Years of reading and battery safety is a mystery to me

chillinn

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i guess you didn't read my post. np.

the atmosphere in the freezer is isolated from the atmosphere of the batteries (a bag which has dry air and/or does not have enough volume to produce appreciable liquid at freezer temps).

Where did the atmosphere in the baggies come from? The Gobi desert? Is there no moisture in the baggies? How did you get the moisture out of the air before you put it in the baggies? IOW, it doesn't matter that you're using baggies because the baggies have air, and air has moisture, and moisture will evaporate and condense due to temperature changes, whether it is inside or outside of the baggies. The volume doesn't matter, unless you're talking about volumes of atomic scales. No matter how much air you think you've removed, unless you are carefully vacuum sealing, and evacuating literally all of the air, there is still a lot of air in there. It's not enough to breathe maybe, but I am sure we could count hundreds of billions of molecules of it, and that is enough to hold tens of billions of molecules of water, most of it will condense, some of that will freeze, some of that will thaw into liquid, some of that will vaporize and join the rest of the vapor and condense again. Over a period of months, this will increase self-discharge, and it is possible that contacts will rust, and spread, and short a cell.

The risk is there, I'm not saying it will always happen, but the circumstances are such that it could happen. But what is definitely happening is the intent to reduce self-discharge is entirely countered, and there will be more capacity lost due to it that if you just left the cells in a drawer, or in their case on your dresser, or wherever else that isn't near your shower.

I did read your post, and I addressed the mistaken idea that baggies would prevent condensation while I was addressing Elvis' nonsense.
 
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This thread is becoming an egotistical parody.

1) condensed water vapor is distilled water. Effectively non conductive so not an issue.

2) we have not established that very low levels of moisture condensate due to the very low temps are even an issue.

3) When you put a battery in a sealed plastic bag, i.e Ziploc or even size appropriate Tupperware the dominate thermal mass by far is the battery, and secondary is the packaging. The air outside the packaging has very little thermal mass and during defrost is not moving. Hence the air inside the bag or container experiences only small temperature fluctuations compared to the air outside. This is science 101 or engineering. It's also the difference between reading about something and actual experience oh with say automotive.

4) I am not clairvoyant I simply found the near exact words and the exact numbers you used and the source. Many sources discuss temp changes. That one source well one person was unique wrt to specific humidity range.

5) external non conductive condensation does not cause permanent capacity loss as one uneducated person is guessing. That is caused by specific electrochemical processes that are a function of voltage and temp. The internal battery temp will be stable and cold. condensation, non conductive is purely surface.

6) last but not least I have had cheap Trustfires in the freezer fully charged for over a decade. I check them once a year and top them up. Still ~90% capacity because the electrochemical processes slow considerably at -18c and the slight self discharge helps as well. Thousands of defrost cycles and door openings. They are in a Ziploc
 

chillinn

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1) condensed water vapor is distilled water. Effectively non conductive so not an issue.
Water is an insulator. Nevertheless, steam and water vapor will conduct electricity regardless of how pure it is. The purity of the water vapor is a red herring because water vapor increases the conductivity of air which allows static charges that build up to dissipate readily into the environment. This is why static electricity is more prevalent in dry air, because the static electricity can build up, whereas in humid conditions, it really can't. Thus, whether or not water vapor is pure and that water is an insulator is irrelevant to battery self-discharge, because the charge is actually dissipating into the air because the conductivity of air increased by water vapor.

2) we have not established that very low levels of moisture condensate due to the very low temps are even an issue.
Now you have constructed a straw man by claiming "low levels of moisture." It is not low levels of moisture, it is just moisture. Low levels of moisture is dry. A desert has low levels of moisture, but your freezer just has moisture. But the moisture is an issue, and I have established this over and over in nearly every response. Where does rust come from? Can moisture cause metal to rust? Is there any metal on a Li-ion cell? Can the metal on a Li-ion cell rust by moisture condensing on it? As you're perfectly aware and yet irrationally unable to admit, yes on all accounts. Moisture not only condenses on the everything in the freezer, it also will condense inside anything if there is any route to the inside of it. As strange as it sounds, moisture will condense inside your Li-ion cells, such as underneath the vented contact. Moisture will get into the cell, dissolve into the electrolyte, change the chemistry of the electrolyte, cause an imbalance in it, and short the cell. Guess what the short will cause? If you didn't guess self-discharge, then I am very disappointed in you, because it will indeed cause self-discharge,

3) When you put a battery in a sealed plastic bag, i.e Ziploc or even size appropriate Tupperware the dominate thermal mass by far is the battery, and secondary is the packaging. The air outside the packaging has very little thermal mass and during defrost is not moving. Hence the air inside the bag or container experiences only small temperature fluctuations compared to the air outside. This is science 101 or engineering. It's also the difference between reading about something and actual experience oh with say automotive.
Here you are employing again your thermal mass straw man, as though failing with it the first time wasn't enough. This is interesting, but also wildly inaccurate. You're trying to suggest that the laws of thermodynamics do not work inside your freezer or inside your Tupperwre. Regardless of these thermal masses you keep discussing, because of the nature of thermodynamics, your Ziploc bag or Tupperware is a very poor temperature insulator and is not protecting anything from temperature changes for very long. If the air temperature increases in the freezer, it is not possible for the air in your Ziploc to not increase in temperature. But it doesn't matter one way or the other, because there is air in the bag, and there is moisture in that air. When the temperature of the air in the freezer increases, the temperature of the air in the bag will also increase, taking with it more vaporized moisture. When the temperature decreases in the freezer, the temperature will decrease in the Ziploc also, and the moisture will condense and become liquid again.

4) I am not clairvoyant I simply found the near exact words and the exact numbers you used and the source. Many sources discuss temp changes. That one source well one person was unique wrt to specific humidity range.
Even if true, the relevance of this is elusive because this is just an ad hominem attack. Even if I plagiarized some Quora article, it really makes no difference. It is the content that matters, not its alleged source.

5) external non conductive condensation does not cause permanent capacity loss as one uneducated person is guessing. That is caused by specific electrochemical processes that are a function of voltage and temp. The internal battery temp will be stable and cold. condensation, non conductive is purely surface.
Not possible due to thermodynamics. Heat moves around due to entropy. It can not magically avoid your cells just because you can't bear to realize what you have actually been doing to your crummy Trustfire cells. And it doesn't matter, everything in that fridge will be within a very tight temperature range. It is the change in air temperature that matters, not whether your cells are protected from temperature change by 1-2 thousandths of an inch of flexible plastic. The temperature of your frozen cells isn't going to have any effect on the vaporization and condensation of moisture on them. Everything in there is the same temperature, and moisture will form on everything.

6) last but not least I have had cheap Trustfires in the freezer fully charged for over a decade. I check them once a year and top them up. Still ~90% capacity because the electrochemical processes slow considerably at -18c and the slight self discharge helps as well. Thousands of defrost cycles and door openings. They are in a Ziploc
Well, the coup de gras. I guess that settles it if we ignore that you've been dishonest in your previous posts in this thread, and deceptive in this very comment of yours regarding all that crap about thermal mass, but I'm sure you're being honest now, even how ridiculous it sounds that you keep a steel eye on your frozen Trustfires. You should have just led with that 4 posts ago. It would have saved everyone a lot of grief, and gotten everyone's cells into their freezer faster. Maybe when you check them next year, take some detailed pictures of the cell cathodes, maybe even a time coded video of you earnestly pulling them out of your freezer and thermodynamically immune Tupperware, and checking their SoC, then there will be no doubt, because anecdotal evidence of course has no equal. But seriously, I have little doubt that whatever cells you have kept in the freezer for a significant portion of your life, among them are damaged cells, if they are not all damaged to varying degrees.
 
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SYZYGY

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it doesn't matter how much moisture is in the fridge/freezer. if you use a good enough vapor barrier packaging, outside moisture isn't getting in.

i also said you could use a desiccant packet if you like, but if you don't do that, reducing dead space by squeezing air out before sealing will help a lot. that reduces the total amount of moisture inside the bag that can condense on the battery.

i don't think such a small amount of moisture could matter.

but here is another way of thinking about it... there is experimental evidence that low temp storage preserves cells. is there any experimental evidence (not theory!) that storing liions in a freezer -- even in a sloppy manner like in a regular old ziplock bag -- is bad for cells? i think that would be interesting to read about if so. but i've never seen a paper like that.
 

chillinn

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it doesn't matter how much moisture is in the fridge/freezer. if you use a good enough vapor barrier packaging, outside moisture isn't getting in.

It doesn't matter how good your moisture barrier is unless you are vacuum sealing your container. But even if you did vacuum seal it, there is still moisture, because of the electrolyte in the cell, which is liquid, and which will also vaporize and condense with the fluctuating temperature, and which will also damage the cathode when it condenses and begins to corrode it.

i also said you could use a desiccant packet if you like, but if you don't do that, reducing dead space by squeezing air out before sealing will help a lot. that reduces the total amount of moisture inside the bag that can condense on the battery.

Unless you're vacuum sealing, that isn't going to cut it, and even if you vacuum seal, there's nothing you can do to stop the electrolyte from evaporating and condensing with the fluctuating temperatures.

i don't think such a small amount of moisture could matter.

Again, as I explained to Elvis, it is not a small amount of moisture. Dry air has a small amount of moisture. The air in your freezer has moisture, not a small amount of moisture. This is just your self bias trying to tip the scales, because you think it is ok, regardless of facts, you think it is a small amount of moisture and squeezing the excess air out of a baggie will make all the difference.

but here is another way of thinking about it... there is experimental evidence that low temp storage preserves cells. is there any experimental evidence (not theory!) that storing liions in a freezer -- even in a sloppy manner like in a regular old ziplock bag -- is bad for cells? i think that would be interesting to read about if so. but i've never seen a paper like that.

There experiments showing cold temperatures can preserve capacity are under controlled laboratory conditions and neither introduce, acknowledge nor account for humidity, and further, the amount of self-discharge reduced compared to controls is negligible, in the single digit percents. For a 3000mAh cell, dry freezing may preserve 250mAh. This makes the exercise pointless and a massive net loss of energy considering the amount of energy required to reduce the cell to freezing temperatures, which is vastly more than the amount of energy contained within the cell. In a very real way, freezing Li-ion cells is wrecking the planet.

And there is lots and lots of experimental evidence that moisture damages Liion cells. You just think there probably isn't because of the self bias. You think it is fine, so there couldn't be any evidence that it is not. But the fact is even during manufacture of the cells in controlled environments moisture damages the cells, and is known to do so, such that there are baking processes to evacuate the moisture and reduce damage and failure rates. Relatively speaking, your nondefrosting chest freezer is a veritable tsunami compared to the controlled manufacturing conditions. And manufacturers are probably obsessed with keeping moisture away from the cells, as they should be, and we should be very grateful for that.
 
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SYZYGY

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Ah, but there is lots and lots of experimental evidence that moisture damages Liion cells. You just think there probably isn't because of the self bias. You think it is fine, so there couldn't be any evidence that there is not.

no need to be a prick about it. it's not self bias.

i'm seriously asking you if you've seen a paper about it because i'm curious about the subject. a snopes article about duracell giving generic advice to the mass market about putting alkalines in the fridge is not what i'm asking about for reasons i gave in a previous post. if you haven't seen a paper like that then no hard feelings.
 

Remembertheslap

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Dip the cells in molten beeswax before freezing. Hermetically sealed against air and moisture.

At what temperature does the liquid electrolyte start evaporating?
 

chillinn

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no need to be a prick about it. it's not self bias.

i'm seriously asking you if you've seen a paper about it because i'm curious about the subject. a snopes article about duracell giving generic advice to the mass market about putting alkalines in the fridge is not what i'm asking about for reasons i gave in a previous post. if you haven't seen a paper like that then no hard feelings.
There's no need to take offense. Everyone has self-bias. And I linked to such a paper in my last comment. And there is no functional difference between Duracell Alkalines in the freezer compared to Li-ion, because ignoring chemistry, they are pretty much identical and subject to the same kind of damage from moisture, it's just that damaged Li-ion can have more detrimental effects because of the greater energy. And I addressed everything in that post multiple times in subsequent comments. There is no reason to conceal specifics. What is in that post that you think I have not addressed?

Dip the cells in molten beeswax before freezing. Hermetically sealed against air and moisture.

And delicious!

At what temperature does the liquid electrolyte start evaporating?

I suspect it is always evaporating to some degree. The evaporation rate would be important, and that would fluctuate with temperature and pressure, in that the higher the temperature and lower the pressure the higher the evaporation rate. But I'm just guessing.

Everything deteriorates, some things more quickly than others, according to the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Li-ion cells lose up to 20% capacity per year from self-discharge when stored properly in a cool and dry environment. For a 3000mAh cell that is losing a maximum of 600mAh. For an amp of current that is a half hour out of three hours. You'll save a lot of energy by topping off your cells every few years compared to lowering their temperature to freezing and maintaining freezing temperature for that period of time, and your cells will be far better off.
 
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penguinpoo

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Simple answer, get any 18650 nite corr or fenix and a set of Maglite ax64338 cells :) Simply use and charge.
They are an 18650 cell with built in charger (connect to USB C), they wont overcharge, they wont under charge. They have a status led if you curious to the level, they can be used to charge other devices by their usb connector too…
Lifes simple!
 
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1)Notice how Chillin keeps saying self discharge even though that is NOT what I am saying? He does not seem to get it. PERMANENT CAPACITY LOSS is what we are talking about. Cold temp storage reduces permanent capacity loss. He does not even know what we are talking about.

2) His justification for damage from moisture is a link to moisture being bad to subcomponents during the assembly of a raw cell. Not the same thing. That should be obvious.

3) He does not understand the importance of preventing air movement, thermal mass in an effectively air sealed chamber, etc. It would be laughable if it wasn't distracting and destructive. Here let me put it simpler. What would you rather do. Spend 10 minutes naked in 0C air or 10 minutes naked in 0C water. One obvious answer.

4) ignores my real world storage example of my Trustfires because it is inconvenient.

5) We clean sensitive assembled PCBs with ... Distilled water because it is non conductive and leaves no conductive residue. Water and humid air some very very small amount of conductivity due to impurities though even pure water is slightly ionic. It takes very little conductivity to prevent the build up of static. However that is not even the point. The point is it is pure enough, and non conductive enough to do no damage when it deposits only on the outer surfaces.

6) last Chilling is fixating on this rather meaningless issue because I blew holes in all the other erroneous things he claimed.

Sorry to the op. You should not have to deal with this but you can see why I blocked him.
 
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Remembertheslap

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You know what chapped me? I bought a couple of KeepPower protected recently, and ended up stripping them down to fit in a certain light. They're Samsung Q-30s, date of manufacture 2015.

Is it even possible to buy "new" cells?
 
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Well op, now you know why you had to do so much reading. Because there are some people who work very hard to spread false information that they think is true. It is an ego thing,

There experiments showing cold temperatures can preserve capacity are under controlled laboratory conditions and neither introduce, acknowledge nor account for humidity, and further, the amount of self-discharge reduced compared to controls is negligible, in the single digit percents. For a 3000mAh cell, dry freezing may preserve 250mAh. This makes the exercise pointless and a massive net loss of energy considering the amount of energy required to reduce the cell to freezing temperatures, which is vastly more than the amount of energy contained within the cell. In a very real way, freezing Li-ion cells is wrecking the planet.

1) Once again I will state that, and it should be obvious, we are not talking self discharge, we are talking permanent capacity loss. Those permanent capacity loss experiments are not tightly controlled for humidity, they are to represent real world storage conditions.

2) Even though we are talking permanent capacity loss, lets poke yet another hole in Chillin. The heat capacity of lithium ion cells is about 1034 joules/kg-1/c-1. I.e. 1034 joules for every degree C drop per kg of weight. It is an approximation. Lithium cells don't "freeze" at -18C as there is nothing to go through a phase change at those temps.

From 22C to -18C, a 21700 cell, 0.07kg, requires 2900 joules to be removed. I could point out that a freezer is a form of heat pump, and does not actually require 2900 joules of energy to accomplish this but what would be the point?

A 21700 cell, nominal 3.6V, 5AH, has 65,000 joules of stored energy. Chalk up another wrong for Chillin.

Again, as I explained to Elvis, it is not a small amount of moisture. Dry air has a small amount of moisture. The air in your freezer has moisture, not a small amount of moisture. This is just your self bias trying to tip the scales, because you think it is ok, regardless of facts, you think it is a small amount of moisture and squeezing the excess air out of a baggie will make all the difference.

3) If I was this grossly wrong, I would probably try to have less attitude while doing it.

- (22C)/50% relative humidity air has 8.2g/kg of moisture. I.e. 8.2g or moisture (water) per kg or air. That is a lot of air by the way.

- (-13C)/100% relative humidity air has 1.8g/kg of moisture.

This is neither here nor there though. We already placed the batteries in the bag. As the temperature drops when the bag is placed in the freezer, the moisture will start to precipitate out. It will both precipitate out and form ice crystals that simply fall, and also freeze onto the surface of the first thing cold, which will be the plastic bag as it has less thermal mass than the battery and will cool faster. This will continue till you hit some equilibrium < 100% RH, probably closer to 50% RH, so you will get down to about 0.9g/kg of moisture in the air worst case when the freezer gets warmer at least inside the bag and realistically less as the air inside the bag will experience a smaller swing due to the thermal mass of the battery which acts like an ice cube in the sealed air, with Brownian motion enough to achieve some homogeneity of the air.

So ...... what do you think is worse, 0.9g/kg of moisture at -18 to -13C or 8.2g or far worse at 22C?

Normally we are not concerned with air moisture because it does not do much till very high. We are concerned with it condensing as liquid water dissolves impurities and can create conductive paths. However, we are at -13 to -18C, and for the cell, typically much closer to -18C. There is no liquid water to dissolve impurities in solution. There is only ice. The very small amount of moisture in the bag will go from ice to vapour without a liquid phase as the temperatures are too low once it all freezes.

The ziploc or tupperware is essentially air tight, so adding external moisture has no appreciable effect on what is inside the bag. You may get ice forming on the outside of the bag since it is cold but most of that sublimates away as the RH drops once the freeze cycle restarts and the Rh drops.


See, this is the difference between reading about stuff on the web, and say working in industry and having a relevant educational background so that you can tie real world experience to the underlying physics.
 

chillinn

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1)Notice how Chillin keeps saying self discharge even though that is NOT what I am saying? He does not seem to get it. PERMANENT CAPACITY LOSS is what we are talking about. Cold temp storage reduces permanent capacity loss. He does not even know what we are talking about.

Self discharge is why cells lose capacity in storage. What causes permanent capacity loss is cell damage. Freezing a cell can not cure a damaged cell, and in fact can damage a cell.. Storing a cell properly will not cause damage to the cell. So it sounds to me, like always, there is some irrational belief here that doesn't match up to reality.

2) His justification for damage from moisture is a link to moisture being bad to subcomponents during the assembly of a raw cell. Not the same thing. That should be obvious.

No, your comprehension is bad, and your straw man arguments are getting worse. Moisture damages cells. It is not only well known that moisture damages cells, it is expected. Cells are so sensitive to moisture, that it's a problem even in the controlled manufacturing environment, which is not a damn spa, and no one said anything about component stages, and if you looked at the paper I cited you would have known that. We expect manufactures to control for moisture already, because they can and moisture damages cells. And they do. And yet even in the low moisture environment, it still damages enough cells that they introduced baking the cells to solve and reduce failure. They don't bake cell components, they bake cells.


3) He does not understand the importance of preventing air movement, thermal mass in an effectively air sealed chamber, etc. It would be laughable if it wasn't distracting and destructive. Here let me put it simpler. What would you rather do. Spend 10 minutes naked in 0C air or 10 minutes naked in 0C water. One obvious answer.

Apparently, you've never heard of entropy or equilibrium. It isn't going to matter whether there is air flow when something has been sitting in a freezer for days and months on end, because everything in there will be more or less the same temperature, except in your magical freezer where a thin piece of plastic can somehow insulate a cell coming into equilibrium with the rest of the fridge. This really is called magical thinking. Heat doesn't need to travel through air currents. It goes right through the vacuum of space, which btw is the best thermal insulator known, far better than paper thin plastic.


4) ignores my real world storage example of my Trustfires because it is inconvenient.

This is a lie. I did not ignore your anecdotal evidence. I mocked it and called you dishonest, as was apparent by the absurdity of the lie.

5) We clean sensitive assembled PCBs with ... Distilled water because it is non conductive and leaves no conductive residue.

Do you really have to use distilled water? Do PCBs carry a charge? This is a fallacy known as a non-sequitur.

Water and humid air some very very small amount of conductivity due to impurities though even pure water is slightly ionic. It takes very little conductivity to prevent the build up of static. However that is not even the point. The point is it is pure enough, and non conductive enough to do no damage when it deposits only on the outer surfaces.

Your premises are false, but even if true, your conclusion does follow from the premises. The fact that static electricity is quickly dissipated in humid and moist environments and builds up in dry environments proves your unsound reasoning is wrong. Twice, now. This is called counter example, and it proves that you are wrong.


6) last Chilling is fixating on this rather meaningless issue because I blew holes in all the other erroneous things he claimed.

None of your arguments stayed afloat. My argument still stands, which is namely, storing any cells in a freezer is pretty stupid because of the moisture and condensation, known the world over to damage batteries, and even when it doesn't damage cells, it will cause an increase in self-discharge, which defeats the original dumb intent of reducing self discharge by freezing cells. It doesn't work, and it can't work, and, it can and will damage cells. And it is insane when you calculate the amount of self-discharge ordinarily, which is negligible, and compare it to the amount of energy needed to lower the temperature of the cell and keep it lowered. It's just a dumb idea and always has been.

Sorry to the op. You should not have to deal with this but you can see why I blocked him.

Yeah, Airwolf41, and CPF, it is deeply regretful that JustAnOldFashionedLEDGuy can't seem to keep his Narcissistic Personality Disorder under wraps, and that due to his Toxic and Malignant Narcissism, he is rude, arrogant, paranoid, obsessive and compelled to bully and belittle others in order to compensate for his inner feelings of anxiety and worthlessness. It is shameful that he just goes nuts when anyone stands up to him or questions his idiotic and unsupportable pseudo-scientific claims and exposes his blatant dishonesty. Sucks, that.
 
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chillinn

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Well op, now you know why you had to do so much reading. Because there are some people who work very hard to spread false information that they think is true. It is an ego thing,

Blaming and the passive aggressive behavior seen in his previous posts are common symptoms of JustAnOldFashionedLEDGuy's mental illness, NPD. The paranoia regarding ego also is a named symptom, as is having what appears to be an ego the size of Mars, in truth he is quite terrified others will detect his deep anxieties, so he overcompensates by being arrogant and bullying others, and generally trying to sound like an authority by employing informal fallacies. His dishonesty, fwiw, is intentional, is known as gaslighting, and it is another common symptom of his illness.


1) Once again I will state that, and it should be obvious, we are not talking self discharge, we are talking permanent capacity loss. Those permanent capacity loss experiments are not tightly controlled for humidity, they are to represent real world storage conditions.

Once again, I will say permanent capacity loss only occurs to damaged cells. I was hoping you would explain exactly what damage caused the permanent capacity loss, but moisture such as found in a freezer condensing on the cell can do that. But i'll ask again, just what the hell are you talking about? Why would freezing prevent permanent capacity loss, and what causes the permanent capacity loss in the first place?



2) Even though we are talking permanent capacity loss, lets poke yet another hole in Chillin. The heat capacity of lithium ion cells is about 1034 joules/kg-1/c-1. I.e. 1034 joules for every degree C drop per kg of weight. It is an approximation. Lithium cells don't "freeze" at -18C as there is nothing to go through a phase change at those temps.

Straw man fallacy. I was speaking colloquially, not suggesting that the cell freezes the way water freezes solid, and I specifically addressed this before you showed up, that I only meant cold at a low enough temperature like 0°F such that if rapidly heated up could succumb to thermal shock.

From 22C to -18C, a 21700 cell, 0.07kg, requires 2900 joules to be removed. I could point out that a freezer is a form of heat pump, and does not actually require 2900 joules of energy to accomplish this but what would be the point?

I'd really like to know what you're getting at here, other than just to make pointless irrelevant babble. But think you've forgotten the part about refrigerating it for years.

A 21700 cell, nominal 3.6V, 5AH, has 65,000 joules of stored energy. Chalk up another wrong for Chillin.

Now what are you saying, falsely claiming I made some claim that I never made? Nice gaslight, as though no one could figure that out. Your calculations are incomplete, thus your conclusion is incorrect. First of all, you can't just pull calories out of something, In the real world, you're going to need a compressor and coolant and electricity to drive it, maybe something called a freezer, to actually cool a cell below freezing. You can't just wave your hand and show precisely what that energy is, and voila! Cold beer! You actually need the refrigerator, which will use a shitton more than 65K J to freeze it and keep it frozen for, say, a decade or so like your Trustfires.


3) If I was this grossly wrong, I would probably try to have less attitude while doing it.

- (22C)/50% relative humidity air has 8.2g/kg of moisture. I.e. 8.2g or moisture (water) per kg or air. That is a lot of air by the way.

- (-13C)/100% relative humidity air has 1.8g/kg of moisture.

This is neither here nor there though. We already placed the batteries in the bag.
Yes, the magical bag that is a perfect insulator and doesn't obey the laws of thermodynamics. I love that bag.

As the temperature drops when the bag is placed in the freezer, the moisture will start to precipitate out. It will both precipitate out and form ice crystals that simply fall, and also freeze onto the surface of the first thing cold, which will be the plastic bag as it has less thermal mass than the battery and will cool faster. This will continue till you hit some equilibrium < 100% RH, probably closer to 50% RH, so you will get down to about 0.9g/kg of moisture in the air worst case when the freezer gets warmer at least inside the bag and realistically less as the air inside the bag will experience a smaller swing due to the thermal mass of the battery which acts like an ice cube in the sealed air, with Brownian motion enough to achieve some homogeneity of the air.

So ...... what do you think is worse, 0.9g/kg of moisture at -18 to -13C or 8.2g or far worse at 22C?

You are asserting an awfully specific amount of moisture there, and an amount that seems low, almost as though your cognitive dissonance invented it in order to self fulfill your own prophecy. He's actually pulling fictional numbers out of his giant *** now and passing it off as technical knowledge. Impressive! You must be really smart to be able to make things up like that.


Normally we are not concerned with air moisture because it does not do much till very high.

Except when things are very sensitive to moisture, it doesn't take a lot. But there in fact is a lot of moisture, up to 80%-100% for several hours at a time until the temperature drops again, at which point a lot of that vapor condenses on everything, including inside magical Ziploc bags that were not evacuated of air.


We are concerned with it condensing as liquid water dissolves impurities and can create conductive paths.

And you know what else? the water makes the air more conductive.

However, we are at -13 to -18C, and for the cell, typically much closer to -18C. There is no liquid water to dissolve impurities in solution. There is only ice. The very small amount of moisture in the bag will go from ice to vapour without a liquid phase as the temperatures are too low once it all freezes.

Nice fairy tail. I love how you assert that there will be perfect and predictable order in a chaotic system of oscillating tempertures and unknown amounts of water being added to the system every time the door is opened.


The ziploc or tupperware is essentially air tight, so adding external moisture has no appreciable effect on what is inside the bag.
But the moisture in the bag or Tupperware will condense and vaporize as the temperature changes because plastic is a poor thermal insulator and can not prevent it from occuring,

You may get ice forming on the outside of the bag since it is cold but most of that sublimates away as the RH drops once the freeze cycle restarts and the Rh drops.

What you've done is used false reasoning to sound scientific to try to persuade what I must now call victims of your narcissism to damage their cells by storing them in the freezer for no reason.


See, this is the difference between reading about stuff on the web, and say working in industry and having a relevant educational background so that you can tie real world experience to the underlying physics.

See, this is just another fallacy called appeal to authority, used in conjunction with ad hominem, so another fallacy. I think it is fitting Elvis ended his nutty argument on two fallacies. Buttons it up nicely.
 
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Self discharge is why cells lose capacity in storage. What causes permanent capacity loss is cell damage. Freezing a cell can not cure a damaged cell, and in fact can damage a cell.. Storing a cell properly will not cause damage to the cell. So it sounds to me, like always, there is some irrational belief here that doesn't match up to reality.

Arrogant and wrong at the same time is not a good look. Storing a cell properly means storing it at low temperature. I posted several links, and with links to links that show the permanent storage capacity loss is a factor of state of charge and temperature. This is so well known that you literally have to have lived under a rock not to know this.

Full state of charge of the types of lithium battery we are talking about is 4.2V. At any state of charge over about 20%, there is noticeable PERMANENT CAPACITY LOSS just by sitting there. You could have it in a perfectly dry environment, it does not matter because the permanent capacity loss is from the chemical breakdown of the electrolyte. As you raise the charge voltage, the breakdown happens quicker, no matter the humidity of storage. As you raise the temperature, the breakdown happens quicker. It is a chemical process and almost all chemical processes accelerate with heat. You can store at 40% state of charge, but then you need to charge before use. You can also store at cold temps, then you just need to wait for it to come back to working temp.


No, your comprehension is bad, and your straw man arguments are getting worse. Moisture damages cells. It is not only well known that moisture damages cells, it is expected. Cells are so sensitive to moisture, that it's a problem even in the controlled manufacturing environment, which is not a damn spa, and no one said anything about component stages, and if you looked at the paper I cited you would have known that.

Arrogant and wrong is a bad look. What you linked.

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While the summary makes reference to complete cells, it actually does not talk about them. Since you linked to the summary I am going to assume YOU didn't read the whole article, since you unlikely have academic or corporate access. YOU should. YOU should also follow the links to cold drying of lithium battery materials.

People, ask yourself this. Is the inside of a modern freezer cold or damp? Are your meats more likely to be covered with ice, or freezer burned? It's not 1975 any more. Your meat and other items are freezer burned. Keep ice in the freezer, it gets smaller and smaller. Why? Because freezers are on average very dry environments. Even though the RH may go up, the amount of moisture in the air is very low.

Apparently, you've never heard of entropy or equilibrium. It isn't going to matter whether there is air flow when something has been sitting in a freezer for days and months on end, because everything in there will be more or less the same temperature, except in your magical freezer where a thin piece of plastic can somehow insulate a cell coming into equilibrium with the rest of the fridge.

Arrogant and wrong is again a bad look. The equilibrium temperature is about -18C in a typical freezer today. When the defrost cycle runs, part of the freezer go about freezing, and the AIR temperature will rise 5-6C. The items already in the freezer don't rise 5-6C. They have enough heat capacity compared to the very low heat capacity of the air to stay close to that -18C. Feel free to put a thermometer in a small block of ice in a freezer to confirm this. Most of the walls of the freezer will also stay closer to the set temp reducing radiative loss. The plastic does not insulate the cell. The plastic does not need to. The plastic prevents the inside and outside air mixing preventing additional moisture from being introduced.

This is a lie. I did not ignore your anecdotal evidence. I mocked it and called you dishonest, as was apparent by the absurdity of the lie.
So what you are saying is you don't have any of your own data, or even experimental data showing me to be wrong. Noted. Go back to your hole.


Your premises are false, but even if true, your conclusion does follow from the premises. The fact that static electricity is quickly dissipated in humid and moist environments and builds up in dry environments proves your unsound reasoning is wrong. Twice, now. This is called counter example, and it proves that you are wrong.

Arrogant and wrong is again a bad look. Even pure water ionizes and provides very very low, but some conductivity. That is all it takes to eliminate static electricity. However, extremely low conductivity is rather meaningless in this discussion no matter how hard you try. This discussion is not about self discharge it is about permanent loss.

None of your arguments stayed afloat.

LiFeP04 batteries can't be Intrinsically safe .. and I showed you an intrinsically safe rate LiFeP04 battery pack .... would you like me to show you your other failures?

And it is insane when you calculate the amount of self-discharge ordinarily, which is negligible, and compare it to the amount of energy needed to lower the temperature of the cell and keep it lowered.

I will remind the narcissist that he claimed that the energy required to cool the battery would exceed the energy stored. Note my numbers above. The heat energy was 1/20th of the stored electrical energy. That is assuming a 1:1 efficiency, but freezers have a performance coefficient of about 4, so it would only take about 750 joules of energy to bring a 21700 cell with 65000 joules of storage from 22C to -18C.

Yeah, Airwolf41, and CPF, it is deeply regretful that JustAnOldFashionedLEDGuy can't seem to keep his Narcissistic Personality Disorder under wraps, and that due to his Toxic and Malignant Narcissism, he is rude, arrogant, paranoid, obsessive and compelled to bully and belittle others in order to compensate for his inner feelings of anxiety and worthlessness. It is shameful that he just goes nuts when anyone stands up to him or questions his idiotic and unsupportable pseudo-scientific claims and exposes his blatant dishonesty. Sucks, that.

And yet, I am not the only one having issue with Chillin even in just this thread. You can't seem to get along with anyone. Paranoid? Now you really are projecting. Oy vey! This is why I don't participate much in public forums. The crazy people never see it in themselves. Case in point:

CHILLIN: For a 3000mAh cell, dry freezing may preserve 250mAh. This makes the exercise pointless and a massive net loss of energy considering the amount of energy required to reduce the cell to freezing temperatures, which is vastly more than the amount of energy contained within the cell. In a very real way, freezing Li-ion cells is wrecking the planet.

JustAnOldFashionedLEDGuy reply ....

From 22C to -18C, a 21700 cell, 0.07kg, requires 2900 joules to be removed. I could point out that a freezer is a form of heat pump, and does not actually require 2900 joules of energy to accomplish this but what would be the point?

To which Chillin replied:

I'd really like to know what you're getting at here, other than just to make pointless irrelevant babble. But think you've forgotten the part about refrigerating it for years.
Now what are you saying, falsely claiming I made some claim that I never made?


He does not even know what he has written in the past. It may also behoove him to know that whether a full freezer does not necessarily use more energy than an empty freezer and a lot depends on the model and how often you open the door. As I keep stating, the whole freezer does not increase in temp during a defrost cycle, mainly just the air. There is also heat loss (larger) when the door opens. Fuller freezer means more air space, meaning more heat required to cool it down. It's a 6 of 1, 1/2 a dozen of another issue. Net result is one cannot state with any absolute that keeping something in the freezer requires additional energy.

Oh, but it gets better,

Chillin: You are asserting an awfully specific amount of moisture there, and an amount that seems low, almost as though your cognitive dissonance invented it in order to self fulfill your own prophecy. He's actually pulling fictional numbers out of his giant *** now and passing it off as technical knowledge. Impressive! You must be really smart to be able to make things up like that.

You know, when you are going to throw insults like that around, I would ensure I am 100% correct. But again, your ego didn't let you.

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@SYZYGY ,

Talking turkey, moisture in lithium cells is considered to be an issue, saying it is an issue, knowing what the issue is, and knowing how environmental conditions relate to and effect that are not the same thing. Hence bleating that moisture is an issue while not being able to clearly indicate why that is an issue at cold temp is the real issue.

RH, or total moisture is not even what we should be discussing, but since someone does not know what we should be discussing, it is a good illustrator of that. What we should be discussing is equilibrium moisture content. The equilibrium moisture content is apparently rather consistent for materials within lithium batteries which means that they will store about the same amount of water independent of temperature at a given RH. So if the average RH in a freezer is close to 40-50%, expect the equilibrium moisture content to be similar as at room temp. Big however, though, is that the chemical activity, when fully charged, is way way less at -18C, which is why there is less permanent capacity loss.

Which is not to say that cold temps cannot be detrimental to Lithium batteries, though most of those problems have been solved (good thing too with EVs huh?). The issue is not chemical in nature, but mechanical, structural cracking. There are chemical\mechanical aspects at very cold temps (talking -30C or more) and this may be related back to equilibrium moisture content, RH (well really vapour pressure) and general properties of water. You can reach a temp where ice starts to precipitate out. Funny enough, you end up drying out the electrolyte, but you mechanically damage the battery.

I will go back to ignoring Mr. Wikipedia now. Probably a reasonably intelligent guy, but also probably used to pulling the Wikipedia bully crap on average intelligence people without experience where he can get away with it.
 

airwolf41

Newly Enlightened
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Much thanks to all that have tried to explain all this info to me.

Hopefully everyone's feathers didn't get too ruffled.

Here is where I am after reading all this closely.

1) Chillinn, that incident you referred to where the member had the flashlight in his mouth, was that found to be conclusively, the result of thermal expansion?

Just to be clear, I do not plan on storing a rechargeable in my car, but the direction this thread headed, had me questioning what I do keep in my car.

2) Which brings me to this question, when it is said that multi cell lights are more dangerous, does that apply to Energizer lithium primary batteries AA's and AAA's?

And if it does, what about if the cells are not touching each other, such as 2 battery light where the cells are side by side vs in a row.

Oldfashionedledguy,

If I'm understanding you correctly, thermal expansion on the Nitecore light in question or any similar light, would be mitigated during powering on in cold temps via the light detecting a lower voltage?

If I'm understanding that correctly, how reliable is this detection in a light, and if it were to fail, I'm guessing thermal expansion and the light blowing up would still be unlikely in cold temps?
 
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Just a reminder that a certain person likes to dispense wrong information on topics he clearly knows nothing about .... like suggesting "electrical grease" under the false assumption it is conductive :)


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Electric vehicles are using effectively the same cells as you will use in your flashlight. Minor differences, and obviously extensive electronics and systems, but essentially the same. Your cell phone uses the same chemistry. Millions of E-Scooters worldwide stored outside, some in cold temps, and many with LiCo and LiMnCo, though most now LiFeP04. Any number of pieces of equipment that use lithium batteries, drones. power tools (very high drain), etc. etc. all often stored outside and in cold temperatures.

Have their been lithium laptop fires? Yes, several a decade ago with bad Sony batteries. Have their been some lithium fires in flashlights? Yes, but few, and not in a while it seems.

Some people really seem to relish creating fear in others, and/or they are just not good with statistics and the math of large numbers. Yes, perhaps you could have a catastrophic event, but the worst that is likely to happen is you drop a rapidly warming flashlight. You are far more likely to die in a car accident, heck, you are probably more likely to get struck by lightning. Stick to cells and protected cells made with high quality. Panasonic, Samsung, LG. Protected cells have better inherent safety as you are protected for inadvertent shorts.

Energizer Ultimate Lithiums are rated for intrinsically safe use. Put all worries of use whether single or multiple out of your head. They have many built in safety mechanisms. It is one of the reasons why they are so expensive.

w.r.t. the reliability of the voltage based cutoff they are reliable.

Given your concern airwolf41, maybe you would be better off with a lower power flashlight, 1000 lumens is a lot, that still runs off a larger battery. Some 21700 batteries are designed for very high discharge, i.e. 25-50A. Even cold, you are not going to hurt it.
 
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