Leaking NiCd or alkaline cells

[Alex Eisenhut]

Do these things actively spew stuff far away or vent corrosive gas as well as leak liquid? I mean I don't see how else the contacts inside a connector can be greenish without anything in between being corroded. I'll try to find a way to take a picture of what I see deep down inside the LCD connector on my Model 102.

[Alex Eisenhut]

I mean the green is all the way inside of the connector, you really have to look. From the outside it looks OK at first, I just saw a tiny bit of white fluff on one pin so I took a closer look.

Seems to me this alien blood acid spews all over the place even not immediately visible in areas far away from the batteries. I didn't expect that.

Is this typical of battery leaks?

[BravoV]

Yep, they're nasty, not only the liquid spills, but also sort of evil gas that ruins everything metals.

Examples :

Watch how the shiny battery contacts from my Fluke 287 turned into ... 




The culprits, and this photo was shot at Oct 2013 and watch closely the battery's expiration date, no, they're not drained at all. 




At April 2017 .. brand new never used alkaline cells, fyi, they're genuine product.

[helius]

NiCd and NiMH can vent hydrogen gas if they are overcharged. The gas can carry corrosive vapor quite some distance.
But even a liquid electrolyte leak can creep pretty far.

The amount of electrolyte leakage from alkalines seemed to increase when they went to 0% mercury. The mercury was used to prevent some side reactions that cause pressure buildup and venting or leakage.

Some of the more dramatic damage comes from LiSOCl₂ primary cells. They can explode violently, spraying electrolyte everywhere.
Normally not this violently:

[David Hess]

The potassium hydroxide electrolyte tends to creep along surfaces and along strands of insulated wire.

[TERRA Operative]

I'm fixing a bit of HP equipment that suffered from a leaking nicd battery.
The spicy sauce got under the solder mask and looks to have run along the edges of the copper layer, almost like capilliary action.
Luckily the tinning on the copper layer has protected the copper and after scraping back the solder mask and neutralising and removing the goop it is all looking pretty good.

[Crazy_Pete]

Hi all!

Hmm, maybe i can contribute here instead of just being a taker.    (Thanks again to all for all your help.)  Long ago i did some work with Organometallics.   A white salt coming out of a battery is relatively harmless (don't eat it of course.)   I am embarrassed to admit that i caused enough laboratory accidents to be an expert on the appearance of toxic metal salts! :-)

Cadmium Salts tend to be blue (Cd salts actually come in various colours, when it leaks out of a Cell it is usually blue) and Nickel salts tend to be blue/green in the presence of atmospheric moisture.   That deposit on the bottoms of those pins is exactly the colour i have seen in mixed nickel cadmium spills.   That doesn't mean that is a mixed nickel cadmium salt.  What it DOES mean is that between the colour profile of your camera and the colour profile of my Computer Monitor it LOOKS like NiCd.

The green stuff on the bottom of the alkaline batteries (posted by Bravo)  is exactly the color of a nickel or copper salt.:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel(II)_chloride

Nickel Salts tend to be BRIGHT LIGHT green and copper salts a darker duller green.   Cadmium is of course a cumulative poison.   If it takes 50mg of Cadmium [just guessing] to cause brain damage, it doesn't matter if you take 50mg all at once, or eat 2mg a year for 25 years.   Once you have reached the cumulative threshold you have brain damage and need to come the USA to join the rest of us.

Thanks
Peter

[Alex Eisenhut]

Thanks for the info, it seems to be exactly that NiCl₂ color. It not only seems to have corroded traces but also seeped through the soldermask to chew away entire chunks of copper down to the fiberglass. It ate a lot of via barrels too.

Oops. I didn't know that much about battery spills before taking this poor 102 apart. I was figuring it needed cleaning and resoldering new parts, turns out it needs sanding down to the copper since no flux or fresh solder I've tried has made satisfactory new joints so far.

Both because solder turned to lead, and there is that copper carbonate (?) black residue on there too.

[drussell]

The culprits, and this photo was shot at Oct 2013 and watch closely the battery's expiration date, no, they're not drained at all.
...
At April 2017 .. brand new never used alkaline cells, fyi, they're genuine product.

That is pretty bad.  What was the provenance of those cells for the first 6 years, how were they stored before you used them?  (since they were manufactured in 2007)