How old is too old of a battery?

I checked one of my lights has 4x nitecores from 2015. They still hold a charge and there's no issues with them. Should batteries be disposed of after a certain time? Do they become increasingly more dangerous the older they are?



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Batteries can age but age differently based upon the quality of the battery..... the state of charge it is in and usage.
If the battery doesn't have high internal resistance and capacity is still useful then nothing to fear. I'm using old laptop batteries that are 10 years old or so I had to toss about 1/3 of them and had another few of them that lost substantial capacity in use such that I retired them.

Lynx_Arc said:

Batteries can age but age differently based upon the quality of the battery..... the state of charge it is in and usage.
If the battery doesn't have high internal resistance and capacity is still useful then nothing to fear. I'm using old laptop batteries that are 10 years old or so I had to toss about 1/3 of them and had another few of them that lost substantial capacity in use such that I retired them.

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How is high internal resistance determined?

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trailhunter said:

How is high internal resistance determined?

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There are chargers that measure it, but one sign of high internal resistance is under heavy loads fully charged the output drops more than usual. Also often you have high self discharge and batteries with high internal resistance tend to heat up a lot more in use and tend to get hotter when charging.

Lynx_Arc said:

There are chargers that measure it, but one sign of high internal resistance is under heavy loads fully charged the output drops more than usual. Also often you have high self discharge and batteries with high internal resistance tend to heat up a lot more in use and tend to get hotter when charging.

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Interesting, I have an opus but I don't think it measures that. Would be another good variable to monitor.

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trailhunter said:

Interesting, I have an opus but I don't think it measures that. Would be another good variable to monitor.

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My Opus measures it, it is called an impedance test
https://www.candlepowerforums.com/v...-Acceptable-resistance-for-good-quality-18650

Don't use any charger's internal-resistance function as an accurate measurement. It will be wrong. But, it can be very useful when comparing it to other batteries. If it's a lot higher than known "good" batteries, then you can probably be confident that battery has high internal resistance.

For me, if a battery/cell can't sustain even a 1 amp drain, I start to mull over the idea of pitching it into the recycling bin.

Chris

WalkIntoTheLight said:

Don't use any charger's internal-resistance function as an accurate measurement. It will be wrong. But, it can be very useful when comparing it to other batteries. If it's a lot higher than known "good" batteries, then you can probably be confident that battery has high internal resistance.

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I agree that most chargers internal resistance function isn't accurate but it is a good tool to track down marginally performing and even bad batteries. If the internal resistance measurement is a lot higher than a known good battery (5-10 times higher) that battery will most likely have issues in use under reasonably high current applications. My biggest issue with batteries (18650s for instance) is the batteries work fine but the capacity has dropped to but a fraction of the original. For instance a 2600mah battery that has only 500mah capacity becomes not very useful for any but very low current applications and then you will still have to recharge it 5 times more often to get the same runtime. I typically pull batteries that drop to around half capacity from general use to misc use and if I have a lot of batteries that are good I sometimes recycle or toss them in the trash depending on chemistry.

The word I got from several engineers was 5 years on NiMH. They'll continue working past that, but for maximum reliability, 5 years is my cutoff for my project.

pendragon2019 said:

The word I got from several engineers was 5 years on NiMH. They'll continue working past that, but for maximum reliability, 5 years is my cutoff for my project.

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There are threads about people testing Eneloops (LSD NiMh) a lot older than 5 years that worked just fine. I have LSD nimh 1st gen that has issues but not as much from age is the Chinese LSD cells were a lot more fragile than Japanese LSD. I have 13 year old Duraloops that work just fine.

Lynx_Arc said:

There are threads about people testing Eneloops (LSD NiMh) a lot older than 5 years that worked just fine. I have LSD nimh 1st gen that has issues but not as much from age is the Chinese LSD cells were a lot more fragile than Japanese LSD. I have 13 year old Duraloops that work just fine.

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Like I said, they'll continue working beyond 5 years. My project requires near perfect reliability, so I retire mine before they start to suffer performance issues.

Hello Pendragon2019,

Can I assume that the 5 years is from the date of manufacture?

Tom

That's how I understood them.

Now that my son is 16 years of age, it's not so much of an issue, but previously I don't think I've ever had a cell more than a couple of years before it got somehow lost in the midst of toys and various appliances, lost in transit when moving and whatnot. :-D

/Dennis

Personally, I used to throw away old batteries, regardless of whether or not I had any issues with them, but I stopped doing that a couple of years ago, mainly because it just didn't make good financial sense. I am using 18650s that I have had since 2012 and have zero problems with them. It used to be a safety thing, at least in the vaping industry. I'm not really sure about flashlights, as I only got seriously into them about a year ago. The thing is, batteries are supposed to be good for 250-500 charge cycles and the fact is that I don't own any that are even close to 250 charge cycles, let alone 500, so why not continue to use them rather than disposing of them?

I basically use NiMH batteries until they no longer sustain a charge, but I demote any batteries that get HIGH in my C9000. They go into flashlights and anything else that doesnt drain the cells too quickly. I recently had to stop using some old NiMH Energizers in my work light because the negative terminals were pushed in and I was blowing the light emitters out with them. Surprised that the batteries hold a charge and maintain a 70+% charge.

Talk about batteries that keep going and going. I don't have much experience with lithium ion other than the electric equipment such as my phone and sony mp3 player. So far they're doing fine.