Picking up free lithium cells off the street and making them safe for use

https://www.atomic14.com/2022/07/16/free-lithium-cells.html

by iamflimflam1 • 4 years ago

302 201 4 years ago

atomic14.com

davidmurdoch• 4 years ago

What is going on with the "st" ligature on this site?

smegsicle• 4 years ago

automatic font ligatures and their consequences have been a disaster for the human race

moritzwarhier3• 4 years ago

Sorry to be snarky, but this whole comment thread borders on satire for me.

If I can think of a "disaster for the human race", it's probably people being paid obscene amounts of money in exchange for advancing the destruction of the environment.

Cerium• 4 years ago

There is a CSS rule: font-feature-settings: "liga", "dlig" [1]. This rule enables both standard (liga) and discretionary ligatures (dlig). The discretionary set often includes a loop "st" ligature [2].

[1] https://css-tricks.com/almanac/properties/f/font-feature-set...

[2] https://helpx.adobe.com/fonts/using/open-type-syntax.html#dl...

iamflimflam16• 4 years ago

Hopefully fixed - didn't see anything on my machine so was wondering what people were talking about!

moritzwarhier3• 4 years ago

Interesting, I had not yet heard of or thought about that CSS property, but it makes sense that it exists.

For example, one could enable them for headlines only, or only for smaller font sizes, only with a minimum DPR...

robocat• 4 years ago

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/font-featur... says “Whenever possible, Web authors should instead use the font-variant shorthand property or an associated longhand property such as font-variant-ligatures, font-variant-caps, font-variant-east-asian, font-variant-alternates, font-variant-numeric or font-variant-position. These lead to more effective, predictable, understandable results than font-feature-settings, which is a low-level feature designed to handle special cases where no other way exists to enable or access an OpenType font feature.”

Using https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/font-varian... you can disable font ligatures (yayyy!).

Safari Mobile allows JavaScript shortcuts to run in any web page: I created a web shortcut in the Apple Shortcuts App to disable ligatures using JavaScript, and run it from the page share icon in Mobile Safari - unobvious functionality! I only learned that feature was available on the iPad today! I would prefer a user style sheet override. . .

cabirum• 4 years ago

It sticks out like a sore thumb and is completely unnecessary for this typeface.

mattlondon• 4 years ago

Have to agree - very distracting. After a while I kinda lost track of what the article was saying and just started "spotting" the ligatures.

greatartiste• 4 years ago

These things are now everywhere , not just litter but an environmental horror story and a fire risk as well. Previously I had seen them & wondered what they were then this Big Clive video explained all ..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N65DpT2nqEI&ab_channel=bigcl...

I must admit the ones with 1500 mah batteries are very useful.

iamflimflam16• 4 years ago

Still waiting to find one of those - so far I've only found the 500mAh versions.

failTide• 4 years ago

I've even seen them ending up in the ocean and harbors. Teens will litter them on the shoreline and not realize (or care) that the high tide will take them.

Blackthorn2• 4 years ago

My God, that video made me wince when he revealed the insides of all those devices. Perfectly good lithium and manufacturing, made to be used once and literally thrown away. Such a disgusting level of waste.

tsol3• 4 years ago

How is that cost effective? To me, it seems like something is wrong with our economy if it's cost effective to waste so many resources. I'm sure the cost to an individual to extract and refine those resources are low-- but the cost to society as a whole of littering those resources is great

2muchcoffeeman• 4 years ago

Lithium batteries are too widely used in my opinion.

I have the IKEA Eneby Bluetooth speaker. Uses 3 AAA. I can just reuse what rechargeable batteries I have. And I can use the speaker as long as I have batteries so I can charge up as many AAAs as I have. The speaker is no larger than most speakers. You can also recharge the batteries inside the speaker if you want.

So many things would be just fine with normal AA or AAA batteries.

baobob2• 4 years ago

It's been infuriating watching this in real time in the UK. Over the past 6 months, shops that sold liquids overnight just stopped selling anything reusable, with shelves full of this single use shit

Of course these sell better with higher margins than the old liquid bottles. Hope they get taxed into oblivion, wayyy worse for society than an equivalent box of cigarettes

lnsru• 4 years ago

So so, electronic waste landing everywhere while illusion of closed loop electronic recycling is being sold as a solution. My proposition: deposit of 25€ for small electrical devices and 50€ and more for bigger ones so that these do not land in landfills.

kennywinker3• 4 years ago

This kind of solution is absolutely what's required. Two addendums:

First, make the deposit a function of battery size not item size or cost (small battery $5 deposit, medium battery $10, large $50). This way the environmental cost of a specific battery is linked to the consumer's cost in a way that it isn't really now when the variation in battery cost is swallowed up in the cost of the item itself.

Second, peg this deposit to inflation. 20 years ago the 5c deposit on a beer can meant a lot more than it does today. I'm old enough to remember my fairly well off grandparents saving up their cans and returning them. Today, nobody I know bothers.

bombcar2• 4 years ago

It also provides an effective income for those disadvantaged enough; if the five cent deposit on cans had increased with inflation there'd still be an incentive to do it.

$1-5 for vape devices would be similar.

DoingIsLearning3• 4 years ago

Third, make manufacturers pay for deposit on devices with non-replaceable batteries.

As in tax them at the time of purchase, on batteries that render a device unusable.

jefftk2• 4 years ago

peg this deposit to inflation. 20 years ago the 5c deposit on a beer can meant a lot more than it does today

Adjusted for inflation, 5¢ in 2002 would just be 8¢.

onlyrealcuzzo• 4 years ago

Maybe we should tax externalities of non-renewables more before we start taxing renewables?

BizarroLand2• 4 years ago

Yeah, if soda bottles had a $1 deposit on them to ensure proper recycling that would be pretty tough to adjust to but good for the environment.

UkrainianJew• 4 years ago

Sadly, this is not very practical. A lithium cell in itself is a chemical time bomb: if it gets mechanically damaged or short-circuited, it has enough oomph to burn your device, skin or house. For factory-produced battery packs this effect is mitigated by having protective circuits that monitor charge level, temperature and a bunch of other parameters, cutting off the power if the cell is deemed too dangerous. But once you take a random lithium cell off the street and try to revitalize it, you are opening a can of worms: depending on how it was used, it might be full of dendrites [0], ready to cause a fiery short-circuit a few charges after. It might have structural damage due to gas buildup, or someone literally stepping on it. It could have been under direct sunlight for longer than it should, and so on.

It's fine to tinker around with it for your own experiments, but you don't want to ship it to anybody who's not going to be using it in a fireproof lab wearing eye protection.

A better idea would be to find a way to properly recycle the raw materials (i.e. extract the lithium from a dead cell), but that could be several orders of magnitude more challenging.

[0] https://www.batterypoweronline.com/news/a-look-inside-your-b...

wffurr• 4 years ago

The deposit can fund the materials recycling and encourage a take back program.

GekkePrutser7• 4 years ago

But once you take a random lithium cell off the street and try to revitalize it, you are opening a can of worms: depending on how it was used, it might be full of dendrites [0], ready to cause a fiery short-circuit a few charges after. It might have structural damage due to gas buildup, or someone literally stepping on it. It could have been under direct sunlight for longer than it should, and so on.

Yeah exactly what I was thinking.. I'm sure the cells used in these disposable devices weren't exactly the cream of the crop in manufacturing either. Probably cells that didn't pass QC or something.

It's pretty risky messing around with them like that.

gruez9• 4 years ago

My proposition: deposit of 25€ for small electrical devices and 50€ and more for bigger ones so that these do not land in landfills.

This is already a thing in EU, and parts of US and Canada.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Waste_Recycling_Fee

konschubert2• 4 years ago

Well, it's not a deposit. It's a tax that manufacturers pay, which finances some make-pretend recycling options. But consumes don't use the recycling options and the electronics still end up on landfills.

onion2k• 4 years ago

This would just mean wealthy people get to trash the environment with impunity.

bobbylarrybobby2• 4 years ago

They already get to though, so...

sschueller• 4 years ago

I am not saying this is OK nor acceptable however with a deposit people can pull batteries out of the trash and redeem them like cans and bottles. Just that a battery is worth a lot more.

ratsmack2• 4 years ago

I made this point today, but it was summarily dismissed as "not a problem".

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32120246&p=2#32121248

margalabargala3• 4 years ago

Account names don't match so not sure which alt account is "you", but:

The reason what you said was dismissed/started an argument is the reason a lot of arguments start: using terms whose definitions have been overloaded. People can both be talking about "green" energy but mean entirely different things and get frustrated talking past one another, as happened here.

Specifically, for many people right now, the pressing reason for "green" energy is climate change. Ergo "green" energy is energy which does not release significant amounts of CO2 when used. Solar panels are "green" energy in that they help solve a chronic environmental problem.

At the same time, as was pointed out, solar panels require some incredibly toxic chemicals to be created, and to the extent they are recyclable, that recycling process also involves, creates, and produces as waste even more horrific chemicals. Therefore solar panels are not "green" energy in that they directly contribute to an acute environmental problem.

The root of the issue is picking some abstract label, "green energy", and then each person argues whether something meets their own personal definition of that abstract label.

A more useful question may be "in which ways are solar panels good for the environment, in which ways are they harmful, and does one obviously outweigh the other?"

A supporter of solar would probably say "solar panels breakeven for co2 in just 3 years, a fraction of their lifespan, so they spend most of their life replacing fossil fuels which is good. While toxic chemicals are a byproduct of their creation, and those toxic chemicals would be harmful if released into the environment, they can be contained, stored, and disposed of in a way that localizes all harm to the point that there is no widespread environmental impact from their manufacture".

flir• 4 years ago

Wouldn't that kill the second-hand market? Reduce, reuse, recycle.

davewasthere4• 4 years ago

The value of that deposit would be reflected and transferred.

dotancohen3• 4 years ago

  > deposit of 25€ for small electrical
  > devices and 50€ and more for bigger ones

That sounds like a terrific way to encourage even more device theft.

gibolt• 4 years ago

One bonus side effect of this is that an influx of batteries meant to be recycled means it will be easier and more profitable for battery recycling to get off the ground.

That means more materials and better future recycling process discoveries

pxmpxm2• 4 years ago

Didn't he short out the battery when snipping both wires at the same time?

Neat idea though, will see if i can find any.

iamflimflam16• 4 years ago

Fortunately it was just the atomiser wires - so it briefly powered on before it was snipped off.

gumby2• 4 years ago

So far, I’ve only managed to score a couple, but I know of people who can’t seem to stop finding them. I guess it’s the same people who always seem to find pennies when they are walking around.

I don’t find pennies, but the first lock picks I made I made from street cleaner bristles someone gave me. I’d never seen one before up close, but since that day I’ve been unable to not find them and pick them up, typically one or two a week. Except that day I was working really late and when I looked at the empty parking lot as the sun rose and the ground flashed at me :-)

The same thing happened with four leaf clovers: a friend claimed they are reasonably common and we went out to a lawn and looked. Within a couple of days I’d trained my brain to detect them as I walk around.

pxmpxm2• 4 years ago

Huh, street sweeper bristles are metal?

bombcar2• 4 years ago

The ones I've seen are either metal (black ones) or very hard plastic (blue).

jakzurr• 4 years ago

That is correct. Decades ago, my cousin was into recreational lock-picking, and it turns out the bristles are perfect for machining into such tools.

EDIT - whoops, I stand corrected, metal or plastic.

nibbleshifter2• 4 years ago

Quite often, yes! I sometimes collect them for making lockpicks and other small tools (a common practice!)

systems_glitch• 4 years ago

I’d never seen one before up close, but since that day I’ve been unable to not find them and pick them up, typically one or two a week.

Same. At a previous HOPE, I'd mentioned to someone in the lockpicking village that I had never been able to find them, despite living in a city with weekly street sweeping. We walked outside and promptly found 10 or so. As you say, after you know what they look like, and where they usually are, you can't help but see them!

bobbylarrybobby2• 4 years ago

Wait, those thin metal with loops on one end? Those are street cleaner bristles?

swimfar• 4 years ago

I don't recall ever seeing something like this so I wanted to know what they look like. Here's a short video that shows a guy walking around looking for them. He also talks briefly about some uses he has for them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DOwMr_T4_A

heyalexej• 4 years ago

Quite a lot of windshield wipers have metal inserts with the same properties & dimensions. Perfect to open your older car when you forgot the keys inside.

jamiek88• 4 years ago

Four leaf clovers are a mutation, so if you find a couple you are likely to find a bunch more in close locales.

fibonachos• 4 years ago

I received an old terracotta pot with some succulents a while back that also had some clovers growing in it. One day I noticed a 4-leaf clover, then another, any another all in the same pot. The next day my black cat had eaten them all, but that’s another story. Two years later and the same pot still regularly produces 4-leaf clovers while the other nearby pots only seem to ever produce the normal 3-leaf variety.

ofrzeta• 4 years ago

Thanks. I always wondered what those are. Now I know.

stavros• 4 years ago

I wanted to buy some VTC6 cells (for my RC planes), but there's a big counterfeit problem here, so I did what any one of us would do: I wrote a capacity testing program to graph the battery capacity. It's fairly easy to use, if you want to test your own cells, all you need (TM) is an electronic load and a drone FC (they come with voltage/current sensors and cost $15, plus I had a few lying around).

Here are some pretty graphs of fake and real VTC6es:

https://notes.stavros.io/maker-things/battery-discharge-curv...

The software is called Assault and Battery:

https://gitlab.com/stavros/assault-and-battery/

gumby2• 4 years ago

I suppose the opposite is true too: you could make a little circuit in volume that could turn junk (or any) batteries into firestarters. Glad nobody seems to have made these IFDs.

aoki• 4 years ago

Not knowing anything about vape internals and with him referring to them as “lithium” instead of LiPo or LiIon, I thought on first reading that he was recommending recharging primary lithium batteries. Which would already be a kind of stochastic IFD!

BizarroLand2• 4 years ago

I'm assuming IFD stands for "Idiotic F##K#NG Devices", right?

odiroot• 4 years ago

I see a lot of these disposable e-cigarettes here in England. Usually discarded around big parks in the centre. I did consider picking them up to reuse before.

nibbleshifter2• 4 years ago

I see dozens of these scattered about every time I go walking in my area. Need to order a bunch of those protection/charging boards and start harvesting the free batteries.

diimdeep• 4 years ago

I still have a few Lithium polymer MacBook batteries after replacing them due to swell. I think it is possible to get individual cells from them and use protection circuits like this. The problem of course is that they swelled, there is videos how people puncture outside shell to release gas, but it is a very dangerous and scary thing to do.

olivermarks3• 4 years ago

Be extremely careful about damaged batteries, they are a major fire risk indoors. Strongly recommend outdoors disassembly away from structures. Metal ammo boxes are a good idea to store the batteries in as a lot of RC hobbyists know

Wingman4l7• 4 years ago

You can also purchase heavy zippered containers or Velcro-ed pouches made of fire-retardant fabric that are intended for use as safe charging containers for lithium polymer batteries.

picture• 4 years ago

I personally wouldn't trust anything less than steel ammo boxes. I've exploded batteries before and they get seriously hot. It will completely burn through anything without a lot of thermal mass. There are videos on youtube showing how cheaper pouches are completely useless

ah27182• 4 years ago

Definitely. My dad sells ebike batteries and there was recent electrical fire in my parents garage due to one of the "dead" batteries exploding. Beyond just the initial fire from the battery, it also resulted in molten metal shrapnel ricocheting off the ceiling and started other fires simultaneously.

Thankfully we all awake and our garden hose was enough to put it out, but it was pretty clear to us that safe/proper battery storage is needed asap.

krallja• 4 years ago

garden hose

Please find a different solution. Lithium + water = boom. Don’t put water on an electrical fire of any kind, to be honest.

tgsovlerkhgsel• 4 years ago

I wonder if someone did the math how the plastic straw "problem" compares to vape litter.

fragmede• 4 years ago

Where I am, flavored nicotine products are illegal (along with plastic straws) so the math is both are bad.

daneelsan• 4 years ago

Scott's thots part 2

squarefoot• 4 years ago

This is a good way to limit somehow the environmental damage created by those disgraceful single use vape devices; I wonder how on earth they're allowed to be produced and sold! Other users warned about recovered batteries: true, give them a good visual inspection first, always check they're not damaged and measure above a certain safe level (usually 3.0V for Li-Ion) before attempting their recharge. Also keep in mind that those small TP4056 boards were set up for recharging bigger cells and output a higher current. With 500mA charging a 550mA cell we're close to C, which is perfectly doable, however it's a stress I wouldn't subject a unknown used cell to. To stay on the safe side, I'd limit the output current to 250mA or less, which is doable by swapping the resistor going from pin 2 of the chip to ground with a 5KOhm or more one.

emson• 4 years ago

Great article, it does make you think what more we could be doing to track and recycle waste. There must be a data analytics play here?

explodingwaffle• 4 years ago

They should be illegal- the waste of RECHARGEABLE lithium cells in DISPOSABLE vapes is insane. At least in the UK, anywhere there are teenagers these things follow. I'll admit as an electronics hobbyist these can be a good source of free batteries though (hell, it'd probably be cheaper and certainly quicker for me to walk into a vape shop and shuck these for the batteries than it is to buy them online).

Real evil villain stuff tbh- wasting rare metals, getting kids addicted to nicotine, probably shipped by the boatload from China...

tsol3• 4 years ago

These types of situations make me think some externalities should be priced in, perhaps through taxes. It's ridiculous that these devices make litter of rare metals that also have a risk of fires. If we're gonna allow it, it ought to include the cost of inevitably cleaning them up off the streets

spaetzleesser• 4 years ago

"These types of situations make me think some externalities should be priced in, perhaps through taxes. "

Why not all? Externalities are hard to determine but in general this should be a principle in a capitalist market economy.

Gigachad2• 4 years ago

Problem is if we started pricing in this stuff it would absolutely obliterate other, much more wasteful practices. If these were priced in, almost no one could afford to drive SUVs like they do now. Which is a good thing but isn't going to be accepted by the public.

detritus• 4 years ago

These stupid things and fairly large Nox canisters (650g) are utterly befouling my locality here in London.

I despair. I really do.

sneak• 4 years ago

Why is it insane? What's the harm in someone disposing what they have paid for?

eternityforest2• 4 years ago

Lithium mining is horrible. Landfills are a problem. The more mining the more pollution. The more disposable lithium the more mining.

Julien_r2• 4 years ago

They didn't pay for the processing.. We ignore a lot of cost when selling a product, and particularly the cost of recycling, which start to be a huge issue taking in account the amount of waste produced..

This gives us the feeling that electricity is almost free and green, while in the meantime we damage entire area through lithium mining (E.g https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/06/business/lithium-mining-r...)

dqpb2• 4 years ago

Maybe it’s just the news I’m fed, but I have an unshakeable feeling that China is waging war with “the west”, but they’re doing it discretely, by making everyone a little sicker.

wiml• 4 years ago

Considering what "the west" did to itself in past centuries (and still does) I think China is just participating in a preëxisting tradition of self harm.

mrguyorama4• 4 years ago

China doesn't have to do anything on purpose. America and American's utter disregard for anything other than saving a couple pennies here and there mean every possible corner will be cut, without any purposeful planning or damaging intent.

moralestapia• 4 years ago

Wait are those things disposable? Vape sticks or whatever they're called? WTF!

I can't believe this is tolerated, that is a massive amount of environmental damage for an incredibly stupid distraction that lasts for a day or so.

Damn!

Gigachad2• 4 years ago

Another one was a trend of "single use" phone battery banks. Where its a rechargeable lithium battery but without the recharge circuit so once its flat you just throw it in the bin.

atVelocet• 4 years ago

Yeah.. they sell them for 8€ and you can‘t refill them or change anything. When the liquid is empty it get’s thrown into the garbage.

rsch• 4 years ago

I started reading it, saw the first photo and went oh my gaaaaaaaaad wear gloves.

And not just for the goop inside the thing, people had this thing in their mouth.

The next paragraph confirms the author came to this conclusion too.

djmips2• 4 years ago

I made the mistake of getting the goop on my bare hands. What a rookie mistake!

derekdahmer• 4 years ago

Don’t know much about batteries - what makes these 500mAh battery packs useful/valuable for home projects?

2800mAh NiMH AA batteries are like $1.50 each. Will they not do the job?

GekkePrutser7• 4 years ago

Lithium batteries are easier to charge, have a more suitable voltage, are lighter for the same energy and have no memory effect. They also have a great even voltage drop during discharge which makes for accurate charge indicators (Sony used to advertise them as "infolithium" back in the day)

Lithium batteries are pretty great except for the fire risk. And Lithium mining is bad for the environment (lots of chemical waste during extraction) so using them for single use stuff is horrible.

fsckboy• 4 years ago

NiMH batteries don't have a memory effect either, that's NiCd that does. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel%E2%80%93metal_hydride_b...

rruark• 4 years ago

I built a USB power back using these cells a couple months ago after finding out that disposable vapes have rechargeable batteries. A friend had already taken the cells out of several of his own vapes; I don't know how I'd feel about taking apart ones that I found on the street.

http://robruark.com/projects/power_bank/power_bank.html

sgtnoodle• 4 years ago

In my experience, the ESP32's ADC isn't noisy so much as buggy. When using the most straight forward mode of operation, software triggering, the ADC frequently spits out garbage. It's almost as if it's an internal pin mux problem.

The ADC can instead be clocked by the I2S peripheral, and when doing so it seems to bypass that particular bug. I did that for a hobby project. I was trying to detect 500uS wide pulses, and I went from regularly missing them to getting every single one.

I suspect that the software trigger mode goes through an intermediate MCU in the guts of the ESP32, and there's some race conditions in it's firmware.

iamflimflam16• 4 years ago

That's very interesting - I've done a lot of work with the ADC for getting audio from the ADC, didn't consider using it to just get values as well.

trhway• 4 years ago

Just today was on the Ukrainian TV - a student group in Kiev Polytech collects those batteries and reuses in the drones what they make for the army.

kstenerud• 4 years ago

Reminds me of a movie I saw as a kid where a guy from the future comes back to the 80s. There's a scene where he's looking for new batteries for his gadgets.

Woman at the store counter (peering suspiciously at the battery): "What kind did you say they were?"

Traveler: "Plutonium."

My only thought at the time was "My god, what an ecological nightmare that would unleash when people start throwing these things out with the trash!"

raffraffraff• 4 years ago

I've been finding these things everywhere. How the fuck are they legal?

exabrial2• 4 years ago

... I mean, at least here, there's a ton of illegally parked Bird Scooters that might be a little more efficient use of your time.

Picking up free lithium cells off the street and making them safe for use

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