Hardware Dead battery + freezer = life?

Vipera

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I'm sure many of you heard the urban legend about putting a dead laptop battery into a freezer in order to restore it.

Since I've been trying to restore my old laptop, and I didn't want to drop more cash for another battery, I tried this trick just for fun, and put my dead battery into the freezer and kept it for half a day. Then I took it out, let it warm up and plugged it in.

...it charged.

RsKEWMH.jpg


Then I pulled the AC cable out and... it works.

2rbprG7.jpg


IT WORKS

An urban legend works!! I don't know what to think anymore.

Anyway, my question is: how is this possible? How could my freezer restore my bigass laptop battery? I'm very curious about this.

I'm still shocked, and want to try it with different batteries now. This is awesome.
 

Foxi4

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It's a solution, but it's only temporary - be on the lookout for a new battery anyways. The thing with batteries is that they lose their capacity to hold charge as they heat up and since they heat up during changing and intensive use, they effectively wear out. Cooling them down can get the reaction going again, but the battery is already worn out and it will not perform at its default parameters anymore, ever. Another tip is keeping the battery cool as it charges, but it's too late for that for ya, sorry.
 

The Real Jdbye

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Reading the title I remembered reading several times in the past that batteries perform worse in extreme cold. I'm surprised that actually worked at all.
I agree with Foxi4 that it's only temporary, there is no magical way of "fixing" a worn out battery.
In fact I would be wary of trying to resurrect dead batteries, in a worst case scenario laptop batteries can make a pretty nice fire/explosion.
 

RandomUser

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If I am not mistaken Lithium ION battery can be discharge at –4°F, although I wouldn't recommend it. Laptop batteries are usually nothing more then several AA or size 18650 Lithium Ion batteries in one pack. In theory you could refurbish you laptop battery pack, but it will take some time and labor to open the said battery pack, as well as soldering. If you do decides to refurbish your laptop battery pack, then perhaps you should get tabbed version of the Li-Ion batteries for soldering.
Edit:
I forgot to mention that the laptop battery pack indicator may eventually call out "end of Life" for the battery pack even though the batteries would be fresh. So in other words, it may be better to just buy a whole new battery pack.
 

Vipera

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It's a solution, but it's only temporary - be on the lookout for a new battery anyways. The thing with batteries is that they lose their capacity to hold charge as they heat up and since they heat up during changing and intensive use, they effectively wear out. Cooling them down can get the reaction going again, but the battery is already worn out and it will not perform at its default parameters anymore, ever. Another tip is keeping the battery cool as it charges, but it's too late for that for ya, sorry.
Ehh... I've always had >4 hours of autonomy with it and after two more discharges it peaks to 4:24. That's close to its original autonomy (~5 hours). What's weird is that I kept it in a sealed bag into a metallic box under my bed. I thought they'd get damaged if you kept them attached to the PC for too long, and I didn't want to let it get damaged (I paid 40Eur for this thing and stopped using it after the ram became defective). I will absolutely get a new battery somewhere in the future, but for now I'll squeeze it 'till it begs me no more.

I still don't get how this was possible though :x the best explanation so far was "chemistry"...
 

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