Lithium from Batteries

Today I managed to extract lithium from energizer batteries Theres quite alot of Li in there. It is not as scary as I thought it would be. I managed to cut open the battery AND remove enough of the case to pull out the coil without shortcircuiting enough it to cause it to burst into flames. The net has no real documentation of dismembering Li batteries (Theodore Gray has one, but its kinda confusing), so I'll post one here

Lemme get some lunch first though

[Edit]: Procedure is here

Anyone who's not foolish like me, will wear a pair of fireproof gloves. I did it barehanded (cause I didnt have fireproof gloves), but I dont think thats something to be proud of
Then get pair of diagonal cutters, and large pair of heavy duty pliers that can firmly grasp the battery, a small pair of long nose pliers, and the optional stuff includes: a hack saw, oil, lotsa dish washing soap (a must if you're using the oil )

DO THIS OUTSIDE IN A FIREPROOF PLACE!!

I dont have any pics of the procedure cause I had to work kinda fast. Sorry guys

First, peel off the wrapper of the battery. You'll notice theres a "neck" (that indented part) near the top of the battery and that the negative terminal IS the ENTIRE CAN (see pic below).


If ANY part of the can touches the positive terminal, you'll see a tiny but bright spark indicating a short circuit. Because of this, we can't open the battery like the conventional carbon batteries where you open and peel from the top. Instead, use the diagonal cutters to cut the top off at the neck while holding the battery with the large pliers (like decapitating the thing ). Do this as quickly as you can because you may be short circuiting the battery. If it continues to short, it'll heat up really badly in a few seconds and may catch fire. Cutting off the top will remove all the stuff in the positive terminal and make life a bit easier. If its too slippery to cut, use the hack saw make a nice rough spot to start cutting.

Once the top's gone, you'll see a plastic ring on top of the inner coil (it's held in place by the remnants of the neck). Cut and then peel away the can using the long nose pliers, starting at the severed neck. Peel off bits until you can easily pull out the coil. Do this carefully and try not to dement the coil or touch the top of the coil, as that will shortcircuit the battery because the coil contains the anode and the cathode.

Unwrap the outter most layer of plastic (its thin and has lines on it). If you want to keep the Li, grab onto a tad of the next piece of plastic (its thicker than the previous one), then dunk the coil into oil and unroll the coil under there using chopsticks or something (its *not* an easy task ). Most of the Li will be already dark brown, but some of it that was wound deep in the coil will still be metallic. Some of the dark brown stuff in the coil is very thin and sticks to the plastic. It sinks in the oil and is not Li (thats the iron sulfide and it turns dark green in water). The Li is the thick sheet that floats in the oil. Some other crap in the coil includes a sheet of aluminum foil.

[Edit 2]: Posted some pics


Thats the top severed at the neck and the remains of the can after my peeling spree.


The unrolled coil under canola oil. Still some shiny Li floating there.


Lotsa shiny Li


Heres the Li foil reacting with water

Cleaning up was NOT fun. I had oil everywhere and enough dishwashing foam in my yard to drown in it

[Edit3]: I tried to make the procedure a bit more understandable.

[Edited on 7-7-2004 by Saerynide]

No solvent is needed to extract Li, I just recantly aqquired 5 large Li batteries, the best way I have found of gutting them is to use make a downwards slit for about a couple of cm from the top of the battery, and using long-nosed pliars to curl round the casing and peel it off like the ring-pull on one of those old style corned beef cans.

The problem I have, is not getting the Li out of the battery, but finding something to store it in that it doesn't float to the top
of it

I dont think there is any thing we can use that it wont float on. It has a density of only 0.54ish

I am thinking of glueing a long glass rod to the lid of a jar, with a section of a sieve or somesuch mesh spread out over it, i think that would do a good job of keeping the lithium down without displacing too much motor oil.

Great pics Saerynide
Now all we need to do, is come up with a good way to melt it into blocks

Have you by any chance heard of calcium batteries? apparently they have a calcium metal alloy as one of the electrodes, I think maybe a thread on battery chemistry would be a good idea, as there are just so many goodies to be had from batteries


[Edited on 7-7-2004 by Reverend Necroticus Rex]

[Edited on 7-7-2004 by Reverend Necroticus Rex]

Mwhehehee.. Battery abuse is always fun (not to mention scary)

Great idea about the lithium holding lid :d I'll do that with my next left over battery

About melting the Li, Im not sure if thats a good idea. Read this other page of Theodore Gray's. Li tends to explode when melted in ceramic crucibles... Maybe glass will be safe?

And where can we get these calcium batteries?

Don't try melting lithium in glass, I have never actually done it, but from what I have heard, molten lithium has a nasty tendency to melt glass, and produce a big hot fireball in the process

As for the calcium batteries, I found one scavenging on my local waste dump for a power source for my Na experiments
I never opened it up, but maybe somehow the Ca could be extracted from its alloy, as to how, I have no idea though.

If it's spent, I doubt there'd be any Ca left in it

I dont think any of us should try melting Li

And is it just me, or does Li smell really good?? Maybe its reacting with the oil...

Hmmm... Im in such a good mood today

The dump near where I live has huge piles of quite well charged car and truck batteries, that's what I rely on for electrolysis, since I destroyed my father's car battery charger

I wouldnt be too surprised if there was still a fair amount of Ca alloy to be had in those batteries

Interesting....Aparently the plates are composed of a Pb/Ca alloy, and the positive grids are at least partially made of silver


DAMN!
It looks like there is about 1% or so tops Ca in those batteries, a couple of percent Ag, and about 6% antimony.
Looks like a non starter, but I wonder if a sort of fine spongy lead couldn't be produced by dissolving out the Ca with acid, leaving a sort of fine honeycomb-sponge structure.

[Edited on 7-7-2004 by Reverend Necroticus Rex]

[Edited on 7-7-2004 by Reverend Necroticus Rex]

I was wondering when you were going to do this, I almost U2U'ed you. I also have done this but I opened it on the wrong side not wanting any chance of shorting, primarily because my needlenose pliers have one tip broken and I don't have many tools to handle it. When I did this, I had a plastic car wax top mostly filled with clear mineral oil (intended as a laxative, with a bit of vitamin e, too) and I immersed the battery in it while working. If I needed to see it up close, I would use a dropper to keep it soaked in oil, and of course I was wearing goggles. I learned soon enough that I couldn't use leather gloves for protection against heat, and besides I would have no idea how hot it was until a spark or flame formed.

I chose to use my mom's latex gloves (she's a nurse so she has boxes upon boxes of them ) but after a while they'd soak up some oil and their pores would become visible. I was SOOO freaked out while doing this, not wanting to initiate any undersired reactions. Everytime I did, by shorting or pressing the Li against the black stuff (I thought it was MnO₂ but not sure), I would usually see a red spark and take the battery outside in a glass container full of oil as far from buildings as possible and quit for the night.

I began at the bottom cutting sort of diagonally with an okay pocket knife, dulling it by the time I finished. Next, I cut another slit so that I could grip the point with pliers and pull it to expose some of the innards. I kept pulling away the casing until I had no good place to pull. Too bad it was only partly opened. I got the small Li strip out, but the much larger one was impossible without a small set of scissors to cut the plastic layers so I could get to some Li each time. To say the least it was quite time consuming and I only got a small fraction out in a test tube. My mineral oil allows Li to sink if there are absolutely no bubbles attached, which takes a while. Currently there are crystals forming on the edges as sometimes the top would pop off due to hydrogen (I tried to add a droplet of water to test once and it seems to have sort of dissolved) and when it comes off the 60%+ humidity can get in.

The battery still remains in mineral oil and I'm considering making lithium isopropoxide with some hopefully anhydrous isopropanol just to get rid of it, and to be able to have an alkali alkoxide. I still need to make sure that reaction won't be too violent and won't catch anything on fire. I have 7 more batteries to take apart "the right way", and the entire pack was bought for $20. The reason I took the first battery apart wrong was because my internet connection wasn't very stable and I proceeded to do it anyway after weeks of waiting to see <a href="http://www.rhodium.ws/chemistry/lithium.batteries.html" target="_blank">this page</a> to check the methods.

I had my twin brother always watch me in case I needed something or something really bad happened. I need to get better tools, but the ones I can find at local stores are much too expensive. Perhaps I'll ask my mom or sister to buy me a couple of items. One time my sister came in while I was doing it, and she was mostly fine with it. My older brother however came in later and I felt that I had to show him the reactivity of it so he wouldn't go poking around (like he tends to do) and really hurt himself. By the way, there is a <a href="http://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=1974" target="_blank">related thread</a>.

Oooohhh. Thanks for showing me the Rhodium page. That one always escaped my google searches.

I understand how freaked out you mustve been. I was terrified last time I tried it. As soon as my cutters touched it and I saw the first orange spark, I stuffed the battery into a glass jar and called it a day. That was two weeks ago I think. But yesterday, remembering a line from Theodore Gray's page: "Don't be put off by small fires", I just made myself do it

It was acutally safer for me to not use gloves. I didnt have any gloves that were fire proof or that I could rip off easily should they catch fire. I didnt use goggles either. Im so bad

And there's no wrong way to dismember it. Its interesting how 5 people all did it their own different way. Pick which ever way works for you But I dont recommend Theodore's way though, his battery kept on catching fire

And you're lucky you had someone with you. IMy brother freaked and stayed far away from me as poss... He almost ran away from me when I showed him the Li

About those crystals.... what *are* they? They remind me of how people describe AP. Are you sure they're not peroxides or anything dangerous like that?

As the lithium is in a thin foil, you could probably get away with burning strips of it in a chlorine atmosphere, what are you using the LiCL for?

Bugger, sorry, I misread your post as wanting to make LiCl

[Edited on 9-7-2004 by Reverend Necroticus Rex]

Reacting any alkali metal with water gives the hydroxide, they skid about on water and from Na up they usually burn, Li skids about and fizzles on water, Na does the same, but is a lot more likely to catch fire.

Na will explode if sufficient amount be present, K is VERY likely to explode,

I havent personally seen Rb and Cs hit water, but from what I have heard, explosion is a certainty and said explosion is extremely violent

Try some Fr on water, that would be violent. Too bad that there is like no Francium in the world

A chunk of francium reacting with water has been one on THE experiments I would most like to see, second only to maybe nitrogen tri-astatide

And I don't think "violent" would be sufficient to describe it......

[Edited on 9-7-2004 by Reverend Necroticus Rex]

Thats cause I only put about 5 drops of water on it. I didnt want to waste it all

Sorry if it sounded like I didnt care about anything. Maybe it was the effect of the Li (the Li+ ion messes with your mind). I found myself in a really-happy-for-no-reason-while-not-thinking-about-anything kind of mood for a few hours. You dont know how hard it was to type that first post sensibly

Saerynide, do you think the happy mood you got was because of the Lithium? How much would a person need to ingest to cause that? You were not touching the Li with your hand, were you?

This sounds like a lot of fun, got to try it, and I will find my OWN way to open the battery.

Good, other people have found Gray's site. It's great.

I didnt touch it, and I *definately* did not eat it It might've been from bits of airborne particles of carbonate or it slowly reacting with the oil and making something volatile? It also could've been from something in the battery and not the Li. There's something in there that smells really sweet and nice (if you take a whiff of the insides of the can, you'll know what i mean). But whatever it was, it wasnt just me

And I agree, I really dont think eating anything made from a battery is a good idea

Yeah it smelled like ammonia when I put some water on it. Made my brother run out of my room

I think I anyone would be really scared if they were holding lithium Whats the mask for though?

[Edited on 9-7-2004 by Saerynide]

Lithium

I just got some Li from 2 energizer e2 aa batteries.

Procedure- for the first battery, I cut a circle almost going through the battery outer wall, the circle was in the middle of the battery. Then I tried to cut all the way through the battery under mineral oil. That's not easy, don't try to replicate it unless you have something smaller and better than a hacksaw to cut with-very messy and slow. Then I used needlenosed pliers to pull off one side of the outer shell, then the other side. I dipped the rolled up insides into mineral oil and then stupidly thought that the iron sulfide was the lithium, and that the lithium was another roll of Al foil. I figured that while I was sawing open the battery, all of the lithium oxidized. After collecting all of the iron sulfide by scraping it off of the Al roll, and putting it in a bottle with mineral oil, getting rather aggrevated with my very poor quality lithium, I noticed the lithium roll. Ahh, that's what I was missing. This was rolled up and put in mineral oil.

I put the second battery in a vise, sawed a circle around it, cutting it in half. Several fires started, but they are easily put out by dripping mineral oil on the battery. Then I pulled out the roll and unrolled it. This time I just got the Lithium, rolled it up, and put it in the bottle. Good.

The smell during the whole operation was very, very, very bad. It was disgusting, revolting, asphixiating! Kind of like H2S, but worse somehow.

After doing this I feel sleepy and slightly incoherent.

Also, when I put Li in water I would say it smelled more like NaOH, probably because it is LiOH. I detected no ammonia smell.

At first, I thought the iron sulfide was the Li too! I was so disappointed to see that there was so little of it. After, I felt really stupid for failing to see that it sank in the oil and could not have been Li

Yeah, that iron sulfide smells SO bad. I kept on thinking it was like H2S also. Since I had the whole roll under oil, I didnt smell the iron sulfide too much. Mostly, it was that sweet smell I was smelling.

Was your lithium dark brown/black? It'll only make the ammonia smell in water if its covered in Li3N.

Hmmm, that's the second person to be affected by Li batteries

And why did the aluminum foil come at such a surprise? I mentioned it in the first post

Well I can't even remember if the Li had nitrides on it. The front was bright, but I never looked at the back.

The Al foil wasn't a surprise, the Li foil was. I didn't read the first posts very carefully.

Reply

Oh no, I wasn't wasting the Li I was making sure it *was* Li by by making sure it reacted with water

Edit: typo

[Edited on 2-8-2004 by Saerynide]

well, i was just saying that if you wanted to have some fun, you could have reacted it with a concentrated acid. -> much more vigorous reaction. actually, if you wanted to have a bit more fun you could have added some KCl or KNO3 to that mixture and replaced the K with Li yielding K metal. throw that in a beaker of conc acid and you'll definately blow up the beaker. it will ignite with a purple flame and go shooting around the surface in all random directions with much gas evolved. good stuff

indeed. that's why i didn't say to make an aqueous solution

No need to be mad. I wasnt being condescending. Sorry if it sounded that way (smilies really *are* indispensible...).

Now, before you get pissed at me again...

I wasnt expecting you to suggest something so insane as to liqueifying HCl, pouring on motor oil, then dunking metallic lithium into it and blowing up the room Therefore I assumed you meant aqueous solution

No hard feelings, k?

I was thinking, make a saturated solution of KCl in pyridine if pyridine will dissolve it, and adding Li(s) to precipitate potassium metal, and filtering in an inert atmosphere to protect the fine particles of potassium if it worked

no worries at all.

actually, the post above reminded me; NH3(l) reduces alkali metals to form -1 anions. it makes me wonder; if you added, say, NaCl to NH3(l), would you get Na(s)?

if so, i'm heavily considering distilling some NH3 to 100%, collecting the gas then pressuring it like crazy in a container filled with NaCl

Today I dissected my second Li battery. This time, when I had unrolled the whole coil, all the Li was still silver. I wanted to store the Li in a fresh container of mineral oil, so I quickly pulled it out and dunked in the new container. Unfortunately, there were air bubbles stuck to it and I didnt realise, so about 10 min later, when I looked at the Li again, it was brownish.

Right now, its still kinda streaming bubbles, and its almost 3 hours later How much air is trapped in this wad So much for silver Li...

True, but I would dry the oil, filter/remove out the drying agent, and then put in the lithium.

Now if the drying agent sank, this would not be a problem as lithium floats...

unless the drying agent was soluble in mineral oil, but I doubt CaCl2 is (enough to be a problem).

Quote: Originally posted by benzylchloride1

What is the best method for storing the lithium extracted from batteries?