lithium-ion batteries overcharging

Lithium-ion Battery Fires 2 – Overcharging

Lithium-ion batteries are everywhere as shown by the last iteration of Lithium-ion battery fires. But what makes them so dangerous and what causes them to start fires? Most lithium-ion batteries are safe and will never start a fire with safe and sensible usage, but sometimes they are used with not enough care for what a danger they could be. When the batteries are consistently left overcharging, the risk starts to rise.

Overcharging

One of the causes of lithium-ion battery fires is when people are overcharging the batteries. This is when the battery is constantly being charged all the time for extensive periods of time. The biggest culprit for this is people such as phone users who leave their phone charging overnight, every night so eventually overtime the battery is worn and worn until just one time it could explode and burst into flames. This is also a growing problem with e-bikes and e-scooters as they are another common item that is left to charge for extended periods of time.

How to stay safe

Lithium-ion batteries’ optimal window of charge is 30-70% and maybe 20-80% for some other products. If a battery is kept in this window at all times, the wear on the battery will stay minimal for a long time, therefore leading to longer lives of batteries and less chance of starting a fire.

Check out our last iteration of Lithium-ion battery firesย here.

Lithium-ion batteries overcharging is one of the greatest risks.

lithium-ion battery

Lithium-ion Battery Fires 1

The first Lithium-ion battery was invented in 1982, and are different from the standard lithium battery. Lithium batteries are the standard non-rechargeable batteries and are very safe however, lithium-ion batteries are rechargeable and this leads to their problems. As they are rechargeable they store lots of energy relative to their size. And this is another of their problems, as they are so small, they are very accessible and useful for all different rechargeable products of all different shapes and sizes.

Development of the Lithium-ion Battery

As the technology has developed the lithium-ion battery has been able to hold more and more energy relative to their size, and this is what has made them more dangerous over the last few years. In the modern household, they can be seen everywhere from our phones, our watches, our earphones and even more recently popular e-bikes and e-scooters which have shown to be the most dangerous in the latest statistics.

Check out our next iteration of Lithium-ion battery fires here. Where we touch upon the dangers of overcharging lithium-ion batteries and what can YOU DO to help stay safe.

To learn more about extinguishing lithium-ion battery fires click here to look into AVD extinguishers.