DuraHELL batteries

[helius]

And since Duracells claim to last, and whatever other whiz-bang stuff they do, people buy them.

It's too easy to forget this point: marketing works, and unsophisticated (electronically-speaking) customers buy into gimmicks like "freshness seals" and "power meters". The actual quality is something you can't see and is therefore a harder sell on a store shelf.

[SilverSolder]

And since Duracells claim to last, and whatever other whiz-bang stuff they do, people buy them.

It's too easy to forget this point: marketing works, and unsophisticated (electronically-speaking) customers buy into gimmicks like "freshness seals" and "power meters". The actual quality is something you can't see and is therefore a harder sell on a store shelf.

At some point, though, a reputation will get damaged.  E.g. a loved one left stranded on a dark road, and the flashlight you considerately placed in their car's glovebox doesn't work because of leaky crappy batteries that you thought was top drawer material...

[Refrigerator]

At some point, though, a reputation will get damaged.  E.g. a loved one left stranded on a dark road, and the flashlight you considerately placed in their car's glovebox doesn't work because of leaky crappy batteries that you thought was top drawer material...

This "some point" has been over 10 years in the making and is still nowhere to be seen.

[SilverSolder]

At some point, though, a reputation will get damaged.  E.g. a loved one left stranded on a dark road, and the flashlight you considerately placed in their car's glovebox doesn't work because of leaky crappy batteries that you thought was top drawer material...

This "some point" has been over 10 years in the making and is still nowhere to be seen.

Yeah, I think they are pretty immune for all the reasons discussed earlier - the general public has no way of knowing.  But we know! - so we can avoid them like the plague.

If only there was a way to test leakage performance reliably, that would make a huge difference...

[Alex Eisenhut]

My container with all my cheap digital scales has the AAA cells stored in it. Maybe not my greatest move, but at least they were out of the scales.

Here we see four year old Duracells vs. dollar store Panasonics.

[bdunham7]

Is it 2025 yet?  This is in a $5K+ LCR meter.  Thanks Duracell!

[SilverSolder]

Maybe Duracell simply uses a different calendar from the rest of us -  so 5 years in their world is like, 5 months in ours? 

[SeanB]

Is it 2025 yet?  This is in a $5K+ LCR meter.  Thanks Duracell!
(Attachment Link)

I guess I had the same batch as well, as they did the same. Also 2025, and a pair in my multimeter started to leak as well, so lucky for me I got there in time, and just had to do the acetic acid wash, then the alcohol wash and leave to dry. Going to use the ultra cheap cells from the China shop, those likely will not leak, seeing as they have so little active material in them.

[helius]

Corrosion at the + terminal is especially weird, since that terminal extends all the way around the case. The seal is at the - end which is where liquid usually leaks from. It would have to leak under the wrap from the - to the + side.

Peeling off the wrap on a Duracell reveals that the outer seal/isolator is made from kraft paper. That must be great for reducing production costs; other brands have rubber or vinyl.

[bdunham7]

Corrosion at the + terminal is especially weird, since that terminal extends all the way around the case. The seal is at the - end which is where liquid usually leaks from. It would have to leak under the wrap from the - to the + side.

You're right--the leakage appears to be from the negative of the adjoining cell.  Fortunately this was in the middle of the pack since the battery holder is a relatively obscure 3-cell internal tube-style holder with a push/turn cap on the outside of the case.  The holder isn't sealed and if the electrolyte had dripped out onto the main circuit board, there'd be trouble.  I wonder if in that case Duracell would have paid for IET to fix it. 

[mcinque]

Never had a Varta brand leak.

They leak too, I found two of them last week, they were in a remote with lcd. One was fine, the other leaked on the negative side.
All brand leaks, maybe duracell more, but every alkaline has this issue.

[Refrigerator]

Never had a Varta brand leak.

They leak too, I found two of them last week, they were in a remote with lcd. One was fine, the other leaked on the negative side.
All brand leaks, maybe duracell more, but every alkaline has this issue.

I would disagree. You are correct that they may all leak but duracells are so much more prone to leakage.

[SilverSolder]

It's funny that the cheap dollar store batteries seem less prone to leakage.  Maybe no active ingredients inside?

[james_s]

It's funny that the cheap dollar store batteries seem less prone to leakage.  Maybe no active ingredients inside?

They probably do have less active ingredients inside, the logic works.

[coppercone2]

part of something everyone should do is test the quiescent current draw of your battery powered expensive tools, particularly ones off ebay, because the soft switch can be fucked up. A good soft switch should be around 5uA draw, slightly more with a RTC.

Any alkaline battery will get messed up if the quiescent draw is too high and you deep discharge it (and maybe even nimh too). Playing battery bingo will not save your expensive stuff if it has a defect in the soft start transistor. And some stuff is not engineered properly also.

Doing this simple test with a microamp meter can save you thousands if you like portable equipment. Once you get into the C/D batteries, its less important, but with 9V, AA, AAA.. its critical. Scopemeter on 4 C's is probobly OK, but fluke 289 or expensive LCR meter on AA's is gonna trash pretty much anything if its leaking. We are at greater risk because if ebay purchases.

The way to do it is to take a piece of paper and glue two conductors to it and stick it in the battery cavity between the battery and a contact and hook it up to a microamp compatible meter and test the draw when its off. Now microamps are easy to measure. Just make sure the meter turns on with the current meter in the circuit, because its easy to have it not connected.

Also, mechanical switches could be contaminated from previous battery leaks and present a leakage. Don't trust it because it has a mechanical switch.

And keep in mind how bad soft switches were, some people never learned, i.e. printers stealing energy. Imagine those engineers were tasked with making a soft switch for a multimeter.

And, you can also have a low impedance fault while the meter is turned on, which can easily hammer the battery by drawing 200mA to heat a transistor, whereas normally it should draw 20mA, but still be functional. Deadly to intermittent use 9V batteries, which are common on multimeters. Perfectly fine when you draw the expected 10mA, but when you turn it on, it ends up drawing half an amp unknown to you, it will cause the battery to explode after a few cycles.

But, since current is not measured, and you have it hooked up to some weird 9V meter (i.e. DE-5000) that you power on once a season, you end up killing the batteries WHILE THE METER IS ON and it looks like the battery died because 'it sucks', because you drew a heavy load from a 9V for 30 minutes a month because of a undetectable internal fault (particularly with heavily insulated rubber coated meters where the heat will take forever to escape and will be unnoticeable because you will be long done with the measurement and put the meter into an insulated pouch when you are done measuring the odd inductor). Deciding to whack in 18650's to power a 10mA load is NOT the correct engineering solution, you are potentially hiding a problem!! It's similar to a bad AC repair job, where you do not find the leak or purge the system from moisture or follow proper procedures, if you ever worked on a car air conditioner.

Restoring leaked equipment is a difficult process, you need a ultrasonic to do a good job IMO, + I recommend dremel rotary brush tools, vinegar, Distilled water wash, etc. And you typically need to replate contacts. There is a good chance if you did a 'scrub the contact with a screw driver' repair job on a leaked battery that there is a impedance shift in the unit because of corrosive mist, vapors, etc. And you  can have a humidity and temperature dependent leakage problem once the circuit is soiled. You can't trust your eyes to do this repair, it needs to be measured for leakage. Thankfully its simple once you understand the procedure.

I don't like how people want to shift the industry to change battery chemistry and capacity and force changes to accommodate for broken equipment and poor quiescent current and unnecessarily high current draw designs. Wrong tool for the wrong job and being and idiot IMO, in the end you are accommodating for bad efficiency. Do we need the same problem as MS-WORD in the micropower electronics world? Where you need a 2GHz processor to run a word processor program?? It's not M$ windows! Think high efficiency ASM code, not high level inefficient crap thats poorly coded. Lazy and dumb engineers will use higher capacity insensitive batteries and rechargeable batteries to cover their tracks. Eventually you will need a nuclear reactor and a liquid cooling system to run a 3.5 digit meter.

I would like to see people measure the draw of the devices that are making everyone start to hate primary cells. I don't want a pouch cell soldered into my DMM. I want to be able to go to the store and buy a pack of batteries in 5 minutes if the need arises and forget about it. The art of electronics 3rd edition has a chapter on soft start switches everyone needs to read.

Fluke 187 - 9V battery. Fluke 289 - 6AA cells. WTF. I am guessing at this rate the future fluke 387 will have a 30Wh LIPO in there.

Also, try setting a primary lithium on fire some time, cut it open and spit in it. It burns like a road flare. I don't like this. It is not necessary to put that in a fucking wall clock.

[Red Squirrel]

There is something hilarious about seeing them do this right inside the original packaging which advertises a big 10 year guarantee.     

It really is an oddball thing though as it's so sporadic.  Like I've had some cells do it in a device (check your Wii remotes if you don't play very often!) so I always attributed it to a very small discharge that ends up killing the cell completely dead.  But seeing it happen right in the package proves that it can happen even with zero discharge.

I imagine there are lot of factors at play, both QC and environmental.  Perhaps lot of cells just end up not having the same quality as the other, then couple that with some environmental factors and it decides to happen. 

I also found some super old nicad cells in a box the other day, at least 20  years old, and a few of them started to crystalize/leak too.  I would be curious to test the ones that look ok.  I put those cells through a lot of abuse as a kid.  Short circuits etc.   

[coppercone2]

like I said, measure the quiescent current draw. Those are cheap plastic toys that might get zapped alot, and they rely on high impedance transistors to act as a switch, if you are playing with them in a carpeted room, you might be zapping the battery contact when you switch batteries, causing the pass transistor to sustain damage.

[mcinque]

part of something everyone should do is test the quiescent current draw of your battery powered expensive tools, particularly ones off ebay, because the soft switch can be fucked up. A good soft switch should be around 5uA draw, slightly more with a RTC.

^THIS

totally agree, all the leaks I had were from devices with soft switch of with some uA draw.
with more than a battery in the battery compartment and more than few uA current draw, one battery is gonna deplete always more than another, and then polarity inversion begins or the other batteries starts to charge it: this leads to internal pression rise and often (but not always) subsequent leaks. It may depends by the amount of the residual charge of the other batteries.

this is the "real" risk in my opinion; different thing it's a battery that leaks just in the original packaging after some months, it's just a time bomb

maybe there was some changes in the security pressure relief valve/system: or the cells in the '90s were insecure with no pressure relief system and if accidentally charged could really kill someone (but no leaks!), or they changed something in them forced by security (or envionmental, like RoHS) requirements, ruining the "acceptable" seal that existed in the '90s making them too prone to leaking...

[madires]

I can't confirm the "quiescent current" hypothesis. Maybe it increases the possibility of leaking, but I've seen several leaking batteries also in devices with nice old fashioned switches. And the switches were fine.

[mcinque]

but I've seen several leaking batteries also in devices with nice old fashioned switches.

How old were those batteries laying in the battery compartments?

Seems a "discharge problem" or "unused for too long" issue.

I am convinced that there are only 2 possibilities for battery leaking:

1. internal pressure rising spontaneously in unused batteries due to natural chemical reaction (like already said by another forum member), with subsequent sealing/security valve failing
2. quiescent current that deplete one battery that starts being charged from the others, with subsequent internal pressure rise and the same conseguences as point 1

What do you think about this?

[madires]

Two or three years. Another observation is that AA and AAA are more prone to leaking than 9V PP3, and C and D cell are least effected.

[SilverSolder]

The "leaking soft switch" is an additional risk with alkalines, but it isn't the only way they fail and leak.

We have several examples in this thread of batteries leaking in their original packaging, long before the shelf life date.  Then there are all the examples of leaky cells in old fashioned flash lights and other products that have mechanical switches.

Basically, there's no way round the fact that these batteries are just not very good.

I use Eneloop NiMH or Duracell Rechargeable (which are re-badged Eneloops, apparently), and for smoke detectors, handheld DMMs and other tools etc. I just use lithium cells - job done! 

And yes, if I had a wall clock, it would also get a lithium cell.  It doesn't really matter how cheap a device is:  I bought it for a reason, and I want it to work reliably for a long time!

[mcinque]

Two or three years.

hmm, seems the seal failed to contain internal pressure. Like it was said in this post, battery it's chemistry and chemical reactions take place inside them even when they're not used, with possible internal pressure rise.

not using them = internal pressure rise due to chemical reactions going on > sealing fail > leak
using them too much (too much current drain) = makes them hot > internal pressure rise > sealing fail > leak
too hot environment = internal pressure rise > sealing fail > leak
too cold = poor performance
old battery = aging of the seal > failing to contain internal pressure > leak

in every case is a fail for an alcaline.

Another observation is that AA and AAA are more prone to leaking than 9V PP3

I thought that there may be a energy density reason behind this but this rough calculations says not (correct me if I'm wrong).

AAA = 1.150mAh in 3.9ml = 295mAh/ml
AA = 2.250/2.500mAh in 8.3ml = 271mAh/ml
C = 7.800mAh in 26.5ml = 294mAh/ml
D = 17.000mAh in 55.8ml = 304mAh/ml

9V battery has very few mAh and it's often double sealed (6AAA inside), in my opinion too low energy density inside and the double seal helps a lot.

Maybe in C and D the sealing glue has much more surface due to bigger size, and the pressure is distribuited onto a higher surface and it's better contained?

Or maybe AAA and AA are simply the most used type and our perception is that they leaks more.

[mcinque]

I use Eneloop NiMH or Duracell Rechargeable (which are re-badged Eneloops, apparently), and for smoke detectors, handheld DMMs and other tools etc. I just use lithium cells - job done! 
And yes, if I had a wall clock, it would also get a lithium cell.  It doesn't really matter how cheap a device is:  I bought it for a reason, and I want it to work reliably for a long time!

Same here.
A conspiracy theorist would say that alcaline battery leaks are intentional to make us spend more on lithium 

[james_s]

And yes, if I had a wall clock, it would also get a lithium cell.  It doesn't really matter how cheap a device is:  I bought it for a reason, and I want it to work reliably for a long time!

I tried a lithium battery in my wall clock once and it didn't work right. I don't actually recall what problem it had but the mechanism didn't like the higher voltage. I use a NiMH cell now and recharge it annually.