Comment on Single-use e-cigarettes contain batteries that last hundreds of cycles despite being discarded
kent_eh@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
A few of us electronics hobbyists have been collecting them (when found discarded on the street) to harvest the battery for re-use in other projects.
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Yes they’re nasty, but I pick them up with a dog poo bag and clean them before cracking them open to get the battery.
I guess that’s the silver lining, free batteries for anyone willing to deal with a dirty object.
They’re also a prime starting supply for lithium battery recycling plants so they can get things figured out before they have to deal with car packs at volume.
You can also use them as mini fog machines if you hook up a small pump. I build dioramas and have been experimenting with them.
I have a small collection from friends that use the disposables. What do you use them for? I had the idea to make keychain flash lights or a battery conversion of some kind.
At the moment I have several strings of LED Christmas lights on various houseplants that are powered by salvaged batteries.
Also a dollar store magnetic “spotlight” that I modified and have mounted to the chest freezer in the basement so I can see what’s in there.
For anyone wanting to learn more there’s a bigclive video covering the extraction process.
daed@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I was just thinking about this the other day. Any ideas for projects to use them with?
redcalcium@lemmy.institute 6 months ago
Turn them into a power bank, among other things.
Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
I am dying… 🤣
Also they all have to be 0.1 v from each other otherwise the “whole thing goes south” sounds scary and is now kind of making me rethink my plan of putting up collection boxes outside of high schools and building a battery for my house out of them.
redcalcium@lemmy.institute 6 months ago
Once it’s balanced and wired it’s impossible to be imbalanced again though. The risk is only during initial assembly and you accidentally includes an empty cells among fully charged cells.
adrian783@lemmy.world 6 months ago
… home made ecig?