Since nobody seemed to know the origin or how to read the Molicell wrappers, I’ve been in communications with a Molicell representative I reached at the Molicell company, on the various Molicell battery sales going around, and am sharing this for general information. I included his responses from several emails put together with pertinent information and omitted my questions and comments.
“The MOLICEL IMR26700A, FSPE70045.227805 was manufactured in Canada on
Friday, August 15th, 2008.
The nominal capacity was 2900mAh and the maximum continuous discharge
rate is 40A.
Maximum charge rate is indeed 7.4A.
This cell was originally shipped and sold to a customer in Asia and may
be used or recycled from a battery pack.
(Likewise the green cells marked ending in 240803 were manufactured on the 240th day of 2008)
The date code for our cells is as follows;
FSPE800XX.YYYZAB
XX = Model Number
YYY = Day of manufacture
Z = year (0-9, A=10, B=11, ect.)
AB = Daily Batch number.
The FSPE70045 cell was discontinued in 2009 and is no longer in
production.
The version with the paper sleeve was our standard production for this
model and was manufactured only in Canada. The primary market was power
tools and light electric vehicles.
I would be very cautious about purchasing cells online for this model as
the cells are at least 4 years old and cannot be guaranteed with regards
to capacity and impedance. If they are ‘new’ unused stock they may be
fine but the impedance may have increased due to storage conditions.
Our minimum Order is 10K per month. We don’t deal with retailers and
don’t sell to any retail operations. We deal directly with
manufacturers.
I would assume that the retailer that you are dealing with has purchased
a number of cells from an auction or business sale or from one of our
customers who was liquidating old stock. They did not purchase from
E-One Moli Energy directly.
Any lithium-ion cell will be prone to failure if subjected to any abuse
conditions which include but is not limited to;
Over charge
Over discharge
External Short circuit
Drops
High temperature operation/storage
Freezing
Puncture/Crush
Immersion in liquid
Burning
Shooting with a bullet
Operation outside of the recommended parameters
The IMR26700 was a cell that used Manganese and Carbon electrodes and as
such are a very safe chemistry but severe abuse conditions can still
cause failure of the cell.
Every lithium-ion cell requires a protection circuit with, at the bare
minimum, protection from over discharge to keep the cell from going into
the negative voltage range which will cause lithium plating on the
electrodes which in turn causes internal short circuits that can lead to
“rapid disassembly” of the cell. (at the very least, capacity loss and
high impedance)
Over charge protection can be put on the battery or if not will be
located on the charger circuit.
Cell balancing circuitry and temperature monitoring are also typical in
multi-cell battery packs.
In rare cases, single cell application can be run without protection
circuitry but that is very application specific and would not be
recommended for this cell.
The “seller” of the cells online is not the manufacturer, and does not
constitute a representative of E-One Moli Energy nor our products, and
is obviously trying to just make a sale, I would again caution you to
take what they say with a grain of salt. No cell manufacture would tell
you that their cell will not explode and does not require a protection
circuit.”
(last portion was in response to my question whether or not its true this chemistry is safer and doesn’t explode as I’ve seen claimed, not in reference to any particular seller)