[HN Gopher] Building a 2.5kWh battery from disposable vapes to p...
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Building a 2.5kWh battery from disposable vapes to power my
workshop [video]
Author : rsanek
Score : 74 points
Date : 2025-11-03 19:51 UTC (6 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
| jonesjohnson wrote:
| The thought that _disposable_ vapes are still not forbidden in my
| country (EU) is making me sick.
| agumonkey wrote:
| i see more and more of them thrown in small streets and parks
| these days (FR).. if I had secure storage i'd take them just
| like that youtuber, alas
| Gigachad wrote:
| They are illegal in Australia, but they are all over the
| ground. Littered like cigarette butts. Only now instead of
| just being plastic and some slightly toxic substances. It's a
| whole e-waste package.
| trollied wrote:
| They are illegal now in the UK.
| detritus wrote:
| 'illegal' in that manufacturers add on a usb port and the
| basic board to tick the reusable check box.
|
| I'm still seeing almost as many of these cast on the streets
| as I did a year ago.
| skopje wrote:
| i did not know these existed. very sick indeed.
| erinnh wrote:
| From what I know the law is passed already. And they will
| become illegal end of 2026.
| userbinator wrote:
| On the other hand, free parts!
|
| Everything is reusable if you're determined enough.
| garyfirestorm wrote:
| The problem is how do recover these parts from a heap of
| trash
| pjc50 wrote:
| My reading of the WEEE directive is that no electrical
| equipment can be "disposable", it should all be recyclable and
| recycled.
|
| Actual enforcement of this is non-existent. If you see a
| "disposable" vape discarded in the street, look for the crossed
| out bin logo.
| dingnuts wrote:
| Manufacturers should be required to actually take back
| anything with that logo. You can buy so much stuff that
| becomes a serious problem to dispose of and that stupid logo
| is all that's required of the manufacturer. Cost of disposal
| would then get added to the price of the object, as it should
| to begin with!
|
| Everything with a sealed, soldered battery makes me furious
| on this front. Every item with a battery that recharges
| through the device instead of having a battery door like a
| Game Boy is on a timer, and for no good reason other than
| planned obsolescence.
| viraptor wrote:
| Just curious: if you wanted to do something like that, but
| prevent a... thermal event, how would you protect an experimental
| battery realistically? Build a brick enclosure? A fire safe?
| mlsu wrote:
| I think there's not much you can do other than placing it very
| far away from the house. Those big packs just have way too much
| energy.
| louwrentius wrote:
| A runaway NMC battery is notoriously difficult to extinguish,
| so the best thing to do is to not do it and investigate LFP
| prismatic cells instead.
|
| Many people building home storage batteries use a shed a few
| meters away from their home.
| knowitnone3 wrote:
| what's a NMC battery?
| yurishimo wrote:
| Nickel manganese cadmium maybe?
| jonesjohnson wrote:
| Nickel Manganese Cobalt - a type of Lithium battery
| chemistry
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_nickel_manganese_coba
| l...
| jonesjohnson wrote:
| Proper cooling seems to be the primary thing to do.
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S259017452...
|
| Proper Home Storage systems are pretty safe:
|
| https://www.bves.de/en/2024/12/17/study-home-batteries-fire-...
|
| There are special containers for transport of (even damaged)
| lithium batteries, which don't look overly bulky:
|
| https://www.zarges.com/en/solutions/transport-and-storage-of...
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| Current building regulations in the UK are moving towards
| outside storage of batteries now because of NMC's having a high
| tendency to combust. The battery management systems do detect a
| lot of issues, thermal and shorts but at some point I think
| government is going to force these to be on the outside of
| houses.
|
| The right answer is LifePO4 for home storage, does not combust
| and has good enough density.
| Animats wrote:
| Agreed. I think that about ten years out, when solid state
| batteries are widely available, lithium-ion batteries bigger
| than laptop-sized will be prohibited.
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| Once we have solid state cells I really hope the entire
| industry moves over to them and we just have solid state,
| LFP and Sodium Ion, all nicely non combustable chemistries
| that offer different price, power and weight density trade
| offs.
| holoduke wrote:
| It's usually not the batteries causing fire. A broken fuse.
| Or something else. I can create a pretty heavy welder from my
| 1000 amps of 48v system.
| Animats wrote:
| Small outbuilding. Concrete pad. Cinderblock walls. Sheet metal
| roof. Safe distance from anything important. Typical cost is
| $3000-$4000. Farms often have little buildings like this.
|
| (There are pictures of such buildings online. Search is
| returning awful LLM-generated garbage landing pages, so I don't
| have a link.)
| killingtime74 wrote:
| Doesn't matter. If you try any of these techniques your insurer
| will still void your home insurance if your house catches fire.
| hamdingers wrote:
| If you have the space for it, just put it outdoors 5' from
| anything flammable and you're good to go. This is not a hobby
| for folks in apartments unfortunately.
|
| I've had one of my DIY ebike batteries short and fail
| spectacularly at near full charge and was able to push it with
| a broom out of the garage into the driveway before any damage
| was done. Now I have a bench with wheels that I can take into
| the driveway for initial testing.
| kees99 wrote:
| If you put this outdoors, make sure to never charge when it's
| below freezing.
|
| Charging most common types of Li-ion batteries below 0
| degrees C promotes metal accumulation, which will eventually
| short-circuit and start fire.
| oulipo2 wrote:
| Shameless plug: we're building a repairable e-bike battery
| where you can use your own cells at https://infinite-
| battery.com
|
| We worked on a very sturdy casing, with some specific features
| to release pressure and limit the fire event propagating cell
| to cell, you can check it here
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0NXXfCA2CY
| jeffalyanak wrote:
| Ideally build it in away from your house, as others have said,
| but in terms of actual safety systems:
|
| -get a high quality BMS from a reputable source, it should
| supports current limits and thermal probes - configure current
| limits with as much overhead as possible, the less you drive
| them, the cooler they'll stay - make sure you have sufficient
| thermal probes inside key points in the pack(s) and that
| they're configured in the BMS to cut draw - add thermal fuses
| as well, knowing where to put these is important, too - house
| the packs so to minimize fire risk and cascading issues,
| especially if space is not a concern
| louwrentius wrote:
| Never ever consider doing something like this.
|
| There is a good reason why most home battery storage solutions
| are based on LFP batteries and not NMC as used in vapes.
|
| LFP is a much safer chemistry that can withstand higher
| temperatures and won't bust into thermal runaway like NMC.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > Never ever consider doing something like this.
|
| Unless you're a hacker, and you like hacking on stuff, then by
| all means, read through all the warnings and please do consider
| doing similar to what OP did, it's a lot of fun and you'll
| learn a lot!
| mosfets wrote:
| There are a million ways this can turn into a fireball, dont' try
| it, at least don't put it at home.
| tiernano wrote:
| Don't try this at home. Try it in someone else's home first.
| wpm wrote:
| The creator of the video made this very clear already.
| neuroelectron wrote:
| Does he ever once mention where he gets all these disposable
| vapes or what we can do about stopping them from entering the
| landfills?
| halfmatthalfcat wrote:
| Yeah he does, watch the video.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| When I first read your comment, it makes it sound like you've
| been watching the video for 20 minutes and it wasn't mentioned
| once. Turns out he starts talking about it around the 2:00
| minute mark...
| Fwirt wrote:
| The amount of e-waste _in general_ is truly nauseating. My
| employer just cleaned 30 years of "junk" out of our in house IT
| "tech shop" and the number of working but obsolete computers that
| went out (many simply because they couldn't support Windows 11)
| is sickening to me. The amount of carbon generated from the
| mining activities, steel production, etc. that went into
| producing "obsolete" computers has to absolutely dwarf any carbon
| "savings" you get by replacing them with more "efficient"
| machines. Especially when you consider that renewable power is
| taking over and many places aren't burning coal to run the things
| anymore. A 12 year old i7 server runs my NVR, home automation
| setup, web server, and network router (not to mention a small
| handful of other services) without even breaking 25% CPU usage.
| We could replace so many data centers with old desktops.
| lukan wrote:
| "We could replace so many data centers with old desktops."
|
| But I assume for way more energy costs? And the manual labour
| to sort out the different mainboards and make everything
| interoperable is not free either. But I guess it means lots of
| opportunity for unconventional low costs projects to scramble
| things together. Win 10 got another year of support, but I
| assume next year, even more computers will be avaiable quite
| cheap or for free.
| Fwirt wrote:
| See my other reply, when people count energy costs they fail
| to take into account the existing sunk cost of producing said
| resources, and the energy from having to build out new
| infrastructure to create these "more efficient" datacenters.
|
| It's like when people replace their fridge with a "more
| efficient" one and wipe out any energy savings with the cost
| of the new fridge. The difference in energy use will not pay
| for the new fridge for _many years_ and by then you've
| already replaced the new fridge with another newer "better"
| one.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > A 12 year old i7 server runs my NVR, home automation setup,
| web server, and network router (not to mention a small handful
| of other services) without even breaking 25% CPU usage. We
| could replace so many data centers with old desktops.
|
| Replacing concentrated and highly optimized data center servers
| with 10-1000X as many old desktop computers idling away at
| 50-100W or more would be a terrible tradeoff. That would
| explode the energy usage by orders of magnitude.
| Fwirt wrote:
| Unless you count in the effects of distributed solar and the
| environmental effects of building said datacenters in the
| first place. Many homes with solar produce more than they
| consume, and many homes pay for heat. Instead of new
| construction (concrete is another huge CO2 contributor) and
| AC units or pumping surface water for cooling, putting a
| server in your house is basically free heat and making use of
| an existing, underutilized resource.
|
| I could run my entire rack off of one to two solar panels
| (decommissioned ones from a power farm might I add). Even
| that would take a few years to pay for itself (when you
| factor in the costs of mounting and permitting) and my power
| company over 80% renewables the last time I checked anyway.
| huijzer wrote:
| Well luckily according to Bill Gates the climate is not really
| an issue anymore [1]:
|
| > There's a doomsday view of climate change that goes like
| this:
|
| > In a few decades, cataclysmic climate change will decimate
| civilization. The evidence is all around us--just look at all
| the heat waves and storms caused by rising global temperatures.
| Nothing matters more than limiting the rise in temperature.
|
| > Fortunately for all of us, this view is wrong. Although
| climate change will have serious consequences--particularly for
| people in the poorest countries--it will not lead to humanity's
| demise.
|
| Note that this is from someone who used to be one of the most
| focal "doomsday viewers", see for example [2] or [3].
|
| [1]: https://www.gatesnotes.com/home/home-page-
| topic/reader/three...
|
| [2]: https://youtu.be/rhNxDp8e7p8
|
| [3]: https://youtu.be/zrM1mcKmX_c
| crmd wrote:
| After all networked smartphones and computers were placed under
| control of the regime, resistance hackers relied on
| microcontrollers harvested from ordinary household devices like
| smart lamps and vape pens to slowly rebuild the covert but
| resilient mesh internetwork that became known as FreeNet.
| lionkor wrote:
| Maybe this is not such a bad side of history to be on after
| all.
| bethekidyouwant wrote:
| Not designed to be charged? So its also disposable?
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(page generated 2025-11-09 23:00 UTC)