Most people don't know that there is an alternative the Industrial Recycling of Batteries
Scientific American sometimes MISses on information. And then, there's the problem with some information MISsing (or perhaps there's just a lot of MISinformation out there), for example, in respect to electric vehicles and batteries. Sadly, most writers don't have an e-car or e-bike. (I own four evehicles and use them daily.) Worse, you've got writers who write about batteries in evehicles who don't really "play" with batteries. (My students and I play with batteries.)
The above may explain why Scientific American got it wrong on Lithium Batteries, Dec 2006 issue; below was my reply to the magazine's editors:
Dear Editors,
Thanks for the colored cutaway diagrams of lithium ion and single-use lithium coin batteries in your December '06 issue, although I'm writing you to respectfully dispute the Scientific American article and the "Battery University" website.
Several years ago, an energetic scientific Canadian named Larry who runs a photo shop in Vancouver once drowned a non-rechargeable (so-called "primary") lithium battery, to test the urban legend that they would explode when wet. Well, it didn't, and one toilet bowl was thankfully spared.
We were shocked by that initial discovery. Electrified, I continued Larry's playful experiment, and tossed (grenade-like) batteries in varying depths of water, this time in a weapons-testing grounds, otherwise known as a summer camp. Again, contrary to the manufacturers' dire warnings, they did not turn into a Fourth of July spectacle that most SA readers would have expected. Thus, I, too became a disbeliever of commandments of fear handed down by the Battery Church.
Seems like heresy directed at Battery Church, doesn't it?
So, being more Densa than Mensa, I and my colleagues proceeded to discount the warnings on batteries totally. Some of us waded into the uncharted waters, real depths of electrolytic solutions and successfully revived every kind of primary batteries, including coin cells.
By now, the heresy has gone far and wide against the "It'll explode" orthodoxy, and hundreds of people (not including the viewers of a community TV newscast, that videotaped and showed it) have been shown, by gifted kids, how to revive primary batteries.
Thousands of dollars of free batteries have already been given away in greater Vancouver, too. Where? Revived primary batteries have also been given away at Perpetual-Motion Inventors and Gadgeteers meetings, as well as other events. Contrary to the Battery Pope's infallible edict (historically called "Papal Bull"), these recycled batteries didn't explode or leak.
http://daycampworkshops.blogspot.com/2006/08/photos-of-perpe...
Was your writer aware that solar-powered (lithium) coin cell chargers have been sold for many years? I recall a model sold by Real Goods at one time. (That's a center of energetic heretics, too.)
Why am I telling you all this? Your article, imho, does a disservice to the battery revivalists around the world (the heretics) engaged in a cottage industry aimed at reducing metals in landfills by allowing the ReUse of batteries, including the just-released Oxyrides. How nasty are small batteries? Mountain Equipment Coop alleges that 50%-70% of all heavy metals in landfills comes from small household batteries.
And, there's even a heresy currently aimed at the Battery Church's papal bull (another infallible edict, eh?) that NiMH batteries are just "deplete" after so many hundred cycles, but that's another story, one that Battery University got right, since its dean is the manufacturer of one battery-revival machine.
Thank god, there's a separation of state-of-charge and the battery church, eh?
Bottom line is this: Every type of used battery, except lithium ion, has been successfully revived to full power. You'll likely be Goggling this subject, so here's a start:
http://watershed-sentinel.blogspot.com/
Cheers,
Rob Matthies
Vancouver, BC
My latest activities below:
http://country-festival.blogspot.com/
http://republic-vancouver-article.blogspot.com/
