| General > General Technical Chat |
| Is Big Clive right about lithium battery charging? |
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| Peabody:
He says it's ok NOT to terminate charging, that it won't hurt the battery if the charger continues to apply 4.2V to a fully-charged battery. That goes against everything I've learned about lithium batteries. Also, if he's right, why do all lithium chargers I've ever seen include a termination feature? If continuing to trickle charge is ok, why bother to terminate? On the other hand, he has almost 1 million subscribers, and I don't. |
| IanB:
--- Quote from: Peabody on December 17, 2022, 02:56:03 am ---He says it's ok NOT to terminate charging, that it won't hurt the battery if the charger continues to apply 4.2V to a fully-charged battery. That goes against everything I've learned about lithium batteries. Also, if he's right, why do all lithium chargers I've ever seen include a termination feature? If continuing to trickle charge is ok, why bother to terminate? On the other hand, he has almost 1 million subscribers, and I don't. --- End quote --- He doesn't say that, though. He says the charger "appears to keep charging, but it's not doing that really". He says at 7 minutes in that the module charges the battery up and it does terminate. He goes on to say that the load then discharges the battery a bit, until the voltage drops, and then the charger switches back on, charges it up again, and terminates again. So this is an endless cycle of charge/discharge/charge again. The only variable in this scenario is how long the charger should wait before reactivating. I have a lithium charger that refuses to start charging even with a substantially depleted battery. It is really annoying. I have to drain the battery a lot before the charger will recharge it. |
| Peabody:
That's when the load is less than the termination current. You need to go back to 6:00 when the load exceeds the termination current. |
| amyk:
It won't be good for battery life to keep cells at full charge, but it won't be hazardous either. Once the cell reaches 4.2V, the charger won't supply any more current so it stops charging. The problem is with pushing the voltage past 4.2V, which won't happen since the charger is a limited current + limited voltage source. |
| IanB:
--- Quote from: Peabody on December 17, 2022, 04:27:09 am ---That's when the load is less than the termination current. You need to go back to 6:00 when the load exceeds the termination current. --- End quote --- That's OK too. When the load exceeds the termination current the battery will reach a steady state where the battery voltage is constant and therefore the battery current is zero. If the battery current is zero it is not being charged, so that is also fine. Charging is effectively "terminated", even if the termination light does not illuminate. |
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