Lithium-ion battery excitement!

OVERKILL

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Was just down at one of our medical buildings making sure everything came back online OK after a 12hr outage yesterday and I checked in on the building manager's office and something was looking funky with his MacBook Pro:
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I took it home and started to take the screws out of the bottom. POP!!!! With three screws left it spread wide open:
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Bottom of unit removed:
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I took it outside because it started to pop and make some less than safe noises. Was extremely difficult to get out of the chassis as the whole pack was distorted but finally managed it by prying it out with a screwdriver:
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These are @JeffKeryk's favourite pouch cells!!! (JK). As many of us, including @JHZR2 and @ZeeOSix have discussed with regards to pouch cells, this is what happens when things go sideways with them. And this is with very good Apple charge management.

Scary stuff!
 
in my younger days....(maybe late 20's) I tore apart an old Motorola BT headset for fun..it's little battery was a little lithium pouch cell...

not knowing any better I threw it (the naked pouch) in a jar of water... sizzled/popped/smoked for a couple minutes but no big drama...
 
Shoulda brought it to Apple first, and see if they would have fixed it under a goodwill policy.

Staff are given latititude when it comes to taking care of lithium battery issues, at least with the phones.
 
Shoulda brought it to Apple first, and see if they would have fixed it under a goodwill policy.

Staff are given latititude when it comes to taking care of lithium battery issues, at least with the phones.
This is not a very recent MBP, vintage is around 2009, I wouldn't expect Apple to do anything about it at this point.
 
Ok I have to ask, why are they using a 13 year old computer?
It was a hand-me-down and the guys that share this space didn't want to give it up. The one guy has a 1 year old HP Probook in his main office, the other guy technically doesn't even need a computer. Guess they are both getting a new one now though, lol.
 
Why not? Apple computers don’t have the severe lifecycle or quality issues that PCs do.
That's basically the crux of why they didn't want to give it up. It worked fine (right up until the battery decided it wanted to vacate the chassis) for what they were using it for, which is basically just e-mail and web surfing. They liked it, they were used to it, it was very low usage, so there was definitely a comfort angle to why they didn't want to upgrade.
 
I had a Nexus 6P phone that did that. It lived in a cast iron dutch oven in my BBQ until I figured out where to get rid of it.
That's a good idea. I have it sitting on my deck right now, plan is to take it to the e-waste place tomorrow. I think I'll put it in a turkey pan "just in case".
 
I've done about 3 of those within the past 2 years from older ~2016 HP elitebooks but I've never seen the battery case split like that. That's crazy.
 
Update:

The E-waste recycling place wasn't open until Wednesday so I swung by a battery store and asked if they took lithium-ion and they said not normally, but they'd take it for me, so they did, and it is out of my life, lol.

Interestingly, I tried to fire the computer up and it survived! I had anticipated the motherboard being damaged, but apparently, nope! So, I ordered a battery for it and the guys are excited to get it back.
 
I had something happen with a Chinese generic battery in an old iPhone 6. Thankfully, the swollen battery fell out as soon as lifted the display to remove it.

I’ve had luck using a trim tool and chlorinated brake cleaner(perchloroethylene or Oxsol, PTCBF) to extricate a battery from a MacBook.
 
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