New to 14500 - what are the dangers?

Just purchased a pair of Eagletac 14500 to go into my new Zebralight SC52. This light is incredibly bright with a 14500. I have read many posts saying that the Eneloops are a much safer choice for this light. I charge my 14500's with a Nitecore i2. Being new to 14500's (and rechargeable batteries in general) what are the dangers in using the 14500? With the 14500, is it best to allow the battery to go dead before charging again? Any other info anyone can provide a newbie is much appreciated. Thanks for any help.

It all comes down to properly pairing cells and equipment, so as to assure you that you are safely charging and discharging them. Yours are high quality properly protected cells and you're using them in a high quality light with its own protection circuitry. Your setup should be quite safe. There is no reason to let the cells discharge to low before recharging them, except maybe once or twice right after you get the battery to break it in and bring out the full capacity.

Read as much as you can of this excellent website all about batteries.

Here is a very good review of the batteries you have.

I wrote this article about battery safety from the perspective of a cave explorer. But if you read the relevant info on batteryuniversity.com (my first link) you won't learn anything new in my article.

Mooreshire said:

It all comes down to properly pairing cells and equipment, so as to assure you that you are safely charging and discharging them. Yours are high quality properly protected cells and you're using them in a high quality light with its own protection circuitry. Your setup should be quite safe. There is no reason to let the cells discharge to low before recharging them, except maybe once or twice right after you get the battery to break it in and bring out the full capacity.

Click to expand...

That's quite a common misconception. Li- rechargeable chemistries (Li-Ion, LiFePO4, LiMn) don't "break-in", and neither do NiZn, only NiCd and NiMH ones do.

The biggest safety danger with rechargable lithiums is during the charging process, it's best practice to charge in a well ventilated area (like out on the back porch or garage with an open window) and in some manner of non-flammable enclosure. Now there are millions of lithium ions in phones and computers being charged every day indoors, but that works because the device usually has built in charging and protection circuits to prevent cell damage and fires. Most lithium ion cell chargers like we use are kinda "iffy" on quality at the best of times, and not all cells have protection circuits.

The other one is running unprotected cells in series, and letting them drain down too far (or sometimes running two cells where one is damaged or defective) This causes a reverse charge and most of the nasty kabooms associated with lithium cells. There's a subforum here called "smoke , fire, and hot cells" that has lots of examples on what batteries do when they stop working properly. Protected cells in series are usually okay, if you run unprotected cells in series, or even a single unprotected cell for that matter it's a good idea to keep tabs on the voltage until you get a sense for when you need to charge them, as the cells can be damaged permanently and rendered unsafe if you drain them too far.


As far as general use, charge lithiums whenever you want, they have no memory, and very low self discharge. Keeping them charged to 100% all the time will shorten the overall cell lifetime, so I like to run cells down a bit closer to empty. Figure out how much you really use them and develop your own charging routine that works for you, and keeps the cells out of the red zone (under 3 volts). 2.5v is what most protection circuits will cut off at, but at 3v lithium ion is past the empty stage.

Mooreshire said:

There is no reason to let the cells discharge to low before recharging them, except maybe once or twice right after you get the battery to break it in and bring out the full capacity.

Click to expand...

Shadowww said:

That's quite a common misconception. Li- rechargeable chemistries (Li-Ion, LiFePO4, LiMn) don't "break-in", and neither do NiZn, only NiCd and NiMH ones do.

Click to expand...

Thanks for clearing that up Shadowww. Lots of manufacturers and retailers claim otherwise. I imagine they are misinformed like I am. Reliable sources do indeed say the first charging is the same as the seventy-first for all Li- based batteries.

Mooreshire said:

There is no reason to let the cells discharge to low before recharging them, except maybe once or twice right after you get the battery to break it in and bring out the full capacity.

Click to expand...

Li-ion cells do not need breaking in and will not increase in capacity with use.

Norm

protected cells
protected cells
protected cells
... nothing else to type, You are perfectly safe by using them



as to Li-Ion --> generals:
* offer ~500 charging cycles and/OR ~5 years of lifetime (no matter if used or not)
* full use to discharge (down to a "safe level" of 2.8 V, better just down to 3 V) counts as one cycle
* "less" discharge than fully down ADDS to lifetime (does not count as full cycle)
* better not store fully charged (have light run for 10 mins, or so)

--> use the light/cell and top off before next use (when runtime might be needed)
--> DO NOT RUN CELL DOWN "UNNECESSARY"