The Right Way to Charge and Discharge Your High Operating Battery Temperature

Batteries can’t be charged or discharged at all temperatures. Special care is required, especially in case of charging. Moderate temperature is the main requirement for any charging process, as extreme temperatures, hot or cold, will reduce a battery’s charge acceptance.

Charging at low temperatures

The temperature range of 10-30 ⁰C enables a battery, especially one made of nickel, to maintain its capacity to recombine hydrogen and oxygen with each other. One should avoid charging nickel batteries below the temperature of 5 ⁰C as it prevents fast charging and subsequent venting. Also, maintain their charge current at 0.1 ⁰C for below freezing situations.

Lead acid batteries are more tolerable of extreme temperatures because of their notoriously sluggish nature. For these batteries, it’s recommended to keep 0.3 ⁰C as its standard charge rate.

Avoid permanent damage of these batteries by preventing freezing and keeping them fully charged. You must stop their electrolyte from becoming like water so that flooding is avoided and issues like leakage, loss of potency and need for a replacement don’t arise in the first place.

Charging at high temperatures

Heat endangers a battery’s life and reduces it by a great measure. In fact, in case of lead acid batteries, a temperature compensation tool is added so that temperature variations can be handled and adjusted.

While charging your high operating temperature battery, you should make sure that ideal peak voltage is obtained at different temperatures. Same is the case with float voltage at standby mode.  

Users of nickel batteries should avoid high temperatures at any cost in order to avert decreased charge acceptance and reduced oxygen generation. Conversely, Li-ion batteries have a great performance record at higher temperatures, but at the same time, continued exposure must be avoided. You can’t let these batteries lose their capacity because of elevated temperatures, especially when it comes to surgical tools.

Discharging at low and high temperatures

Following points must be kept in mind while discharging your battery at low and high temperatures:

• Don’t use cold temperatures, like -18 ⁰C, as they reduce a battery’s capacity and increase its internal resistance.

• Use a temperature range of 60 to 100 ⁰C for dry and solid polymer batteries so that they become more conductive and their ion flow is promoted.

• Use optimum temperatures like 20 ⁰C to ensure best service life of your battery. Make sure that your battery’s cycle life is optimum.

• Try to prevent the development of a negative potential difference in voltage of your battery by looking for matched cells which come with same capacities. Avoid heavy load, over-discharge and cell reversal, if you don’t want to experience battery failure.

Altogether, proper charging and discharging ensure prolonged life, better charge acceptance, enriched battery capacity and superior performance.