns out that it is not able to provide a normal current supply to start the engine. If it is possible to leave the car overnight in a heated garage, then it is better to use it.

Lithium batteries are considered smart, they are equipped with a built-in controller. Lithium is the most active metal, so the batteries are compact and capacious. They contain 1.5-2 times more energy than nickel ones. But this feature also has a downside. It is almost impossible to restore batteries. It's easier to keep them in working order.

With bright screens require a lot of battery power.

But besides the screen, various applications can consume battery energy.

What needs to be done so that the phone does not discharge quickly and its battery lasts as long as possible?

First you need to answer the question: "How do smartphone batteries work?".

Most smartphones have either lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery, or lithium polymer battery (Li-pol), and such batteries do not need to be fully charged and discharged at the very beginning of using the smartphone.

But such batteries can suffer from low voltage problems, so it's best to charge partially (between 20% and 90%) rather than completely charging and discharging.

There is still debate about caring for these batteries, the key is to find what is best for you.

How to increase battery life

Here are some tips on how to make your smartphone battery last longer and not drain quickly:

1. Screensaver and themes in dark colors.

If your device has an AMOLED screen (like most Samsung devices), use dark colors for the screen - this will help save battery power, because AMOLED screens only illuminate colored pixels. Black pixels are not backlit, which means the more of them you have, the more energy you save.

2. Don't use automatic brightness.

This feature may seem useful, but automatic brightness usually makes the screen much brighter than it actually needs to be. It's best to set the screen brightness manually and change it whenever you need to. This is a very important point, because... The screen is a major waste of battery power.

3. Set sleep mode (screen timeout) for the shortest possible time.

Just think, if your screen automatically turns off after 1 minute, it will use 4 times more power than if that indicator stays on for 15 seconds.

Studies have shown that the average user turns on their smartphone 150 times a day, which means everything possible can be done to reduce screen time.

4. You should not use unnecessary functions, such as animation or smart scrolling, because... they also use up your battery power.

Long battery

5. Turn off vibration.

It's also worth turning off the phone from vibrating when you press keys - this may seem like an interesting feature, but it's useless and only drains your battery. Of course, if you simply need this function, then you can skip this item. It takes more energy to vibrate your phone than to make a simple ringing call.

6. Use notifications for your lock screen.

A lock screen can help save your battery power. And all because you see all notifications at once, without having to turn on the entire screen. This screen comes by default on all smartphones with the Android Lollipop operating system.

If you have Android KitKat (previous version), try using widgets for your lock screen if your RAM supports it or you can install an app that does it for you, like Dynamic Notifications.

You will still have to turn on the screen, but it will be on for much less time than usual. In addition, the screen will be dark, which will also save battery power.

7. Set the "Do Not Disturb" function.

This function allows you to activate silent mode, and the user will be notified of all notifications when the phone vibrates.

This utility also disables Wi-Fi and mobile Internet. When you're at work and don't want to be disturbed, set a mode where your phone won't ring or vibrate.

You can also turn on airplane mode when you decide to take a break.

When you install apps like Greenify, the apps you normally run on your phone regularly will shut down and go into "sleep mode" when you're not using them.

Extending the life of your smartphone battery

8. You don't need to be connected to networks 24 hours a day.

Turn off GPS, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and mobile data when you don't need them. To clarify your location and navigation, you can use either Wi-Fi or 3G, or GPS, but not all together.

9. Try to limit the use of widgets, especially those that require an Internet connection.

Widgets that show the weather, as well as widgets for Twitter, Gmail and some social networks. networks need constant updating, which means they need energy.

It's better to simply turn on a particular widget when you need it, rather than leaving it to run and update on its own.

To the delight of taxpayers, sometimes scientists come up with the idea of ​​conducting research, the results of which will not only be published in scientific journals, but may also have long-term prospects for useful application. Sometimes their research can be tested in practice, and the conclusions can bring real benefits in everyday life.

For example, how to extend the life of ordinary AA batteries. So, in April, Gazeta.Ru talked about scientists from , who decided to find out whether the rebound of AA batteries from a hard surface can really tell whether they are discharged.

Having conducted full-scale experiments, scientists have proven that dead batteries, on average, bounce higher than unused ones.

Now, American materials scientists from the California Institute of Technology have set out to find out something a little different - what happens in batteries used in everyday life and how to prevent their failure.
A battery consists of a positive and negative electrode - a cathode and an anode. And during operation of the source, electrons move from the anode through the energy consumer to the cathode.

By losing electrons, the current carriers, some atoms on the anode (made, for example, of lithium) become positively charged ions and move towards the cathode through a conducting liquid called an electrolyte.
Each time we recharge the battery, we reverse this process and positively charged ions move back to the anode, but are deposited unevenly on it.

The study showed that as they settle, they form microscopic tree-like growths called dendrites.

When these dendrites become so long that they reach and touch the opposite cathode, a short circuit occurs. In this case, the electric current flows not along the external circuit, but through these dendrites, which brings the death of the battery closer.

Moreover, the current flowing through the dendrites heats them up, and since electrolytes are flammable, this can cause the cell to catch fire. But even if these appendages are small and do not cause a short circuit, they can completely detach from the anode and float in the electrolyte. In this case, the anode simply loses its material, and the battery can no longer store enough energy.

“Dendrites are dangerous because they reduce the capacity of rechargeable batteries,” said Asghar Aryanfar, the lead author of the study at Caltech. Boris Merinov, a native of Russia and a specialist in materials science, also took part in the study. To try to get rid of harmful growths, scientists heated the elements to 55 degrees Celsius for two days.

It turned out that such heating led to a reduction in growths by 36%.

And computer modeling helped materials scientists understand exactly how these formations are destroyed when exposed to high temperatures. To do this, they followed individual atoms in a dendrite model shaped like a regular pyramid.

Simulations showed that heating leads to the fact that, firstly, the atoms at the top of the pyramid slide down and, secondly, the atoms at the lower levels can leave the buildup altogether and another metal atom falls in its place. Thus, the atoms that make up the dendrite mix and shake, which ultimately leads to its destruction.

By being able to determine how much energy is required to completely destroy a dendrite, scientists will be able to better understand its structure and characteristics. And although scientists admit that they have not fully studied the phenomenon of dendrite destruction when heated, they are confident that to at least partially restore batteries, it is enough to heat them a little.

“In our work, we investigated one of the aspects that affects the lifespan of lithium batteries, namely: the formation of dendrites during the charging and discharging process of the battery. In this sense, “annealing”, like “pulsating charging”, can extend the life of the battery. However, it should be noted that overheating can cause its degradation,” co-author explained to Gazeta.Ru research Boris Merinov.

We often miss good shots in the forest or at sea, we may be late or stumble in the dark because a simple battery from a camera, watch or flashlight suddenly runs out. It's hard to say exactly when the charge will be used up, unless this is a Duracell model with an indicator. But don't despair! Thanks to a few tips, you can avoid unpredictable situations and take the intended photographs from a digital camera, find out the exact time, illuminate the road, etc. In this article, we will tell you how to charge batteries at home without a charger, which will make life much easier in unpredictable situations.

Know that to charge alkaline batteries you can use a special charger that can relatively quickly restore a discharged item. But each charging session will reduce its operating life by approximately 1/3. In addition, leakage is possible.

Note! At home you can charge: alkaline (alkaline) AA batteries. Don't: salt. The possibility of leakage or even explosion cannot be ruled out!

Charging can be done using various methods. Therefore, you should not throw away an element as soon as it stops serving. A few recommendations - and he is back in action. The first method, using which you can charge AA batteries yourself without a charger. We connect the power supply to the network. Next, using the connection wires, we connect the used battery to the unit. Don't forget about polarity: plus is connected to plus, and minus is connected to minus. It’s quite easy to find where the “-\+” of a discharged object is: they are marked on the body.

Having connected the battery to the power source, wait until it warms up to fifty degrees and turn off the power. Next, wait a few minutes for the heated object to cool down. Otherwise, it may explode. Then, while the AA is still warm, it needs to be charged in a different way. It consists of the following: connect the power supply to electricity and disconnect it. This should take about 120 seconds. Next, we place the object to be charged in the “freezer” for 10 minutes, then take it out and wait 2-3 minutes for it to warm up. That's it, the charge is restored right at home without a charger! You can safely use it for the same computer mouse.

Main rules:

1. The charge is not feasible if you arrange the + and - in a different way. On the contrary, the battery will drain even faster.
2. It is permissible to charge the object at home 1-2 times.
3. Using the method described above, you can only charge simple AA alkaline batteries.
4. The charge can be carried out in any ambient temperature conditions.

Another charging method is the conventional heating method. But it is fraught with consequences (explosion). In this way, you can restore, again, small alkaline batteries at home. You can also charge them in a simpler way - place discharged objects in hot water, but for no more than 20 seconds, otherwise sad results are possible. Another simple way is to flatten or reduce the volume of the element with your own hands. This way you can charge various AA batteries. There is an example when a person, after the charge of a cast-ion battery had expired, simply took it out and stomped on it, after which the charge indicator showed one hundred percent.

You can also restore the charge without a charger this way: we make 2 holes with an awl near each carbon rod with a depth of three-quarters of the height of the element itself. We pour liquid into them and seal them, covering them with resin or plasticine. You can pour not just liquid, but an eight to ten percent solution of hydrochloric acid or double vinegar. Pour the solution several times to ensure sufficient saturation. This method allows you to charge up to seventy to eighty percent of the initial capacity.

Video instructions for restoring Duracell using a phone charger

Another way to charge the product: open the cell cover with a knife. If the zinc cylinder, the object's rod and the carbon powder are intact, then immerse the object in the salt solution. Its ratio is as follows: 2 tablespoons of table salt per several glasses of liquid. Next, boil the solution together with the element for about ten to fifteen minutes. Then we return the gaskets responsible for sealing to their place and cover them with wax or plasticine.

Alternative charging method