I knew an electrician who used to recharge his standard batteries with a home made charging device. Has anyone done this or seen one of these commercial chargers sold in Oz?
Also found this on the net. Anyone tried?
Also found this on the net. Anyone tried?
Well I've recharged loads of non-rechargeable batteries and they very seldom explode! The method (at own risk remember) is to use a 12volt car battery charger and to hold the battery and the wires on the ends. Plus and minus have to be the right way round of course, and I always make sure I hold the body of the battery. This is so I let go when it gets hot! That way, it doesn't get so hot it explodes. Having said that, I always make sure that neither end of the battery is pointing in my face, or at anyone else. I'll recharge a battery for a few seconds, perhaps up to a minute, not long anyway. On hearing-aid type battery THREE SECONDS is plenty! And the results, quite good. If the batteries weren't totally dead to start with then the life can be prolonged quite a lot. The results are a bit unpredictable though, so it's best to avoid using the recovered batteries in life-critical equipment such as the smoke alarm. But for the television remote-control, calculator, spare torch, that's another matter. It is possible to save money by this method, batteries being a thousand times more expensive per unit of electricity than the 12v from a charger plugged into a socket on the wall! Helpful correspondents have commented that they have had some success using slow charging of non-rechargeable batteries. This is good, but I recommend caution with leaving such experiments unattended!