WARNING - Exploding Lidl Batteries.

IvanOpinion

As others have already said it almost certainly caused by usig a high speed charger. I have seen this before and now I use a charger that takes about 24 hours to recharge - you just need twice as many batteries but at £2 a pop (for four) who cares.

Ivan

Wig

It could be either batts or charger, but I reccomend using a slow steady charger 12hours, rather than a one hour charger.

I dunno but I suspect the specs on the battery packaging does not mean they cannot be charged at a higher or lower rate. You just need to be sure that if you charge at a higher or lower rate you are aware of the charge current and what the charge time will be for that given current, for automatic chargers you are assuming it will always be working properly and knowing what battery aa/aaa it is charging etc.

Which is why it is better to use a longer time charger, and one with fixed charging currents which you manually switch off.

I suggest you show the lot to someone, trading standards is a good place to start. But I suspect it is the charger. You did have them in the right way round?

chrisw

Well I plucked up the courage to plug the charger back in with some different batteries and it still seems to be working ok.
I dug the rest of the charged batteries out of the bin and they seem to be well charged (!).
Thanks for everybody's advice, I suspect it may be a combination of a duff battery and too hefty a charger. I think I'll keep the batteries and charge them s-l-o-w-l-y in future.

khizman

this may sound extremely american but sue them!!
seriously!

wobbley

khizman wrote:

this may sound extremely american but sue them!!
seriously!

Nah, the American way is to bomb, then sue them!
As regards the OP this is really worrying. I've always 'trickle' charged my NiMh AA's and AAA's but have been on the lookout for a fast charger. I'm aware that this will probably reduce the life of the batteries but the convenience would outweigh this. However, I'm not so sure now.
I'm sure Lidl will blame the charger, but in my opinion any batteries on general sale should be compatible with any charger. I, and I'm sure all the other posters on here would love to know the outcome of just what was the cause of the explosion. The black paste you describe sure does sound like the inside of a 'non' rechargable but I've never dismantled a rechargable so I wouldn't know the difference if any.

littld

RightRevBod wrote:

BTW: You are not supposed to throw NiMH batteries in the bin. They should have special disposal due to the nature of the chemicals involved.

Does anyone know where NiCads and NiMH batteries can be safely disposed of? I have had some for years and they've stopped working so I want to throw them away.

Sooler

littld wrote:

Does anyone know where NiCads and NiMH batteries can be safely disposed of? I have had some for years and they've stopped working so I want to throw them away.

Info here http://www.rebat.com/

RightRevBod

littld wrote:

Does anyone know where NiCads and NiMH batteries can be safely disposed of? I have had some for years and they've stopped working so I want to throw them away.

Our local "recycling centre" as they seem to call the municiple tip these days, has battery disposal facilities. I do not know what they do with them.