Lipo battery - how to fully discharge for disposal/recycling?

[BeeRAD56]

I have some typhoon h batteries that are swollen and need to be disposed of. I've read that they can be fully discharged in salt water. Does anyone have experience with this process and provide details? i.e salt concentration, time, cautions, etc.

Thanks!

 

[Eagle's Eye Video]

I have used a half gallon milk bottle... cut off the top so you have the full dimensions of the bottle to work with. 3 to 4 tablespoons of salt dissolved in water will be sufficient. Immerse the battery for 48 to 72 hours. Check voltage output with a volt meter to confirm discharging.

After discharging you can throw them out in the regular trash.

 

[BeeRAD56]

I have used a half gallon milk bottle... cut off the top so you have the full dimensions of the bottle to work with. 3 to 4 tablespoons of salt dissolved in water will be sufficient. Immerse the battery for 48 to 72 hours. Check voltage output with a volt meter to confirm discharging.

After discharging you can throw them out in the regular trash.

Thank you, that is very helpful.

 

[jannislh]

After discharging you can throw them out in the regular trash.

Why should you do this? All the valuable contents will be lost. I have no idea how battery disposable is organised in the US but in Germany every store selling batteries has to dispose them properly as well. Therefore they are collected in special bins. They get recycled and all the valuable contents go back into the cycle.

Once there is no voltage left they are very safe since the remaining chemical energy is fairly low. Disposing them in the regular trash is therefore no issue but it is very sad to lose all of the lithium, aluminium and other metals inside the battery.

 

[BeeRAD56]

I plan to recycle them. I just don't want them to catch fire in the mean time. They are badly swollen and make me nervous so I want to discharge them first.

 

[tin]

The amount of lithium even in a larger lipo is very small.... The remaining components are a small amount of metal and a load of plastic. There is almost zero value in a lipo, and they're economically unviable to recycle.

Electric cars are going to run into the same problem in about 5 or 6 years as the battery packs of the mass sales start to degrade. They will have the advantage of scale to make it more worth the time, but the material recovered vs cost to recover will still be very small, I'd not a negative value.