I got some Ikea NiMh batteries a few years ago that were at 0.0 volts. Had to charge them for a bit on a dumb charger in order to have a smart charger recognize it. After a few refresh cycles they performed as well as any of the other ones I got from Ikea.
I’ve also had some Rayovac batteries go down to zero in a motion sensor and they recovered fine after refreshing them.
Dunno NiMH cells but used to regularly blast NiCd cells to blow out the internal “whiskers” that’d develop.
A few thousand µF charged to 12V or so, just keep hitting it ‘til the voltage would start to rise. Worst offenders might need a whole bunch of hits in Ol’ Sparky to come to life. Need to blow the fuses (whiskers) that keep the cell shorted out before it could keep any charge.
I’ve “sparked” cells by hitting ’em quick with blasts from a 12V-18V laptop adapter, but in theory, you want to control/limit the maximum zappage by using a cap.
Then again, I recall someone using a Lionel train transformer the size of an anvil to electroshock some cells back to life (mightta been NiCd). Yeah, AC. Worked, but I wouldn’t try it.
For Ni-MH to develop internal “short circuit” it must be reverse polarized (like what can happen to some cells when you over-discharge a series battery pack) and let it rest without recharging some time. A friend of mine did this to a drill pack he had, he discharged it and let it rest without recharging a few days. Sometime later I had the pleasure to service his pack, for obvious reasons. The moral of this is always recharge a discharged series Ni-MH/Ni-CD pack as soon as possible at least a few minutes, for quick cell de-reversal. Of course damaged cells by reverse polarization don't become dead shorts, they still pose good burdening resistance (the damaged pack could work but quite badly).
So, did you set the GP cells in a charger? I guess not. Do it! If the charger refuses to charge them, set them in parallel with some good battery, be it alkaline, Ni-MH, LiFePO4 or even li-ion, and connect both cells in a pulse width modulation way, i.e. give it a good bunch of zaps until the GP cells measure at least ≈0.7 V with a multimeter. If using alkaline just connect 'em dead flat for maybe half a minute tops, alkaline cells have quite high internal resistance so no current inrush problems.
Yeah, hitting a cell with 12 Volts or something can surely work.
I had an Aspire 18350 drained to the bone (zero volts), and then i hit it with short 12 Volts bursts from a lead acid battery, making sparks and the battery got pretty warm too, and i stopped when it had reached 2.7 Volts or something, and then i gave it 2 charging cycles, and it seems to have worked well enough.
Wait, i’ll put it in the charger for a NOR test.
(I’ll report back on it)
Finally (I am crazy!!!) I connected them to a 12v car battery with thick wires… Only touch and release… For less than a second…. Positive to positive and negative to negative.
The one which did not had white powder, instantly got the voltage up to 1.3volts (in less than a second).
Now the chargers “see it” and it is being charged at 0.5Amps.
I stopped the charge, put it in a flashight and it seems to work….
Lets see what happens after a few cycles lf full charge and discharge…
The one which had the powder… Did the same… Touched + with + and - with - with the car battery for less than a second.
The voltage raised to 0.9… Then slowly dropping… I touched again the car battery and voltage raised to 1.2 and drops fast.
This cell still is not detected by any smart or dumb charger…