On 28 Jun 2005 08:04:35 -0700, wrote:



Eric R Snow wrote:
No, I'm not gonna make meth. Reading about lithium batteries and the
explosion hazard makes me leery about opening up the the battery but
on the other hand I've never seen lithium metal. Before I open the
thing up will there be any lithium left? The battery is dead. it is
the 3.6 volt cv3 type. And will the lithium start burning when exposed
to air?
Thanks,
Eric

If it's dead, there's no lithium metal and a good deal of hazardous
chemicals. I can remember one whole neighborhood being evacuated and a
major freeway shut down after a chemical leak at a lithium battery
plant when I lived out on the West Coast, IIRC, it was thionyl
chloride. May not be what's in the battery, may be used in the some
part of the construction process or electrolyte. What's left after the
battery is run down probably won't do you much good, though. You'll
probably end up with a toxic and somewhat corrosive mess on your hands
if you try to open it.

IIRC, lithium reacts with water, somewhat like sodium, not oxygen, at
least not violently. I've never actually had anything to do with the
metal, when I was doing synthetic organic chemistry in college, we used
various salts and compounds of the metal, not the metal itself. Those
were nasty enough by themselves.

Stan
Thanks Stan.
ERS