Sunbeam C size battery explosion

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PJ

Enlightened
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Apr 4, 2004
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City & State/Province
MI
POSTED: July 2, 2008 "Two local residents hurt in battery explosion"

ESCANABA - Escanaba's former mayor and her husband are urging people not to use Sunbeam batteries after they were injured when one recently exploded in their faces.

Judi and Dave Schwalbach spent more than four hours in the emergency room at OSF St. Francis Hospital June 16 after a C-size Sunbeam battery exploded at their Escanaba home. Particles from the battery became embedded in their eyes when the explosion occurred about 8 that night, said Judi.

"We heard a loud pop," said Judi. The couple and their daughter, Heidi Banks, thought the sound might have come from wireless speakers, which they set up earlier that day.

Dave opened the battery compartment to find black soot inside, Judi said. As she was handing Dave a paper towel, he removed the battery and the battery blew up in his face.

"It was like a fire cracker ... a big one," she said. "A cylinder had flown out... There was black soot on the ceiling, the walls, the floors, in our eyes and up our noses. Dave got it the worst."
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I stumbled across this in the Escanaba Daily Press while searching for reviews on Sunbeam batteries.

I have some of these stashed away somewhere, I think they are now headed for the recycle bin.

[url]http://www.dailypress.net/page/content.detail/id/504743.html?nav=5003[/URL]
 
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Hmm... what chemistry - any ideas? Never heard of alkalines exploding like that. Plus the black soot wouldn't come from the alkaline chemistry?
 
Sounds like a carbon zinc "heavy duty" battery. The soot is relatively harmless, but still not really something you want in the eye.
 
I never knew those could explode... I wish the article had more information.
 
I've always known them to just die quietly under any abuse. I didn't realize they could explode either, but the residue is hard to mistake.
 
Sunbeam batteries suck plain and simple.
They are sold at my Dollar Tree, marketed as alkalines when they are actually carbon-zinc (MUCH lighter)
 
I'm sorry for disturbing all the lovely cobwebs here, but this is something still relevant.

This is still happening. In 2012/2013 I bought Sunbeam AAA batteries from the Dollar Store. I neede them for my wireless computer mouse. After a week of use, I was hearing hissing or sizzling noises. Could not figure out where it was coming from. Then I heard a loud POP and felt it in the palm of my hand. It nearly gave me a heart attack! I slowly opened the cover of the mouse, and found beautiful battery acid sprayed all over the inside of it. I thought it was just a fluke occurrence. Cleaned it all out and put fresh batteries in from the same pack. This time 2 weeks later, the same thing! They seem to be failing on the positive end, where the wrapper goes over the terminal of the battery. Let me tell you, these suckers were hot to the touch!

The mouse was a $7 Chinese mouse, so I figured it was the mouse's fault for blowing the batteries due to bad circuitry. I eventually got a Logitech mouse, and Energizer batteries, and no more problems. I randomly found this thread today, and now I have found out that it was the batteries that were the fault!
 
I know the carbon zinc ones are junk, but the alkaline are still good. In my digital camera the alkalines will outlast enerigzers and duracells. In some applications, like my 3 watt spotlight, they last about 30 minutes less than energizers. I did a test for an AAA MP3 player and found them equivalent to energizers. I've got an atomic clock that uses 3 AA'S and have had sunbeams in them for about 2 years now, and they're still pushing 1.3 volts. and that's even with using the alarm clock. I still trust the the alkaline brands, because there is also stores of duracells exploding also. While i try to avoid buying the sunbeams, simply because i don't feel like funding the PLA, I still trust them and can vouch for certain applications, they work good. I've also used them before in a wireless mouse before i discovered rechargeable batteries. 2 of them would last about 2-3 months, but that was mostly because sometimes i would forget to turn it off, and it would run all night, and half the next day until i discovered it. Would have ran longer if i had remembered to turn it off.
 
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Certain things.... I just don't buy at the Dollar Store. Among them, batteries. Even when you get genuine alkalines, they run out of juice in about less than half the time compared to alkalines not from The Dollar Store or the .99 cent Store.
 
scary thing was last week i was in dollar tree and saw cr123 branded sunbeam!
Monocrom said:
Certain things.... I just don't buy at the Dollar Store. Among them, batteries. Even when you get genuine alkalines, they run out of juice in about less than half the time compared to alkalines not from The Dollar Store or the .99 cent Store.
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