Board Thread:General Nerf discussion/@comment-3362895-20170709105825/@comment-27306930-20170724031809

MenacePotatoe wrote: A question for my engineer friend Elliott, although I could just as easily Google it (but for the sake of going off-topic...)

What causes batteries to corrode and is there a way to avoid that? That's a really great question. I wondered the same thing myself a while back and spent an evening understanding how batteries work. Not to give away the twist at the end of the story, but the dirty little secret is all heavy duty and alkaline batteries eventually rupture and cause a giant mess. Every one of 'em.

For the sake of brevity, let's stick to alkaline batteries (because only boneheads use Heavy Duty batteries anymore). Alkalines are basically a steel canister full of potassium hydroxide and manganese dioxide paste, with a zinc shaft down the middle. The discharging reaction produces hydrogen, which builds up under pressure and eventually ruptures the canister from the inside out. The potassium hydroxide then oozes out and corrodes everything it comes into contact with.

Not only that, but the steel canister rusts and corrodes internally when exposed to the potassium hydroxide over long periods of time, which weakens the wall of the battery. So even when you're not using them, your batteries are constantly discharging all by themselves and producing hydrogen as they sit there. So basically, they're tiny little time bombs preprogrammed to explode when the time is right.

To you question, there's only three things you can do to prevent this little Chernobyl from happening Spud. #1 Take your batteries out of your electronics between uses. That way when they do rupture they won't wreck your stuff. #2 Refrigerate your batteries between uses to slow down the chemical process. Then bring 'em back to room temp to get good performance. #3 Throw your alkalines away as soon as they exhibit any loss of power. If you suspect they're bad, they probably are. Throw them out and get new ones.

Bottom line, every heavy duty and alkaline ever made will eventually "explode". Some might take 15 years, but eventually it's gonna happen. All you can do is manage the disaster. If and when it does happen, use that vinegar and salt trick I mentioned earlier. It's not a miracle cure, but it'll get your blaster working again in a pinch.