Pictures of serious battery failure - IMR 18650

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Quick1

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Feb 11, 2010
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Hi rolygate, just found your post in the thread...
Is the "C" rating shorthand for something? How would I find the "C" rating of a battery? The only batteries I intended to use were 3V, 750mah for a 3.7 volt mod running no higher than a 2.4 amp atty. The batteries I intended to buy supply a lot of info, but no "C" rating listed for them.

C rating is an instantaneous current related to the mAh capacity of the battery. In your case your battery is rated at 750 mAh (750 milli Amp hours). If you draw a current of 750 milliamps your battery should last 1 hour. C would be 750 mA.

When you say a 2.4 amp atty I assume you mean a 2.4 ohm atty.
A Li-Ion battery is fully charged at 4.2 V.
4.2V through a 2.4 ohm load will result in a 1.75 Amp current.

So... If your battery is rated for a maximum discharge rate of 2C or more you'll be right at (or just under it's rated capability).
2 * 0.750 Amps = 1.5 Amps

Now, in our application we almost always overdrive our batteries. It's not quite as bad as it seems since our usage is not generally a constant draw and maximum discharge rate is given for a continuous current/load on the battry. But... if the button gets stuck down for some time, like sitting on it, then you are at risk. If you had a 750mAh battery rated for a maximum discharge rate of 4C then the current resulting from your 2.4 ohm atty would be well within it's capabilities. It would be like leaving your flashlight on. You would then only have to worry about that red hot and likely melted atty :)
 
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KyanaBelle

Senior Member
May 27, 2011
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That's probably true. "explode" is a pretty vague term.
But first, you used Li-Ion and LiFePO4 referring to the same battery? Those are different chemistries. I assume you're talking about the LiFePO4. Safer chemistries CAN fail and will vent. They can vent very hot gas and liquid. It's just that they will vent much slower, without producing their own flames, and they won't go into thermal runaway (where the failure/reaction feeds itself ... kind of like a road flare).

That was confusing to me, too. Just to make sure I got it right, I copied and pasted the description directly from their website and they do, in fact, call them "Li-Ion" as well as "LiFePO4". So, I looked it up and Wikipedia, for what it's worth, calls them a type of lithium-ion battery that uses lithium ferrous phosphate.

My dad's a chemist, and I could ask him about this instead of pestering you all. But ... I kid you not, he'll insist on telling me how they are manufactured, starting with mining the iron, before I ever get the information I really need out of him! :facepalm: He caused me to miss the first five years of the 'net because he started on binary when I asked him how to turn his #@%$ computer on so I could type up a resume. True story...
 

Quick1

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That was confusing to me, too. Just to make sure I got it right, I copied and pasted the description directly from their website and they do, in fact, call them "Li-Ion" as well as "LiFePO4". So, I looked it up and Wikipedia, for what it's worth, calls them a type of lithium-ion battery that uses lithium ferrous phosphate.

My dad's a chemist, and I could ask him about this instead of pestering you all. But ... I kid you not, he'll insist on telling me how they are manufactured, starting with mining the iron, before I ever get the information I really need out of him! :facepalm:

If you're concerned, you really should learn about this...

Definitions: Battery Definitions – Battery University

And you should start here with the basics.

Battery information from Battery University

Start with Part One and use the sidebar to jump around to the topics of interest for you. I guarantee if you spend an hour there you will know more than 90% of the people here where you would spend many hours gleaning the same information mixed in with a lot of mis and dis information.
 

KyanaBelle

Senior Member
May 27, 2011
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This is the data they provide for the batteries:

Working Voltage:3.2V and Peak Voltage: 3.6V
Charging cut-off voltage: 3.6V
Discharge cut-off voltage: 2.2V

Please never overdischarge battery below 2.2V/cell
Charge the this battery with LiFePO4 RCR123A smart charger.

Capacity: 750 mAh
Maximum discharging rate:< 550 mA
Maximum charge current: <550 mA

Yes, I meant ohms. Ohms, amps, volts, watts - it could as easily be Babylonian to me. I hated physics. Correction - I hated both physics and chemistry. Biology was my strong suit. LOL - I just don't want to explode or ignite and I really had my heart set on that mod.
 

Quick1

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Sigh... Ok, let's walk through this and then I'll bust your chops at the end.

This is the data they provide for the batteries:

Working Voltage:3.2V and Peak Voltage: 3.6V

Peak Voltage is what you should expect with the battery fully charged just off the charger. We will use this value as the worst case for calculations.

Charging cut-off voltage: 3.6V
Discharge cut-off voltage: 2.2V

Please never overdischarge battery below 2.2V/cell

Ok... here is a small downside. There are no protection circuits on these batteries. That means there is no cut off for under charging your battery either. During use you will notice vapor probably drops off to almost nothing around 3V or above so you'll recharge it long before it gets this low. But batteries have a self discharge rate. Leave them on the shelf long enough and they will very slowly discharge themselves. If this battery goes below 2.2V it's probably ruined and it's likely it won't take a charge again. Unlikely you would leave them that long but you might and then there is that problem with the button getting stuck or something like that.

Charge the this battery with LiFePO4 RCR123A smart charger.

Yes, you will need the charger specifically for these batteries. It will not work for other kinds (and it's probably just for this size as well) and other kind of chargers will not work for these batteries. charge rate, and cutoff, and stuff.

Capacity: 750 mAh
Maximum discharging rate:< 550 mA

Now this is a real problem. Remember we figured 1.75 Amps (1750 mA) with 4.2V through your 2.4 ohm atty?
Well, 3.6V through your 2.4 ohm atty is 1.5 Amps. That's 3 times the max discharging rate for these batteries. No, everybody doesn't ruin these batteries or have them fail (remember the pulsed application) but you are way overdriving them. At the very least you will get much shortened overall life out of these before they need replaced. No, I have no idea why any vendor would sell these on an e-cig site... (yes, I know you were looking on the Tenergy site but they are resold by one or more of our vendors). They do have the same chemistry (or maybe some other "safe" chemistry) batteries rated at 4C or more but I'm not sure they come in the right size for your mod. I would recommend quality, protected Li-Ion batteries.

Here is a handy dandy calculator for Ohm's law:

http://www.ohmslawcalculator.com/ohms_law_calculator.php

Maximum charge current: <550 mA

Yes, I meant ohms. Ohms, amps, volts, watts - it could as easily be Babylonian to me. I hated physics. Correction - I hated both physics and chemistry. Biology was my strong suit. LOL - I just don't want to explode or ignite and I really had my heart set on that mod.

Surely you can find other batteries for that mod. What are you vaping now? If it's some regular kit type of thing do you know the voltage you're running through your 2.4 ohm battery now? If it's giving you the vape that you prefer then you're going to want to stick with the same voltage. If you can't do that then get a decent battery and use different (ohm) attys to get the desired result.

Oh yea, I forgot the busting your chops part :)

DON'T BE LAZY! You could put your eye out with that thing. haha.
Seriously though, people are concerned about safety but they don't want to put any effort into educating themselves. There just isn't any one answer and there is no such thing as completely safe. Especially with rechargeable batteries.
 
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KyanaBelle

Senior Member
May 27, 2011
72
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Louisville, KY
DON'T BE LAZY! You could put your eye out with that thing. haha.
Seriously though, people are concerned about safety but they don't want to put any effort into educating themselves. There just isn't any one answer and there is no such thing as completely safe. Especially with rechargeable batteries.

LOL - I did go to your battery college link! It started with "When were batteries discovered" - it must be an engineer thang! :laugh: I'll try to do some more research and look for some Li-Ion protected batteries. I am not vaping yet. I've been researching online for about 8 hours a day for the past week - seriously. And I will continue researching all the options right up until the first week of June when I purchase my own set. I'm actually like that. I put in a year of research before I decided on a breed of parrot! I even studied an independent lab report on the various chemicals detected in juice samples and what their health risk ratings were. (Retired nurse - that didn't bore me to tears) Researching circuitry and batteries? That is truly painful. :blush:

Right from the git-go, I was questioning why on earth they didn't make these things where you could replace the battery instead of buying a whole new unit when the battery died. It just seemed really stupid to me. The past 2 days I figured out that you could do that on the mods. I won't be the hobbyist type continually looking to modify my set up. I just want something that makes sense and is relatively simple.

Thank you again for your help, Quick1! I do really appreciate it.
 

Merc1138

Full Member
Jul 19, 2009
21
1
California
Hopefully me eGo does not end up like that.

It's kind of a rarity. Although I did have my roommate put a 1.5v AA rechargable into my 3.7v charger and when I noticed it, my kitchen smelled funny and the battery was hot as heck when I went to chuck it. But this is why I don't charge my batteries unattended.
 

MrCool

Full Member
Mar 26, 2010
5
0
long beach
It's kind of a rarity. Although I did have my roommate put a 1.5v AA rechargable into my 3.7v charger and when I noticed it, my kitchen smelled funny and the battery was hot as heck when I went to chuck it. But this is why I don't charge my batteries unattended.

can batterys cause a wierd smell or flavor when youre vaping?
 
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