Reconditioning Nicad Batteries

Introduction:
Nickel-Cadmium (NiCd) is well known in the industry rechargeable batteries, used in electrical equipment such as Notebook, cordless phones, etc.

It is also known that a very famous effect is "memory effect", which makes your battery run out of battery quickly when it is older than the new battery. We will delve into how NiCd batteries work and why "memory effects" occur and how to prevent them.

As its name suggests, Nicd batteries are made of two main chemicals, nickel, in the form of Nickelic Hydroxide and Cadmium. The third ingredient as the commonly used electrolyte is Potassium Hydroxide (KOH). Cadmium is the biggest villain, first it is the component behind the "memory effect" and the second is heavy metal and very toxic.

That's why new batteries that are rechargeable can not use Cadmium (eg Nickel-Metal Hydride [NiMH], Lithium-Ion [Li-ion] and Lithium-Ion Polymer [Li-Pol]. ). Laptops, extended phones, Cell Phone ... today no longer use NiCd.

So what is the "memory effect"?

"Memory effect" is when your battery thinks it is fully loaded but in fact it is not. It loaded 70% but thought it was 100% loaded. In that case the load circuit will stop working and at this time your battery will be 70% and the operating time will be shorter. That is reality, but there are ways to prevent "memory effect" from happening.

Battery Reconditioning: Bringing Dead Batteries Back To Life Is Simple!

Why does a "memory effect" occur and how to prevent it?

The "memory effect" occurs as the formation of Cadmium crystals inside the battery. These crystals are difficult to decay and are one of the causes for "memory effects". Therefore a trick to avoid "memory effect" is to avoid this crystal decay within the battery.

It is common for us to charge the battery only when the battery inside the electric device has completely discharged without charging the battery when it still has a part left. Also high temperatures will help the crystals form.

So there will be another problem: NiCd cannot discharge all electricity or they will be damaged. The discharge of electricity here is referred to as a voltage below 1V for a small battery (in NiCd batteries normally formed by small battery groups with a battery voltage of 1.2V, normally NiCd batteries have a voltage of 3.6V. That means there are 3 small batteries in it.

- See photo (Eight NiCd batteries in a battery pack):

Another tip recommended by many people to solve the "memory effect" is to discharge battery power by short-circuiting them (or by any method to accelerate them all), doing so sometimes causes more damage. It is good for Acy, even many people have claimed that they have restored NiCd batteries and destroyed the "memory effect" in it.
The best way to discharge all the electricity in NiCd batteries and prevent "memory effect" is to use up until our device says "Batteries are low".
Some others claim to have restored NiCd batteries with shock therapy, which means providing fast and large load current, which we'll talk about later.
Tracking the NiCd battery load is very difficult, for example, the NiCd battery output voltage is always 1.2 V, even if all the electricity in the battery is fired. Therefore, even if the battery is only 30% in the load circuit, the output is sufficient to be 1.2V.
To make it easier to understand the following: Normally the batteries are not loaded, the output voltage is 1.5V and the output voltage is down to 0.75V, it starts to be reloaded, so it is easy to monitor the loading status by measuring output voltage during charging.
So when the NiCd battery is not fully charged, and it is impossible to determine if it is full or not, the oil output voltage is 1.2V.
NiCd battery is ready to discharge any time when the output voltage is 1V. The problem, as I said before, that if the battery runs out of power, it will be damaged, so the exact time to recharge batteries is when the phone extends the battery, which requires the battery to continue charging.
In addition, NiCd batteries have a time called a recharge cycle of 500 times, after which the "memory effect" appears.
A major problem with NiCd batteries is that they lose about 1% of their daily power when not in use. This means they lose 30% of their electricity in a month if not used and if not using 3 months, the NiCd battery will be destroyed.
Learn more: Don't Throw Out Your Batteries - Restore Them

Summary of recondition NICAD batteries process:

• To avoid "memory effects" we need to use batteries until the electrical device warns to load.
• NiCd batteries accept a full charge cycle of 500 times.
• NiCd batteries cannot discharge all the electricity (less than 1V for a small battery) because that will damage batteries.
• Do not short-circuit the NiCd Battery to discharge the electricity.
• Loading electric shock into batteries with a large current is also not recommended, because it does not solve the "memory effect" problem.
• When not using NiCd batteries, it will lose power 15 / day. After about 3.5 months, batteries will completely discharge electricity and damage batteries.
• Do not leave NiCd batteries near high temperatures.
• Non-Cadmium batteries will not be "memory effect"

You can find recondition methods for many types of batteries here:

• How To Recondition A Lead Acid Battery
• Renovate A Lead Acid Battery - Sulfation is the Enemy of Lead-Acid Type Batteries

What reconditioning a battery will do is remove a lot of these deposits so it lets the battery hold a charge again. The process is easy and can be done at home with inexpensive tools you can buy locally. Help out your family and friends by reconditioning their batteries also and save them some money.

Battery Reconditioning: Bringing Dead Batteries Back To Life Is Simple!