batteries Archives | Ecotech Services

Dishonest manufacturing

Alan Liefting

4 May 2024

This no name powerbank with solar charging came in for recycling and it is anything but powerful. The battery is swollen and the case is bowed because of it.

It is quite dishonest of the manufacturer to put such a small battery in a large enclosure. Not only could the battery be taller but it could also be thicker. There are two foam rubber spacers used to fill the empty space in the enclosure.

The purchaser would be quite unaware of the small battery size and would assume that a physically large enclosure would equate to a larger energy capacity than a smaller one. If I find a suitable battery I would be able to more than double the capacity of the powerbank.

Please everybody, avoid products that are of such bad quality that the manufacturer is too scared to put their name on it!

batteries, e-waste, quality
Battery recycling in Lincoln

Ecotech Services administration

21 March 2017

In what may be a first for a supermarket in New Zealand, the Lincoln New World now offers a battery recycling service. The scheme is an initiative of Lincoln Envirotown and has funding from the Sustainable Initiatives Fund (SIFT). Dave Fitzjohn, the project manager at Lincoln Envirotown, has been the driving force behind this worthwhile scheme.

Ecotech Services is proud to be associated with this battery recycling initiative.

Battery collection centre at Lincoln New World.
Photo supplied

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batteries, recycling
It would be irresponsible not to!

Alan Liefting

11 December 2016

I was reading the sales blurb for the ASUS Vivobook X556UQ and one of the things that is announced as a really cool thing is the short circuit protection for the battery.

I had to laugh!

It would be really stupid and irresponsible to NOT have short circuit protection for the battery. Lithium ion batteries can put out enough current to cause fires. Take the recent recall of the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 for instance. They had some sort of battery fault that caused some of them to catch fire and Samsung ended up recalling millions of phones although in this case a short circuit protection may not have helped because it may have been a fault internal to the battery.

So ASUS, you may fool the general public into thinking that short circuit protection is a good thing but you ain’t going to fool the techies!

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batteries, computers, electronics
Exposure of pregnant women

Alan Liefting

30 July 2015

The title will probably raise another “what on earth has this got to do with Ecotech Services” question so let me explain.

I was doing a bit of research on manganese dioxide, one of the materials in alkaline batteries, when I came across this datasheet from that most august of organisations, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

And look at what they are suggesting we do with pregnant women:

I have absolutely no intention of exposing pregnant women. It is up to them as to how much they show of themselves! And besides, I don’t have any pregnant women that I can expose.

Yeah, I know. It is just a bit of bad grammar. But it made me laugh.

batteries, humour