The gloves are on because I am about to do something that I wouldn't longly recommend. I'm going to open a Lithium cell and it's fairly dangerous thing to do so. I do have the exposion containment pie dish right here just in case things go wrong. Now this and I'll Zoom down it.

This is a 360 milliamp uh cell out of a vapor device, but it's in a capacitor style package which is quite interesting and I have fully discharged this before actually doing this because the biggest danger of lithium cell isn't the fact it contains lithium. it's the fact that, uh, it stores a lot of energy. and when you release that energy very quickly, things can get quite violent, especially because the electrolyte is highly flamable in traditional lithium cells, not so much lithium iron phosphate cells. Looking forward to seeing how the technology of sodium ion cells pans out because I'm not quite sure what they're using as electrolyte in the ones that are commercially available.

so let's peel this open and hope it all just slides out conveniently. Is it going to have that lovely peardrop smell of carcinogenic, uh, solvent? And is it going to be stuffed to the hilt? So I'm peeling this around and what I'm expecting to find in here is the rolled up files and uh, separators with a bit of tape around them. That's exactly what it is. Does it smell nice? Yes, it's got that lovely pear drop smell.

No. I didn't take a huge sniff. It's safe, so let's unravel this and see how they actually terminated onto the well. Maybe we can separate this now and see how they terminated onto these and how thermally conductive it would be.

So there is a copper electrode that makes sense. There's the aluminum one because one of the electrodes of a lithium cell is copper and one is aluminium covered in graphite and one electrode. Not sure how I'm going to actually get particular gloves. Horn: I Don't think it's going to be eased to peel this off.

Uh, covered. What? The one of the electrodes is graphite and one of the electrodes is usually something like Lithium Cobalt oxide. That's the controversial one that all the babies in foreign countries are being used to mine it. Apparently a few believe the very selective images from the media.

This will change with the Advent of uh, the newer sodium technology. That will hopefully change, but we'll see what happens. No signs of explosive heat yet. This is good.

So this will be the two files. Uh, coiled together with a separator and soaked in that, um, lithium loaded, uh, solvent. So here we go. Here's a separator that keeps them apart and one of these electrodes will probably change color in real time.

You can see it kind of drying off immediately. the solvent. um, and it will probably oxidize very quickly. Any heat, yet nothing really noticeable.

Strong solvent smell. now. I'll try not to snip in too much of that. There is a good ventilation here so they have kind of filled up fairly completely.

Here is the copper electrode. I'm not sure which is which I Not sure which material is in the copper electrode and the aluminium electrode. This is a seems to have more layers on. Let me pull the separator out so they've bonded.

They've not bonded it halfway along, they've bonded it near one. End of the Roll the actual electrode here. Yeah, there's a separator and here is the other electrode is just a well rolled up piece of foil. Oh, actually do they have two separate ones? No, this is just.

uh, the separator with some of the coating on it. either graphite or the uh, lithium cobal oxide. Well, that is it that. It's very classic construction for these.

Uh, pretty much what you'd find in here, but this one is just basically in a foil pouch rolled up tightly and then a bit of tape put in it. Um, so nothing really much to say. that is what's inside these cells. I Do have to say that this one was supposed to be 360 Mah I didn't not get that capacity I measured more like 280 milliamp if that.

Um, so I Don't know how that goes in terms of amount chemistry in it or if maybe just because it had been used once and it depleted. but I would expect the Lithium celles to take multiple charges. I Shall continue doing tests though because I do have another one of those cells on standby somewhere near here. It is right here that I'll continue doing the tests on and doing the charge and discharge Cycles to see how it fares.

Uh, but that is it. That's what's inside. these are miniaturized I'll just zoom out a it so you can see the huge mess I've now made in the bench. What's inside these miniaturized aluminium can capacitor style lithium ion cells.