Best way to a safe recharge of your batteries?

[MikeFB]

With a lot of talk about being safe on the roads I wanted to instead ask the question of how to best safely charge your batteries. What is the advice from those that know on how to best make sure you are charging your battery safely.

I currently only charge mine during the day in the house on a laminate floor about 20 foot from where I sit and regularly check to see if the battery has become fully charged and then turn off the charger and unplug it.

Second to my question, has anyone ever had one explode or catch fire?

Would be interesting to find out if there was a ratio of failure from those that bought their batteries or built their own?

More questions may follow depending on the answers I get.

 

[vfr400]

There's the same chance of your laptop or tablet catching fire and a lot more chance of your phone flaming out. Do you worry about them too?

 

[MikeFB]

There's the same chance of your laptop or tablet catching fire and a lot more chance of your phone flaming out. Do you worry about them too?

True, but I wasn't suggesting they were anymore dangerous, but if there was a best practice with regards to charging them, plus they are a little bit bigger than those that you mentioned.

 

[flecc]

What you are doing is fine, so long as you are only charging indoors when you are present and awake. I've never had a problem with charging any e-bike battery or of them showing any sign of reaching a dangerous condition. I have had two small lithium batteries swell up and have to be prised out and scrapped, one from a camera, one from a minidisc player long ago.

I don't stress about disconnecting and unplugging the e-bike charger either, just doing that when convenient.
.

 

[Andy-Mat]

Your method is very good IMO.
The only point that you may be less well informed about, is that IF a fire happens (Laptop, phone or any Li-ion battery), though unlikely, you need to be able to immerse the whole battery in water in some way, if at all possible.
But I really don't think that you are going to have problems anyway, as your charge method is about as safe as you can get I feel. Plus, IMO, it will give you the best "life" for your battery as well.
If you are interested in seeing some battery fires, here are a few YouTube videos of them, the first one appears to be a Hollander who has TWO batteries on his bike, and although the one on the carrier has been pulled out of its socket, the other battery did not like the situation apparently.
But guessing only :-

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=e-bike+battery+fires

In Germany, electric car fires on the Autobahn are put out using a huge portable tank, filled with water, and then a crane drops the whole car in the water! Apparently, about an hour is needed in some cases, for the chemical reaction to stop!
My personal concern would be the gas and vapours emitted, as though I have not seen any warnings, it looks to be something that one should not breathe in, if at all possible, IMHO only!
Maybe someone here can let us know if such smoke is dangerous or not please?
I just found this for large batteries, and it appears that the smoke may be toxic:-

Toxic fluoride gas emissions from lithium-ion battery fires

Lithium-ion battery fires generate intense heat and considerable amounts of gas and smoke. Although the emission of toxic gases can be a larger threat than the heat, the knowledge of such emissions is limited. This paper presents quantitative measurements ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

regards
Andy