Today my wife asked me to check out her work Laptop. When I opened it up I noticed it was all humped up around the mouse pad. Right away I knew what it was, a seriously swollen battery. I took the back cover off and I was correct, it’s pretty bad to me. I fool with a lot of batteries of all types (thousands) I’m always on her about leaving these devices plugged in, especially when we’re sleeping or not home. Anyway maybe this info might help some one else from going up in flames, Glad I didn’t
Yikes!
I’ve had that happen with smart phone batteries, but so far not with laptop batteries (or any other type of batteries.)
Thanks for the heads up! 
Spicy pillow. I’ve seen worse, but yeah, that’s not great.
Goof catch. Is the lipo cell replaceable so you can salvage the laptop? Assume your wife is self employed else I’d have thought it best to just dump it with company IT dept and tell them to sort it.
Reminds me, I’ve a puffy DJI drone battery I need to dispose of, it’s in a developing country so no recycling facilities, most of the country doesn’t even have municipal waste collection… burn pit??
Deep discharge with a small load in a safe place outside until it’s completely empty, after that it’s safe enough for normal trash.
I would think that’s less pollution than burning it.
One problem that frequently happens with older notebooks/laptops where people don’t travel with them, is that they’ll leave them plugged in all the time. The battery is topped off all the time, hardly ever getting the chemistry “exercised” (discharge, recharge).
Newer laptops / notebooks have really good battery management tech, where the battery won’t be constantly trickle charged. There will be a management protocol to switch to AC power and not draw from the battery while plugged in. Then at a certain charge threshold (battery naturally discharges down to a predetermined level), the system will charge the battery back up.
Lenovo has a pretty good battery charge management system. Learn about it here:
Usually having a laptop plugged in all the time and no sophisticated battery management, there will be a gradual degradation of the battery life. But that should not create a failure situation like this. If a laptop is plugged in all the time and doesn’t get adequate ventilation, the ambient temperature in the laptop casing can get rather high. And if intense processing is performed, even watching video where the graphics chip draws a lot of power, the battery could get badly overheated with the cooling system unable to reduce it to a safe level. I wonder if that’s what happened here.
How old is the laptop and what brand is it?
Not sure of the age – It’s a lease from my wife’s business, but swopping it out is a lot harder than changing the battery ( Files, Programs, Etc )
My wife is a Charger Junkie, always plugging in her phone, Fitbit, PC – The cells just cook away – Most of these chargers charge to the extreme full voltage-- To me is more destructive than beneficial