TRON electronic game and *old* batteries...

From: Joe <rigdonj_at_cfl.rr.com>
Date: Tue Nov 11 07:46:24 2003

At 03:39 PM 11/10/03 -0500, you wrote:
>
>
>Next time I visit my parents I will be pulling my TRON electronic game out
>of storage... It looks like a mini arcade machine and had three or four
>games.
>
>Now the question: What causes batteries to start leaking?

  It depends on what kind of batteries you're talking about. On carbon-zinc
and alkaline batteries it's caused by the electrolyte eating through the
metal shell. In NiCads it can be caused by the growth of crystals of the
metal electrodes. They can pierce the seals. Also NiCads have a pressure
relief value that can fail and allow the electrolyte to leak out. Also the
electrodes frequently short and cause excessive heat to be gernerated and
that causes pressure in the cell, Then the pressure relief value vents, as
it's designed to do, and allows pressure and electrolyte to leak out.
That's why I don't try to "zap" shorted NiCads. You can usually burn the
shorts out of them and get some more life out of them but they will almost
certainly leak and I consider the equipment that they're in more important
than the costs of replacement battery cells.

   Joe

I am worried
>that there may have (now) 15 year old batteries in it. :(
>
>Cheers,
>
>Bryan
>
Received on Tue Nov 11 2003 - 07:46:24 GMT

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.3.0 : Fri Oct 10 2014 - 23:36:18 BST