Peterae,
Good suggestion. I've tried LiION in previous experiments but not LiFePO4. However, I would like to see some of us try LiION as used by Janost but in a controlled condition where the circuit can be physically protected just in case of ignition. Janost is claiming self-running with LiION and for the sake of a really true replication we should try LiION at the same capacity as Janost uses. Perhaps Janost could post a photo of his battery and state its capacity? He has not reported any problems running with his LiION battery, so with suitable protection, this would be a good way of seeing if the battery chemistry is the key.
Hoppy
Li-Ion are not dangerous if you meet these 4 requirements: Never discharge below 2.5v, nothing happens but when you charge it again they will be a full short. Never charge above 4.2v, doing so will cause a thermal runaway and they will combust, very bad! Never discharge with a current higher than 0.1C, same as above, explosion or combustion. Never charge with more than 0.1C unless you have control of the cell temperature, again thermal runaway can happen. I have about 150 of these 18650 Li-Ion cells as I work with computers. In a laptop the control circuit scraps the battery if just a singel cell i bad so I collect these scrapped laptop batteries. When I first started using these I soldered 16 of these in parallell for a 3.6v 35Ah Li-Ion battery. Very bad as all sorts of dangers could have happened but I didnt know and nothing happened. They are safe if you know what you are doing
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