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Jon Goodman
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, January 01, 2006 - 07:03 pm: | 
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While shaving to get ready for church this morning, I had a thought. Looking at two 1.4 v hearing aid batteries which were pretty dead (one registered .07 v and the other registered .8 v), I wondered if I could revive them with a drink. After warming them both with my hair dryer, I dropped them into about an inch of cool water and left them there while I finished getting dressed. Why did I warm them up and drop them into cool water? The little vent holes are tiny, and it seemed to me that this might be a good way to get the battery to draw water back into it. After about 30 minutes in the water, each battery registered less than it had before, so I was not initially encouraged, but I left them out of the water (holes facing upward) and went to church. When I came back, I tried them, and...wow...each one registered 1.39 v.
They still do.
Maybe everybody in the world knows about this trick but me, but I thought it was pretty neat. Two batteries I was going to toss away are now doing just fine.
Jon |
rick
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, January 01, 2006 - 07:26 pm: |
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Jon, your mind works in strange ways. congrats!
 = |
charlie
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, January 01, 2006 - 07:46 pm: |
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What church do you go to? Sounds good to me. |
Mike Kovacs
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, January 02, 2006 - 06:00 am: |
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So, the mechanism of battery death in these is normally drying of the electrolyte, rather than consumption of zinc anode? Of course, the cathode reaction relies on ambient oxygen, which we had better hope is not exhausted
In this case, the battery should be restorable until such time that all of the zinc is converted to zinc oxide. |
Jon Goodman
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, January 02, 2006 - 07:56 am: |
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Well...maybe, at least to a point. For years, I've heard people in arid areas complain about how quickly these batteries die, while people in more humid regions will boast of longer use. Also, I believe one of the ideas behind the "Wein Cell" was that it evaporated less rapidly. The idea struck me that possibly the thing would be revivable if you could coax water back into it. Since then, I have discovered this: If such a battery never worked well, you can not improve it. I found one which had worked well when first exposed to the air but died within a few days. (I saved it thinking I might return it to the maker) I tried the same trick on it, but the voltage only went from .002 to .17. That's it...no further. So, I suspect there was for some reason a lack of zinc in there to begin with, and so adding water only was of marginal help. I've got three now that I've found to work well with this idea and the one clunker. I'm curious to see how long they last.
Jon |
David Ritchie
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, January 02, 2006 - 09:58 am: |
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Hi Jon, thinking outside the box, is it possible that the chemical reaction has left the air holes plugged and that you may have broken loose the seal when you heated them and they expanded? If so, a tiny needle placed in the air holes may also do the trick. I would give it a try myself, but do not have any cells to experiment with. Happy New Year. |
rick oleson
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, January 02, 2006 - 09:58 am: |
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it must be REALLY humid here in kentucky: i've got an OM1 still working fine, with a sticker on the bottom that says "Wal-Mart EverActive Zinc-Air 9-25-03"! i took it out to double check, the same date is written on the battery itself. that's over 2 years! when i first tried these, i got about 6-8 months out of them..... |
Berk Sirman
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, January 02, 2006 - 11:56 am: |
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My gf uses two zinc-air 675's on a Yashica Tl-Electro (with an adapter) and the batteries last max. 2-3 months in dry Swedish winter.
Luckily they are cheap. |
John Farrell
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, January 02, 2006 - 12:16 pm: |
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I use an AC13E zinc-air cell in my Canon FT. I get 6 or more months out of each. |
Jon Goodman
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, January 02, 2006 - 03:46 pm: |
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Hi, David.
I don't know. Maybe. I'm sort of fishing for answers myself, and I'm still intrigued that this worked as well as it seems to have on the ones I tried. I'll watch for another "dead" one and test it your way. I did poke holes in the one battery which never worked that well from the start, but no dice. That battery seems just dead as a rock. Before I poked little holes in the vent holes, I looked at it with a loupe, but it seemed okay.
Jon |
Will
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, January 06, 2006 - 10:46 am: |
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Hi Jon,
Do you have a similar fix for those little LR44's? ;-)
Will |
