I opened my laptop for unrelated reasons and was greeted by a slightly bloated battery. Idk if the picture makes it clear, but the individual segments of the battery have slightly raised above the solid structure pieces in between. Laptop is just over a year old. I have already contacted the manufacturer, but with the holidays and everything I’m not sure when I’ll get an answer.
Basically, I’m worried about the potential danger. I use my laptop a lot (usually plugged in). Since the battery seems to be screwed in and not glued, I could just take it out, but idk if that would be better than just leaving it in until the manufacturer sends me a new one or has me send it in for battery replacement.
Also, I hope that consumer hardware posts like this are accepted in this community. The rules at least don’t state otherwise.
Edit: thank you all for your comments. I brought the bloated battery to a recycling center the day after I made this post. Communication with Medion support eventually led to me talking to a very pleasant service technician on the phone. He sent me a new battery, which I just installed. Everything is working great again.
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Every bloated battery can start igniting any second. So please remove it and store it somewhere outside, ideally on concrete. Li-Ion fires cannot be stopped, not even with water.
Source: I‘m a firefighter.
Thank you for the reply, but I live in an apartment and I don’t think people would appreciate me placing potentially explosive things on the road outside. I’ll take it out of the laptop and bring it to a local recycling center tomorrow.
The battery will most likely not explode, but just ignite. The melting of the chemicals and metals just gets really really hot, so anything else around it will start to burn eventually. So don’t treat it like a bomb, more like a very hot iron. If you can, find a temporary spot for the battery. Maybe in a garage or basement. If also possible, use a metal container. Dirt/sand is also a good option.
I feel like Lemmy is hitting a critical mass, where “am Y, [explanation]” followed by an informal AMA is starting to happen, and it’s great to see!
If the battery is quickly removable I would put it into a sand bucket and cover it with sand.
What about with a fire blanket?
I actually had to check some resources myself, as I was unsure if it was really useful in that case. Those blankets usually help stopping a fire by limiting the amount of oxygen that gets to it - without oxygen, no fire. Unfortunately, many batteries have oxygen in them, not much, but enough to keep it going. So the fire won’t stop in that case. But what the fire blanket does, is give a layer of insulation, thus reducing sparks flying around and reducing the temperature directly above it.
Fire blankets are always a very useful tool, as they are easy to use and at least protect the person holding it (in small fires, obviously). If it doesn’t help, it does not make it any worse.
I’m going to go against what you just said, even though you might be a firefighter.
Take that battery OUTSIDE AWAY FROM ANY TREES OR YOUR HOME and put it in salt water to kill it completely. The water should have so much salt in it that the salt refuses to stir in and you can see the salt at the bottom after heavy stirring meaning the water cant dilute the salt anymore. .
The salt water bath over the next two days will completely drain the battery to 0 volts at which point it is no longer dangerous.
The salt water method is the only fully safe way to handle that battery.
What you are describing is just dangerous, for the simple fact that people then think they are safe, as soon as they put the battery into salt water. You even say yourself that it takes days until fully drained. During those days, the battery could still ignite. When that happens, the salt water will not help at all. What then will happen is, that the water will immediately turn into steam. You know what happens if you put water into hot oil - similar effect, just less dangerous. The water will be gone in no time and everything around it starts to burn.
That‘s why we always recommend what I was suggesting in my initial comment. And please don‘t say things like „it is the only fully safe way“. This is just straight up wrong.
What do you mean it is not going to help if it is in water? That is literally the most efficient way to cool it and thus prevent a runaway reaction to begin with.
Oh, it will help, but only for a very short amount of time. Those metals will get pretty hot, the expanding steam will make the water splash out of the bucket and the rest of it will evaporate quickly. The fire will only stop, if the battery reaches a temperature of about 70°C (158°F). For that you need a lot of cooling material.
Yesterday in the news was a fire of a Tesla car battery, needing 36.000 gallons of water to extinguish it. They had to use two hose (the big ones) for over one hour to have it under control.
So if you put a small battery in a pool, then you are safe, I absolutely agree. I only criticize the wrong assumption that a bucket of salt water is the „only safe way“ to handle a battery.
Sorry but that is nonsense. There is not even nearly enough energy in a laptop battery to empty a bucket of water. There is not even enough heat to warm the water a significant amount, which is why it can not even get to the point of a runaway reaction to begin with. The internal short just dissipates the energy slowly, without any spectacular event. Regardless of salt content, but salt would indeed help discharge the battery even without a fault.
And of course there are other ways to handle a battery (regardless of it’s health) safely.
Look, I‘m no scientist. I just see the effects in real life. Obviously the amount of material affects the energy effectively released. One job of our fire department is to spread awareness and in those messages, you are better on the safe side and be extra cautious. If you are a scientist or know exactly what you are doing, feel free to handle it the way you want to. Based on the message of OP I knew they were inexperienced. That‘s why I would never recommend solutions which are not super clear and super safe. Water and battery can work - but it can also clearly fail if done wrong.
At the scale of a laptop battery, just putting it somewhere without flammables around is sufficient. A bucket of water will absolutely stop anything from happening due to the strong cooling effect. This is not a car battery where water can not actually reach the individual cells. However, I also understand your concerns.
But if I should think of a way for a random person to deal with a dangerous battery in an enclosed space, a bucket of water would be very high on the list. Even if it is already burning.
You are welcome to disagree, but putting a lipo in salt water is the only safe way to discharge it. Obviously this should be done outside away from any trees or the home.
You should add doing the salt bath outdoors to the post and recommend leaving it there for a couple of weeks to ensure it is fully drained.
Done. Won’t matter the downvote brigade already sided with the self proclaimed firefighter.
I learned this from R/C cars many years ago when Lipo came put. It’s a tried and true method that many people in the hobby use to make the battery safe for transport to the recycling facilities.
The downvotes are most likely because you said to go ‘against what was said’ instead of adding to it with the long term solution. It read as if you disagreed with taking it outside where it would be immediately safer.
Are you implying that lithium will only burn on contact with air if it’s in a charged battery?
I had one go pop on a customer, and it melted their computer, irretrievably destroying their data. Leave the battery out and somewhere fireproof.
I’ll take it out and discard it tomorrow, thank you
Bad battery? That’s a
*s•P•i•C•y • P•i•L•l•O•w*
The spice must flow.
If it boots without the battery connected, I would use it like that until you can get it serviced. If you can be certain this is not it’s normal shape, I would refrain from using it further with the battery connected, as bloated batterycells are always a bad sign and you risk fire.
If you can be certain this is not it’s normal shape
Any battery that is not perfectly flat or round is not in its normal shape. They don’t make wavy batteries.
I’ll take it out and discard it tomorrow. Let’s hope that doesn’t cause the manufacturer to not send me a new one, the laptop still has warranty
Just send them the pic and say you discarded it for safety reasons. Maybe take another pic with something identifying like the original receipt or something unique to the purchase and a date for proof. Make sure to get a clearer pic of the bar codes on the top as well.
Knowingly mailing a swelling battery is a safety hazard and there should not be any issue with disposing of it as long as you have something to show it was the one in that particular laptop.
Good point! I have digital receipts and took clearer pictures of everything.
I would suggest opening a case with the manufacturer first if its still under warranty, that way they should be able to get you a replacement even after you discard the faulty battery
I had contacted them before making this post and sent them pictures as well
That’s a spicy pillow you have there.
the cells are failing. order a replacement from ebay/amazon while you wait for an RMA. it’ll be faster.
I use my laptop a lot (usually plugged in)
Warning : I’ve used to fix apple computers back in the day when there were still things to fix, and if this had happened to an Apple device and it had less than 50 cycles on it and was over 6 months from purchase (meaning it went less then 50x under 50% of your full battery capacity), they would refuse to replace it saying it is user’s fault. Nbooks with NiMh batteries could stay connected to power forever, notebooks with Li-ion batteries need to “excercise them”.
It still ran a lot on battery alone, usually in school. But I’ll keep that in mind for the future.
