[Greenbuilding] Recharging disposable Alkaline batteries

[RT]

Some time ago (more than a year I think) Reuben started a thread asking
about a battery charger that was "on sale" at Amazon.com  that was
purported to be capable of recharging disposable alkaline batteries.

They were really inexpensive ($10 ?) so I bought one to test and Ben was
kind enough to send it up to Canada to me from Minnesota (or was it
Wisconsin ?) .

Just in case others may have bought one and weren't finding it to be "as
advertised"...

The charger has individual indicator LEDs that light up (red) if a battery
is capable of taking a charge and then eventually turn green when the
battery is charged.

At first I was finding that many times, the red indicators would not
illuminate for some batteries and I just assumed that they were too
depleted to be recharged.

"Ah well. What do you expect for ten bucks" I thought to myself.

However somehow I thought to try pre-charging the "dead" batteries in a
conventional charger designed for NiCad/NiMH batteries, setting a timer to
alert me to remove them from the charger after 36 minutes after which I'd
stick them into the Rosewill charger for finishing. (36 minutes was chosen
arbitrarily simply because it's an auspicious number for Chinese).

To my delight, the red indicator lights came "ON" when the pre-charged
previously-thought-to-be-beyond-dead alkalines were inserted into the
Rosewill charger and subsequently the indicators turned green after a
period of charging and when removed, the batteries performed as well or
better than "real" re-charged rechargeable NiMH batteries.

Since the batteries felt a bit warm coming out of the conventional charger
after 36 minutes, the next time I reduced the pre-charging time to 18
minutes for the batteries that did not light up the red LED indicators on
the Rosewill unit when first inserted. That too seemed to do the trick.

After about a half dozen re-charges though, the pre-charge time on
too-depleted batteries may need to be increased. I set a timer for 10
minute intervals so that they don't overheat in the pre-charger.

The trick to recharging the disposable alkalines seems to be that one
should try to avoid depleting them too much before sticking them into the
Rosewill unit IF you want to avoid the hassle of pre-charging them in a
conventional charger.

It seems that the Rosewill unit's red indicator lights will not illuminate
for 1.5 volt batteries that have been depleted to less than 0.8 volts or
so ...so if you pre-charge them in a conventional charger to slightly more
than that, the Rosewill unit will see them as being "charge-worthy" (sort
of like Elaine in assessing a fella for sponge-worthiness I suppose).

I recently started putting indelible ink tally marks on the disposable
alkalines after each re-charge. I'm only up to 8 cycles at this point for
some "Duracell" copper top alkalines and they're still going strong it
seems.

As they used to say in the pool room where my brother would often hang out
when playing hooky during his high school days:

          " Not tea bag ! But not coffee either."

... after making an impressive shot.  Actually, I think that the Rosewill
unit is pretty impressive, giving new life to single-use disposable
batteries, extending their useful life by at least 10x (my guess).

The danger in recharging disposable alkaline batteries in a regular
charger is that there's supposedly a risk of explosion (at worst) and
possibly leakage otherwise.

The Rosewill unit appears to avoid the possibility of explosion, either
through "smart" circuitry or low operating current (don't know which. Or
both ?).

I've only experienced leakage with one AA battery. It was an " "Eveready
Industrial" disposable battery of unknown vintage from a bunch of
diverted-from-the-wastestream alkalines that someone had given me to try
out in the charger since all I had at that point were NiMHs.

      But enough about that. Now, if another Murrican is willing to do me
another favour on Amazon.com ....

An MP3 compilation album featuring Canadian musicians (Six Strings North
of the Border -vol. 1) is not available through Amazon.com to Canadians.
Most peculiar. Eh ?)

-- 
=== * ===
Rob Tom					AOD257
Kanata, Ontario, Canada

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