What causes lithium-ion batteries to bulge?
1. Issues with the manufacturing quality of lithium-ion battery packs, including uneven electrode coating and relatively rough production processes;
2. The violent reaction of a short circuit generates a large amount of heat, which in turn causes the electrolyte to decompose and vaporize, causing the lithium-ion battery to swell.
3. In addition, lithium iron phosphate battery packs may bulge if left unused for a long time. This is because air is conductive to a certain extent. Therefore, leaving the battery unused for too long is equivalent to the positive and negative terminals coming into direct contact, resulting in a slow short circuit.
4. Reasons for poor quality lithium-ion battery chargers. Chargers using inferior boards, refurbished or substandard components can cause overheating, inaccurate parameter drift, and uncontrolled charging voltage limiting. This can lead to internal gas compression in the lithium-ion battery, resulting in battery casing deformation, bulging, cracking, or even explosion.
5. Overcharging. Overcharging can cause a large amount of gas to flush the plates, leading to the shedding of active materials inside the lithium-ion battery pack, shortening battery life, accelerating water loss, affecting electrolyte decomposition, and increasing battery temperature, causing it to swell!
How to safely handle a bulging lithium-ion battery?
1. Recharge the battery when it is about half full. Only perform a full discharge and full charge maintenance in rare cases (for example, after using it for a few months to half a year, perform a full discharge and full charge once. Frequent full charge and discharge can easily cause crystal growth). This can greatly reduce the amount of crystal growth and significantly slow down the bulging phenomenon.
2. A bulging lithium-ion battery can be discarded directly because its power capacity is already very small, and it has little power after a short circuit.
3. Lithium-ion battery packs generally need to be professionally recycled to avoid pollution. If they cannot be disposed of, they should be thrown into the recycling bins at the service points of telecommunications service providers.
The above explains the reasons why lithium-ion batteries bulge and how to properly handle a bulging lithium-ion battery pack. Have you all understood and learned this?
