"Nick Odell" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 02 Apr 2020 12:52:25 +0100, Pamela
wrote:

On 20:34 1 Apr 2020, Nick Odell said:

One AA cell has suddenly turned grey underneath the transparent
printed sleeve and it looks like a powdery coating has formed there.

Under normal circumstances I would just throw it away but these are
not normal circumstances (I´m about 8000 miles away from my stash of
spare batteries and over here I´m not allowed out to buy any more) so
I´d like to keep using it for as long as it holds a charge if it is
safe to do so and it will not ruin my equipment.

Any thoughts about whether this might be just corrosion on the outside
of the can or might it be leaking chemicals or is something else
happening?

Thanks!

Nick

This can happen if the cell is overcharged.... snip

That mention of overcharging concerns me. I thought all chargers
these days automatically cut out when the battery was fully charged
or after a certain period of time had elapsed?

No they don't. Have a look at Big Clives teardowns of
the worst of the chinese designs with the cheapest crap.

And there are plenty of even branded laptops that ****
the battery much quicker when left on the charger 24/7

I am currently (sorry about that) using a two-cell usb-powered
charger from Screwfix which blinks while it is charging and
shows a steady light when it has stopped.

But it may not be that great about deciding when its fully charged.

(Most of) my other cells run to the end of their charging cycle
and then stop. These ones, I admit, just go blinking on and on.

So clearly the cells are being overcharged.