Don Bruder wrote:

In article .com,
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


Just don't hit it with a hammer...

KA-BANG! city, baby...

Strangely enough, I just saw a video by the Missouri State troopers
that was about making Meth. They ran through the whole procedure of a
couple diferent methods including tearing a bunch of lithium batteries
apart with pliers to extract the metal foil. They did not seem too
concerned. I do not recall seeing any particular safety equipment in use
while the batteries were being ripped apart, but ...

On the other hand, a fiend of mine that flies electric radio control
helicopters, tells me that he always charges his lithium batteries while
they sit in a ceramic dish, as they can burn quite hot if they do burn.

Cheers
Trevor Jones