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Discharging NiMh batteries to regain lost capacity using a motor.

18/04/11

Attempted discharge of NiMh batteries

Permalink 07:05:00 pm by drf, Categories: News , Tags: battery, charging, discharge, nimh, procedure, test, vibrating. motor
A experiment in discharging. I have noticed something hardly any of my cameras batteries are holding a charge. Even when there chargers say there fully charged, they can't even put out enough to run on my cam! whats more worrying about this is some of them are less than 12 months old and from well known brands such as Duracell and Energizer. In this drain test I discharge 2 of my oldest batteries.

 

2 x Hahnel 1800Mah batteries made in the year 2002!

...

So lets begin, I tried to use a sinlg 1.5V bulb to drain a AA battery and that was taking forever so I decided to ramp it up a bit and use a vibrator! (assuming its motor would pull sufficent drain)
A vibrator made by "California Exotic Novelites" (Cheap generic Chinese made sex toy rebrand) used as the test machine. Takes 2 batteries, uses a potentiometer for speed control. Not alot else really its just a motor.

The charger. I guess this would be called a slo/trickle charger since it takes 16hrs+ to fully charge the batteries according to the instructions.

It outputs 1.25V at 130Mah. Takes 4 AA batteries and was made in Ireland...

 

Test Results (Click for the bigger picture)

As can be seen here something rather odd happened, both batteries fell to 1.25V at after the same amount of time however, 1 of them continued to drop while the other stayed at 1.25v until the test was ended. The test had to end after 3.25 hours because the 1 cell had dropped below NiMh's roughly assumed safe voltage of 1.10V. Also the vibrators motor was really strating to give in, although oddly it never got hot as I would have expected from such a cheap device.

From Wikipedia :

 

 

A  fully-charged cell measures 1.4–1.45 V (unloaded), and supplies a nominal average 1.25 V/cell during discharge, down to about 1.0–1.1 V/cell (further discharge may cause permanent damage in the case of multi-cell packs, due to polarity reversal). This voltage varies depending on the discharge rate of the cell (lower discharge loads result in an increased voltage output for longer periods, approaching the 1.4 V unloaded cell voltage).

Under a light load (0.5 ampere), the starting voltage of a freshly charged AA NiMH cell in good condition is about 1.4 volts;[12] some measure almost 1.5 volts. This voltage falls rapidly to about 1.25 volts at 10% depth of discharge (DOD) and then remains almost constant until the cell is over 80% discharged. The voltage then falls rapidly from about 1.2 volts down to 0.8–1.0 volts at which the cell is considered "flat" in most devices

 

 

 

 

This actually does fit in with the findings pretty closely, what we can assume from this is that the 1 battery is in much better health than the other, which is also about right as no 2 batterys are ever made equal. Hopefully now that they have been discharged enough I can recharge them a few more times and see if we have regained any of the lost capacity.

 

Conclustion :

Managed to run the vibrators motor at max speed for around 3 hours. Considering there 9 years old and have been used what must be 100's of times there doing ok so far.

To do :

Our next test we shall be using a torch and a childs toy car, its quite hard to find devices that use only 1 battery, I think using 1 battery at a time would give a better overall result. As we know no 2 batteries are created equal.

 

7 comments

Comment from: Your Gross [Visitor]
*----
Your GrossThis is disgusting. I dont want to see your nasty vibrators while looking for info on discharging batteries!
26/04/11 @ 19:47
Comment from: drf [Member] Email
*****
drfNo one said it was my vibrator did they?

Would you like to join our mailing list we have a huge battery powered vibro shoot out coming up soon?
26/04/11 @ 20:07
Comment from: Mr Loveit [Visitor]
*****
Mr LoveitDear sir i have found a few old viborating items under my late grandmas bed i would kindly send free to you for more testing
26/04/11 @ 20:14
Comment from: Mrs drf [Visitor]
Mrs drfI want them back now, I need some good lovin and you my man are unable...
26/04/11 @ 20:37
Comment from: drf [Member] Email
drf@MrLoveIt
I think we are ok for odd motorised bouncing things at the moment.

@Mrs DrF
I got plenty of love to give... just no takers :(
26/04/11 @ 20:39
Comment from: AsBo [Visitor]
*****
AsBo[Quote]This is disgusting. I dont want to see your nasty vibrators while looking for info on discharging batteries!
Maybe your grandmother would be interested though ?
26/04/11 @ 20:48
Comment from: michael [Visitor]
michael
the wife uses them but no battery's she don't like the buzzing sound.
27/04/11 @ 20:01

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