Bulging Lithium Ion Polymer Battery

I don’t know your “situation”, but where I live I can go up and down a dozen times to the recycling facility before the explosion proof bag I order arrives at my doorstep.

Yep, but I'm in no hurry.

In this case, I'd rather be safe than quick.

(The potentially dangerous battery isn't going anywhere.)

To be fair:
They did take care of the phone and sent it to destruction.

They destroyed the phone?

Couldn't they just remove the battery and leave the phone alone?

According to Apples instructions, they were not allowed to do that.
They did offer me to just take it back with me.
But I was just glad to get rid of it.
(Opening up an iPhone does put stress on the phone and battery, and I wasn’t that interested in taking the risk myself.)

Okay, I didn't know that.

I have an inexpensive, but nice for the price, android phone, and removing the battery is no big deal for my phone.

iPhones are sealed units glued together, so opening them up normally includes both force and heat.
Not something for the faint of heart close to a dodgy battery…

Have you been IN some recycling collection stations? Often big bins, overflowing with batteries that people make no effort to prep in any way for safety. At least they are usually steel.

Search, battery recycling fires. Images or in general or news.

Risk isn’t zero but generally I think it’s overhyped for these. We get bunches of them at work, laptops and phones and other one-off devices. I clip the leads if it has them and/or tape over the contacts to prevent shorts, keep ’em in a small cardboard box until it’s convenient to drop them off. Lowe’s and Home Depot in my area have both stopped accepting recycling of any kind, but if you have a Batteries Plus or Best Buy, they’ll take them. Some Office Depot and Staples stores do as well. It’s a real hassle for us to take them to a municipal station here (being a business vs. residential customers).

Of course things not to do: poke, bend, pry, and drop. Not a fan of the submersion idea either.

The casings for these cells are way tough. If you’ve ever tried to tear one open, it’s not easy. They can handle pretty amazing amounts of pressure/bulging before rupturing. I wouldn’t worry about transporting it in the car but if it’s too concerning until then, just leave it outside on the concrete or a rock or something, in a metal can if you like.

For pouch/cased cells like this I will usually put them in a ziploc (individually) just as additional protection against shorts or pokes, and label the bag li-ion or li-po, etc, just in case that matters to someone as they sort the containers.

I’ve discharged a few 18650’s and a couple lithium poly cell phone batteries in “salt water”. They were completely dead by morning, didn’t explode, didn’t catch fire, they simply discharged over night.

This only goes for lithium ion batteries, which includes lithium polymer. Never put a lithium primary (like a cr123) in water. Lithium ion cells don’t contain lithium metal and the way to extinguish a lithium ion battery fire is with water. Lithium metal batteries on the other hand, create hydrogen when submerged in water. Trying to put out a lithium metal battery fire with water will make the fire worse with burning hydrogen. Reaction of Lithium and Water - YouTube

It’s controlled obsolescence. If you can keep replacing the battery in your phone , you are much less likely to ever replace the phone. Not a good situation if you are Apple or Samsung.

Biggest part of that was not obsolescence conspiracy but rather shrinking the physical size (until screens grew bigger and bigger…). Now we can have 7mm-8mm thick phones with larger capacity batteries to boot compared to a) the early days, and b) any phone with a removable battery and a now-standard hardware/feature set.

I do miss removable batteries, though.

If the device still works drain the battery to reduce the risk, set the screen to never turn off and ramp the brightness to maximum.

A little bit different, but I notice that all my Molicel P42A’s have a rounding of the negative terminal after some use

In my experience with replaceable phone batteries has been that the original is not bad, and the cheap ‘ebay’ replacements touting superior capacity are……mostly fabrications. The good ones are 2/3-3/4 of original battery and tend to lose that in a hurry. They are a big disappointment.

IF (big if), you can get an original replacement, it’s expensive enough relative to the phone’s value that it barely seems worth it. The tech just keeps advancing in cellphones so that a 5 year old phone is damn near obsolete, if the wavelengths it operates on haven’t been dropped. If ALL you use it for is a phone, then damn near anything will be OK. My wife finally just went to a hand-me-down iPhone 6 (2015 vintage), because the 3G on her Samsung slider is being phased out soon. Plus, it was difficult to text on it, and people are getting to use that so much it’s expected you have it.

Apple replaces batteries with original ‘good’ ones for $50 at the Apple store.

Saw a surveillance video (YouTube) where there are ‘grinders’ of consumer waste prior to conveying to the selected furnace (yes, your waste may be dealt with by reducing to ashes – much as your cremated body). The resulting fire on the conveyer system had some consequences, evacuation of the building. Ironic as the material is going to be incinerated anyways.

Luckily, or more at low tech, my city just grabs the waste and dumps in a tumbling furnace, regardless of content albeit some dynamite that was once spotted. But this burns much like sooty plastics – no kaboom!

RC is good at leaving it in a terracotta flower pot. Doubt it would spontaneously ignite in transport to some specialized facility. I would check which would accept it beforehand – not to have the run-around with dirty waste in the trunk.

Yep, I will.

This is some evil shit. These big companies love to pretend they care about customers and the environment but they’ll make a couple of extra dollars by adding to the landfills if they get half a chance. An independent repair shop could have returned the phone to working order.

Gee, I admit I am pretty much uninformed about cell phone batteries. How dangerous are bulging ones?
I have a couple old bulging ones that have been laying around in an old Pyrex mixing bowl for a couple of years. I always forget to take them to Lowes & dump them when I go there.
Am I in serious danger having them around?