Inside a faulty Samsung lithium cell.

bigclive1@gmail.com

Big Clive

How can I send you a photo? Don't think that is possible as a comment here in Patreon. If all else fails, I can give you a link to my Google drive for that specific file. I can analyze elements using x-ray emission (EDS) on the electron microscope but cannot do organic compound analysis. However if it is a silicon oil that certainly appears differnt than a hydrocarbon oil. I can also do rheological analysis where hydrocarbons are different than silicon based materials. If this is interesting, I can give a postal address. I would only need 2 ml or so. I love challenges!

Ross Clark

I would like to see your results. It sounds very interesting. A wild shot in the dark, but you wouldn't have a full chemical spectrum analyser at work would you? I've got a mystery glitter lamp liquid that I'd love to identify.

Big Clive

Clive, I was intrigued by this video since you explained how cells become damaged due to poor matching and reverse polarity. I took a 2 year old 18650 cell and discharged it to zero using a 10 ohm load for 24 hours. To further insult it, I then reverse "charged" it starting at 250 mA and working my way up to 4A over the space of a couple more days. At this point, it was acting like a 0.4 ohm resistor (1 Volt drop across the cell @ 4A). After another day to settle down, I opened it up as you did. Boy did I have copper all over the clear seperator layer. I can post photos of the metallic copper if you are interested. The copper foil layer really took a beating as well due to my electrochemistry experiment. Rather than a little pinhole, I had square mm of copper visible. I use an electron microscope at work and that plastic separator is going in there tomorrow as well. Just curious. I can't believe I am saying this but for once you didn't go extreme enough! Love your videos!

Ross Clark

Once again, Clive ventures where no less courageous person would.

Phil Collins

Waited for tonight to watch this. Wifey is working. Shot and a beer and a smoke and a new Big Clive Video. Nice.

Michael Thompson

From what I've been reading, Lithium Thionyl Chloride is not a cell to mess with even when fully discharged, as it can have a explosive thermal runaway reaction even when discharged to zero. I remember a seeing a clip on RODALCO2007 several years ago where he had a spectacular explosion from a lithium primary cell while attempting to dump high current through it.

Seán Byrne

I'm always careful how I put things into the metal dish in case of shorts. Except when something is actively going up in flames when it's already too late.

Big Clive

Hi ​Do you ever think you might get a short in your metal anodised​ pie dish, I use a ceramic dog bowl ;-) in the hope it will not get hot while I run with it for the back door. ​Olympic freestyle event for handling Li-Ion cells, might be best for a Winter Olympic for safety. ​My ​Poundland powerbanks​ that I bought last week 1200ma I tested them with two different charge doctors Since they have an auto cut off mine took about 800mah charge from flat and about 600mah drain ​via an led lamp at 23ma load ​This seems a bit low ? What I wanted to do was find a way of powering the ​​Luminara Candles​ but not at 5volts, what I hoped to do was tap into the protected side of the poundland PCB​ battery ​​so I can get a lower voltage but still have a protected cell.​ My old ​Luminara ​candles came from Canada and the drain was about 20ma using ON 28ma using the auto OFF My laptop battery in 2016 an Acer died the same way with 2 dead cells. all the best to all John​

John Harrison

Really enjoyed and enlightened by the little tutorial about cells in series. Learned a lot. Always great vids. Thanks

See new Big Clive vid --> See that it's nearly 40mins long --> Excellent, beer-o-clock. EDIT: rubber gloves involved too. Always means something exciting is about to happen... according to some of my more interesting friends.

Chris Talbot

Just how many of the Poundland powerbanks do you have? Nearly every video we see you opening a new one :D Nice seeing you back doing dodgy things.......but we need a proper explosive video soon lol

John Carr

The issues you described with the laptop is one of the main reasons why everyone, who is at least somewhat into computers, started avoiding Name Brand pre-assembled laptops like the plague. If you just order your own spec Sager or Clevo barebones laptop, and then load Windows 7 and the latest drivers on it yourself, you end up paying much less, having a more powerful and balanced system, don't have tons of spyware and advert-ware constantly using up your internet cap and PC resources, and you can very easily repair it if anything does go wrong (not to mention all the incremental upgrade possibilities).

That used to work with NiCd cells, but I'd be very wary of doing it with a lithium cell due to the potential failure mode.

Big Clive

I’ve seen a video where a guy very quickly puts a lot of power into an 18650 with a welder. It burnt out the internal short circuit and then it could be charged again.

evilution