Important note near the end of the article - they aren’t saying we should cook batteries really -
“The team’s hypothesis is that the structural disorder developing inside LIBs may become a “tunable parameter” that, if tweaked using chargers at precise voltages to alter said battery composition, could be used to rejuvenate the batteries in our tech without fires.”
This is a good old idea that goes back to the days of desulfating lead batteries with powerful shocks of high-amperage current. Might just need a special Healing Charger that applies the right voltage/current to dissolve the bad crystals in lithium-ion systems
I remember recovering dead 18650 cells from laptop batteries and “restoring” them with a 12V modded PC PSU. Quite a few of them actually started working again and had some capacity for a few tens of additional cycles. Those cells were never left unattended in a charger and they were always only used in a device you could chuck in a moment’s notice.
How did that process work? Did you just connect the +/- ends of the cell to the +/- 12v wires of the PSU and let it feed from the high-amp outputs? Imagine there’s plenty of amps on the GPU and CPU power wires
Yup, just plugged it in there. The internal resistance of these cells was high enough that it limited the current somewhere between 3-8A. And this was done only briefly as these cells got quite…warm.
Well, there is some data/rumours out there, stemming from a Dutch Tesla forum, that suggests that some fast charging might be beneficial for battery longevity. This seems to corroborate that. I can’t remember the case for always fast charging, though.
Important note near the end of the article - they aren’t saying we should cook batteries really -
This is a good old idea that goes back to the days of desulfating lead batteries with powerful shocks of high-amperage current. Might just need a special Healing Charger that applies the right voltage/current to dissolve the bad crystals in lithium-ion systems
I remember recovering dead 18650 cells from laptop batteries and “restoring” them with a 12V modded PC PSU. Quite a few of them actually started working again and had some capacity for a few tens of additional cycles. Those cells were never left unattended in a charger and they were always only used in a device you could chuck in a moment’s notice.
10/10 do not recommend.
How did that process work? Did you just connect the +/- ends of the cell to the +/- 12v wires of the PSU and let it feed from the high-amp outputs? Imagine there’s plenty of amps on the GPU and CPU power wires
Yup, just plugged it in there. The internal resistance of these cells was high enough that it limited the current somewhere between 3-8A. And this was done only briefly as these cells got quite…warm.
Oh God I can already see all the questionable “Restorer Chargers” and the like from Temu that will be more likely to burn down the house…
Well, there is some data/rumours out there, stemming from a Dutch Tesla forum, that suggests that some fast charging might be beneficial for battery longevity. This seems to corroborate that. I can’t remember the case for always fast charging, though.