General > General Technical Chat
Rechargeable Alkalines?
Connecteur:
When I was a child, I discovered that regular store-bought alkaline batteries could be recharged, and reused multiple times. I recall having a laptop back in the 90s which had a rechargeable battery pack that was alkaline not lithium. It lasted well over 10 years, much longer than any lithium battery pack.
Then, I guess it was in the 80s, I saw a TV commercial for an alkaline battery recharger. The inventor said he was a college professor who had invented a charger, so you could "save a lot of money by not buying new batteries all the time." Well, a few months later, I don't recall, but I think it was less than a year, when another company took it's place. I think it was called, "Pure Energy." The rechargeable alkaline batteries now cost several times as much as the regular store-bought kind, and the chemistry had changed in the store-bought kind, making them no longer rechargeable.
I'm going to sound a bit paranoid here, but it looks like industry conspired to get rid of a potentially positive contribution to the public good, which was sacrificed in the name of greed and profit.
mikerj:
You can recharge alkaline cells to some extent, with some caveats. You can not let them discharge fully, the smaller the discharge before charging the better. You can only charge them at a low rate and the capacity drops pretty quickly with repeated charging cycles. Also there is the ever present risk of leakage.
Connecteur:
--- Quote from: mikerj on December 27, 2024, 08:50:00 pm ---You can recharge alkaline cells to some extent, with some caveats. You can not let them discharge fully, the smaller the discharge before charging the better. You can only charge them at a low rate and the capacity drops pretty quickly with repeated charging cycles. Also there is the ever present risk of leakage.
--- End quote ---
Yeah, no, I found it a waste of time doing that.
tom66:
I don't think laptops ever used rechargeable alkalines.
Where they did exist they were a fairly novelty product. I think the one that I remember using was only rated to around 10 recharge cycles. The novelty was they weren't much more expensive than a conventional alkaline and they had 1.5V output.
Most likely you had an early laptop with a NiMH battery, those definitely existed (and some even had lead acid batteries, like the Apple PowerBook 100).
ejeffrey:
You could always recharge alkalines to some extent with the right charger, but only a few times. And the risk of leaks was a real problem.
Purpose made rechargable alkalines were designed to recharge more, often claimed up to low 100s of cycles. They had a nice niche for a few years in the 90s and early 2000s before low self discharge NiMH batteries became widely available and inexpensive. But they were only usable in low drain or occasional use applications because of their low cycle life.
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