about battery charging

[meerta]

The guy at my local vape shop told me something really strange about batteries, which I find hard to believe: He said that you should charge your battery fully, then use it until it's absolutely dead and charge it all the way up again before using it. He said that if you charge your battery when it's only half dead, or just whenever you're not using it, the battery will "learn" that you're only going to ask it to work for an hour, or half a day (or whatever amount of time) before charging it again, and it's max battery capacity will change over time. Basically, it will learn that it's going back on the charger after you use half (or a quarter, or whatever) of the battery, and will only ever charge up to that point.

I had a Gravity VV battery that I was using with my nautilus and when I was at home, I was using it a lot and putting it on the charger whenever I wasn't actually smoking it, keeping it off of the charger for a couple of hours and putting it back on for anywhere between 30 minutes and all night long. I had it for about two months and was using it heavily at home and charging it often in this way, but last week it began to die. I only work twice a week, and on days I work, I bring my ecig but only use it maybe once an hour for five minutes at a time, far less than when I'm at home, and I don't charge it when I'm at work. For the last couple of weeks, I brought it to work and used it sparingly as I do, but it would still die by the time I got back home. Last week it died by the afternoon. Do you think it "learned" from my days at home that it would be charged more often and so never charged fully anymore, or do you think it was just this battery's time to die and be replaced?

 

[defdock]

i cant say thats how batteries "think"


but from personal experiance, i have gotten more months out of batteries i would let die completely before charge.

i have a 3 year old 650mah joyetech ego that still works like the day it was bought - i get a full day of use and around 5-6mls vaped. i ALWAYS let that battery die completely before charge.

 

[Wraith504]

Depends on the chemistry of the battery simply put.

 

[holimakaru]

Check out Baditude"s blogs E-Cigarette Forum - Baditude - Blogs

 

[Rickajho]

Umm... geez... those concepts are a throwback to 1993 and NiCad batteries - none of which applies to the Li-On batteries used here.

If you actually could use a Li-On battery "until it's absolutely dead" that's guaranteed to shorten the life span of the battery and damage it in the process. I don't know what a "Gravity" VV is by name but even the most basic eGo class batteries have protection circuits in there that stop the battery from functioning when it hits 3.2 volts - the low end safe cutoff from the ICR chemistry battery inside there. For that type of battery it's never "absolutely dead" - on purpose.

More likely your problem is using too low resistance coils in that Nautilus. eGo type batteries aren't build to handle low resistance coils and if you were running anything below 1.8 ohms on that battery you prematurely wore it out. Realistically? Anything lower than 2.0 ohms isn't a good combination with that type of battery.

 

[gandymarsh]

Umm... geez... those concepts are a throwback to 1993 and NiCad batteries - none of which applies to the Li-On batteries used here.

If you actually could use a Li-On battery "until it's absolutely dead" that's guaranteed to shorten the life span of the battery and damage it in the process. I don't know what a "Gravity" VV is by name but even the most basic eGo class batteries have protection circuits in there that stop the battery from functioning when it hits 3.2 volts - the low end safe cutoff from the ICR chemistry battery inside there. For that type of battery it's never "absolutely dead" - on purpose.

More likely your problem is using too low resistance coils in that Nautilus. eGo type batteries aren't build to handle low resistance coils and if you were running anything below 1.8 ohms on that battery you prematurely wore it out. Realistically? Anything lower than 2.0 ohms isn't a good combination with that type of battery.

That's what I was about to say

 

[Schmitz Bitz]

The salesperson you were speaking to would be referring to the cyclical memory of the battery. Basically, they This (jump to Battery University) sums it up much more eloquently than I...

Now, many folks will try and convince you that this only applies to old NiCad cells (which is the conventional wisdom); however it has been proven that LiON cells (specifically the most common lithium-iron-phosphate construction based) also exhibit a cyclical memory; just on a much shallower gradient than the old NiCads.

From a study by Dr. Peter Novak (pub. phys.org April 2013)
"The numerous successive cycles of partial charging and discharging lead to individual small memory effects adding up to a large memory effect" (in LiFePO4 devices).

So, yes...it could have learned from your charging habits. However if this was the case (and I can't say I've put this to the test with LiON units), you should be able to re-gain some of the lost voltage simply by allowing deep discharge cycles (eg. drain the battery) and full charges. While this will never bring it back to 100%, it should certainly work to make this unit more useful to you.

 

[meerta]

More likely your problem is using too low resistance coils in that Nautilus. eGo type batteries aren't build to handle low resistance coils and if you were running anything below 1.8 ohms on that battery you prematurely wore it out. Realistically? Anything lower than 2.0 ohms isn't a good combination with that type of battery.

Thanks for the info. I'm rather ill-informed as to my set-up. I'm here basically to figure out why I keep having such major failures with different tanks/batteries/coils. So far, I've been taking the advice of the guys at the e-cig store, and their advice is often contradictory and differs from person to person. When I go in to ask for Nautilus coils, they just give me these 1.8 ones. Can I ask for 2.0 and is that something they would generally carry?

 

[Schmitz Bitz]

Umm... geez... those concepts are a throwback to 1993 and NiCad batteries - none of which applies to the Li-On batteries used here.

Ah! Not so Rickajho!

phys.org article "Memory Effect now also Found in Lithium-Ion Batteries"

Paul Scherrer Inst.

There are several others, but I don't really want to generate a ton of link-spam!

 

[AzPlumber]

Ah! Not so Rickajho!

phys.org article "Memory Effect now also Found in Lithium-Ion Batteries"

Paul Scherrer Inst.

There are several others, but I don't really want to generate a ton of link-spam!

You realize that the majority of ecig batteries are not the type of li-ion battery discussed in this article? Several quotes from the article

"discovered that a widely-used type of lithium-ion battery has a memory effect."

"The memory effect and its associated abnormal working voltage deviation have now been confirmed for one of the most common materials used as the positive electrode in lithium-ion batteries, lithium-iron phosphate (LiFePO4)."

 

[Rickajho]

Thanks for the info. I'm rather ill-informed as to my set-up. I'm here basically to figure out why I keep having such major failures with different tanks/batteries/coils. So far, I've been taking the advice of the guys at the e-cig store, and their advice is often contradictory and differs from person to person. When I go in to ask for Nautilus coils, they just give me these 1.8 ones. Can I ask for 2.0 and is that something they would generally carry?

Have you seen that battery you are buying from them on-line? It could just very well be that it's a cheap knock-off (which is typical for a lot of vape shops) and two months is all you are going to get out of it. 1.8 ohm coils... shouldn't be killing it off quite that fast. But some knockoffs have been known to have lower rated batteries inside than what is claimed they really are.

Not sure if they make anything higher that will fit your particular Aspire. The Kanger BCC coils can be had up to 2.5 ohms. 2.2 ohms for a Kanger works nicely on a VV eGo type battery.

 

[Rickajho]

Ah! Not so Rickajho!

phys.org article "Memory Effect now also Found in Lithium-Ion Batteries"

Paul Scherrer Inst.

There are several others, but I don't really want to generate a ton of link-spam!

That would be great, if the article would stop generalizing about all lithium batteries when it is only citing a discovered memory effect in lithium-iron phosphate (LiFePO4) chemistry batteries. Again, not what is being used here - except for the handful of APV's that have recently "gone there" for inexplicable reasons.

 

[Ms82082]

This is true of certain battery types like ni-cad but this is not true for li-mi or most modern battery chemistries.

 

[SequoiaTrout]

Agree with Wraith504

 

[Ryedan]

Ah! Not so Rickajho!

phys.org article "Memory Effect now also Found in Lithium-Ion Batteries"

Paul Scherrer Inst.

There are several others, but I don't really want to generate a ton of link-spam!

A quote from the article:

"The effect is in fact tiny: the relative deviation in voltage is just a few parts per thousand."

So the effect is extremely small. The negative effect of discharging our batteries all the way for each cycle OTOH is huge.

 

[Ryedan]

The guy at my local vape shop told me something really strange about batteries, which I find hard to believe: He said that you should charge your battery fully, then use it until it's absolutely dead and charge it all the way up again before using it. He said that if you charge your battery when it's only half dead, or just whenever you're not using it, the battery will "learn" that you're only going to ask it to work for an hour, or half a day (or whatever amount of time) before charging it again, and it's max battery capacity will change over time. Basically, it will learn that it's going back on the charger after you use half (or a quarter, or whatever) of the battery, and will only ever charge up to that point.

I had a Gravity VV battery that I was using with my Nautilus and when I was at home, I was using it a lot and putting it on the charger whenever I wasn't actually smoking it, keeping it off of the charger for a couple of hours and putting it back on for anywhere between 30 minutes and all night long. I had it for about two months and was using it heavily at home and charging it often in this way, but last week it began to die. I only work twice a week, and on days I work, I bring my ecig but only use it maybe once an hour for five minutes at a time, far less than when I'm at home, and I don't charge it when I'm at work. For the last couple of weeks, I brought it to work and used it sparingly as I do, but it would still die by the time I got back home. Last week it died by the afternoon. Do you think it "learned" from my days at home that it would be charged more often and so never charged fully anymore, or do you think it was just this battery's time to die and be replaced?

No, the lower you discharge Li-ion batteries, the higher you charge them, the faster you discharge them and the faster you charge them the shorter their lifespan will be. Heat is really bad for them too. They have no memory issues when used in vaping.

I don't know the Gravity batteries and Google is not helping me. If that is a eGo class battery you can discharge until it stops working and recharge until it's full with no damage to it. I have one of these that is two years old and has a couple of hundred charge cycles on it and it still performs very well. 1.8 ohms is also just fine for these.

Now, if you basically kept the battery at full charge all the time because you always had it on charge between vapes, that shortens it's life. The less time it spends at full charge and the less at empty the better. This is not due to memory effects, just quicker degradation at full charge and when empty.

If what you have is a battery holder and you are taking out the battery to charge in an external charger, we need information on the battery make and model and the charger.