Hi! I've got another interesting battery video for you.
Now, if you don't know, I've got a ton of battery videos
so click here if you want to have a look at the playlist
I've got like a dozen videos or something like that
on all sorts of things to do with battery tech and The Batterizer as well, groan.
Anyway, this video was suggested by a viewer, Mark
thank you very much for; he was, what the story is, is Mark saw my video
where I would test the capacity of a battery by dropping them on their end like this,
Its easy with "AA"s.
That has to do with the electrochemstry in the battery
its a real phenomenon and things like that
Anyway, he was experimenting
with this and he came across something interesting
I wont tell you that yet
but what I'm going to do is I've got
two fresh "AA", sorry "AAA" Duracells here
Mark assures me it works with "AA"s and "AAA"s
I'll use "AAA"s because well its easier to discharge these things.
So, first let's label these, so we know what one's what.
Cause we're going to have two different batteries at the end of it
"A" and "B", there we go.
So, we know exactly what we've got now.
Fresh battery straight from the pack
1.6174 Volts
Let's do the other one
1.6174...
We'll do battery "B" first, it makes no difference
pretty darn close right, they're identical batteries
straight fresh from the pack, I'm not sure what the expiry date is
Doesn't matter
I'm gonna discharge these at half an amp
for an hour.
So 500 milliamps constant current discharge
I'm gonna use my BK Precision electronic load here
to extract 500 milliamp-hours from these things.
Now that's a high current for a "AAA"
So, these things are rated for about 500 or 600 mAh capacity
At 500 milliamps, so
pretty much should be draining these things fairly well.
So, I won't bore you with the details
of actually showing you this but
I'm going to discharge at half an amp
and we're going to go into the battery mode, here
and the stop voltage I'm gonna set it at like .1 volts
'cause I don't care what the cutoff voltage is
and the stop capacity
half an amp
half an amp-hour
so I'm gonna extract 500 mAh capacity
from the battery.
So, and then the stop timer
3600 seconds
well let's go for an hour ok
so it will stop on either of those two conditions
and
uh
are we go
reset, clear readings up here
OK maybe I've gotta trigger it
sorry I'm not used to using this thing.
Ah! there we go I just triggered it.
OK
So we're off and running just had to trigger it.
and this shows the elapsed time
this shows the elapsed capacity
and then we're drawing half an amp
and the voltage is dropping, dropping, dropping, dropping.
So, I'll come back
by the way; yes, it is a four terminal measurement
I've got the "sense" wires going around to the "sense" terminals on the back
so that we're getting the true battery voltage
on there, and not just the one
and no loss in the wires here.
We're already at half our capacity
257 mAh extracted from this puppy
and we're right down to 1.07 volts
so ehh, getting down there.
And there we have it, it switched off
I'm not sure why because it didn't get to our 500 mAh,
it got to 489
and it didn't get to 3600 seconds
OH! Hang on!
No?
Did it? Hang on, auto-scale
No, look at that, it dropped.
Nah, it's the curve.
It dropped right off.
We killed that suckka
Lookit that
Haha!
It actually went down to, what did we have?
0.1 volt cut-off voltage or something
So it actually plummeted right down.
It jumped right back up
and we're actually back up to
one point...
eh, 1.23 volts now
So...
that's alright,
that's pretty well discharged.
You can see that after about 20 minutes or so
it's actually recovered a fair bit
to 1.31 volts
but of course that is the electro-chemistry
at play doing that
there's not actually any
you know
extra capacity, it's not gaining any extra capacity
by doing that, it still has some extra capacity in it
if we drain it again, but not a huge amount.
OK, we've done battery "B" discharge
500, roughly 500 mAh worth
Eh, let's try battery "A" shall we?
and let's go for the exact same conditions again.
Let's do it
there we go
and...
trigger
Ta-da!
down she goes.
and once again it gets under that 0.8 volts
it really starts to drop like a rock
Oh yeah, here she goes.
Count it down, .4, .39, .38...
....37, .36, .35...
It's about to cut out, but yeah
so we're really brutalizing this battery
There we go, bam! and it should cut off.
There we go it stopped once it hit that 0.1 volt cut-off.
Beauty
So you can see that we basically extracted the same
as we did before I think it was 489 or something.
So, but basically we drained these two batteries identical
No worries
Alright!
Now for the fun part.
Right, so let's actually take battery "A" now
which has been sitting here for a while
and we'll whack that one back in
and, eh, let's start the exact same discharge again
and see how much extra capacity we can get out of it
over and above that 490-odd mAh that we got before
So we'll switch that on again...
and bat, boom, boom, all the same conditions.
everything's hunky-dory
Let's go...
clear readings, it's all reset.
and off we go.
And you can actually see that it starts to drop off fairly quickly
just switched it on and bam,
straight back down
I mean we can auto, auto-scale that
and wham
because there's not much capacity left in this thing.
The electro-chemistry is causing the ESR to rise fairly drastically
at the bottom of the capacity curve
and its gonna drop off pretty quick
feel for how much extra capacity we'll get out of it
eh... I don't know... another 100... maybe?
eh, possibly 200 because you can actually pulse these batteries
they don't just have one discharge then they're dead
due to the electro-chemistry once again
its the keyword.
they keep having
you know
you can pulse 'em then they'll drop down
actually here's a pulse shot, I'll include it
from some datasheet or some data somewhere
so they can actually have, even though you've drained them once
if you let them recover a bit they don't gain capacity
but you can actually extract a little bit more back out of them
And check it out, I think she's about to drop off a cliff
Look at this, squeezed an extra 130 mAh out of this thing
so my guess wasn't too far off the mark, so
yeah this will plummet very quickly
Here it goes!
Yeah let's call it 139 mAh, will we make 140?
Extra?
And, bam it should cut out... Now.
There we go.
Stopped, 140 mAh extra.
Bingo!
OK, so that's our control with battery "A"
Now you might be wondering why on earth I have this vise here
and this is the interesting part about it!
When Mark was playing around with this he was violently dropping these things
and he noticed that he got some increase, or he thought he got some increase battery capacity
by actually shocking them like this.
And many, you know weeks of playing around
finally came to the conclusion that if you actually put it in a vise
and you squeeze it
you can actually get some increased capacity out of this thing.
And he says it works with both "AA"s and "AAA"s.
So, we've already discharged "A" so let's take "B"
and let's eh whack it in
the vise here
OK here we go
let's whack it in and...
I've no idea...
how much to squeeze it by.
I guess we need like a graph of eh...
compression vs. eh...
Woah!
You can't see me but I am sort of tightening that puppy up.
and eh compression vs. added capacity
or supposedly.
So, let's...
I'm, trust me I've...
I don't know how many millimeters I've changed that by
but anyway, let's whack this in.
and see...
if it actually makes a difference
in the actual battery capacity so let's eh...
plug it in and...
we're getting our 1.35 that we got before
So let's... where are we?
shift, battery...
Let's do exactly the same thing we got before.
So let's start...
and...
let's see if that actually works.
So let's give it, Oh!
Did I restart? Clear that, sorry.
Do I restart it? Anyway, I missed the initial drop there.
but anyway, lets come back see if we...
What did we get for "A"? We got our extra 140 mAh out of that puppy,
for exactly the same repeat test again.
So let's see what we get out of this one,
we're expecting, you know there will be some error of course
so if it's you know better than 100, say if it's over 200
then well, we've got something.
And, looks like we're kicking some serious butt!
169... 1.02 volts.
Wha-hey!
And there you have it! Check it out!
261 mAh! the other one only got 140.
There is definitely something in this,
this worked an absolute treat!
Now if we have a quick look here at the squeezed one on the left
and the not squeezed one on the right the response you notice
that they both started out at that 1.35 volt recovery voltage
but the one that wasn't squeezed of course plummeted
very quickly you can see it on the right there,
and then just flattened out.
Whereas the squeezed one had an entirely different response
it didn't get that immediate drop down there's like a linear ramp
well, kinda, sorta.
And then it flattens out
and they both ended up, you'll notice the time difference
1.08 for the non squeezed and 1.02 for the squeezed
roughly about the same volts
but the squeezed one got to that voltage after 1220 seconds
whereas the not squeezed one got there only after 36 seconds
so, a lot of extra capacity under that curve. Amazing!
And there you have it,
that is actually a huge, significant increase
in the battery capacity of this thing
given that this is the second pulse right down after we completely drained it the first time.
We only got 140 mAh extra out of this,
261 mAh extra,
after squeezing the thing in a vise!
Unbelieveable!
That's 19% more, doesn't sound like a lot
but that's 19% more overall capacity.
Let's round it up and say 20%.
That is a...
...quite...
...a very significant increase.
So I'm gonna have to run this again
at like, you know different squeeze pressure in there
for each battery, and see
how much of a difference it actually makes.
See there's obviously going to be a limit to this thing,
there's something weird happening
with the electro-chemistry in here
the ionic resistance.
And with hindsight is not hugely surprising
because I actually did a video
that kind-of, you know almost saw this
eh, basically hinted at this
I showed that pressing on a 9 volt battery
can actually change its ionic resistance.
So a similar sort of thing is happening here
but I don't have the chemical know-how to know exactly what is going on in these batteries.
But there you go!
Hey!
Batterizer, eat your heart out! Heh.
Don't need a batterizer
not that that was, the damn thing was ever going to work anyway
All you've gotta do is squeeze your batteries in a vise!
In fact you probably don't even need a vise,
you can probably just put 'em on a hard surface
and then I don't know, stomp on them or something like that.
So give that a try.
Im gonna have to do some more testing of this
but I just wanted to quickly verify that yeah, this is confirmed!
You can actually get extra capacity out of your batteries by squeezing them.
Brilliant!
If you liked the video, please give it a big thumbs up
and as always, comments and everything down below
I'm definitely going to be following this one up.
But because it takes so long to actually test these,
I wanna do it on some "AA"s, I did it on "AAA"s just to be really quick
to just confirm it, and definitely, confirmed!
Very interesting, so anyone out there who has
the chemistry experience to explain
what's going on here and it would be good to see people replicate it as well.
And so please, give it a try
leave it in your comments
just try and stomp on them
I reckon that's a winner 'cause you're not always going to have a vise available
something to control the pressure.
So I reckon hard surface, and a good whack.
...like a pair of thongs if you're in Australia
No worries!
Anyway, hope you've enjoyed the video
if you did, please give it a big thumbs up!
Catch ya next time.
*This is quite fascinating OK watch what happens if I squeeze this battery*
*Woo-hoo! look at that!*
*Let's give that a little press, yep*
*Goes up, just like the the vadda one.*
*Confirmed!*
*Two different types*
*We've discovered two different types of alkaline*
*construction*
*nine volt batteries*
*Wow*
*That is fascinating*
*Is, yeah, squeeze again*
*It's done exactly the same thing.*