Battery Charge

Hi,

I have a 18650 / 3.7V / 9.6wh 2600mAh Nitecore , Lit Ion rechargeable battery for my flashlight. It also says on the packaging that the battery has integrated battery overcharge and discharge protection circuits.

My little battery charger has this info : Input 5V - 1AMP / Output 4.2 - 2 x 0.5amp

So lets say the battery is dead, I put the battery on the charger at say 7pm and take off at 7am next morning just to get some use of the light.

Can you tell me how to work out how many hours I should keep the battery on a charge to have it fully charged?

When fully charged how many hours can I expect the light to work for?

I have a multimeter and after only 12 hours of charge the battery is showing a steady reading of 4.7V ? Correct me if Im wrong....but I thought when fully charged this battery should only read 3.7 on the multimeter? Im in Ireland EU.

All good advice welcome,

Berne

For a Lithium Ion battery, 4.7V on a 3.7V rated battery is DANGEROUSLY WAY TOO HIGH.

Most packs/batteries would have severely puffed up, or even exploded/caught fire long before then!

I have seen erroneous readings such as that from a dead pack, but I would still try to get rid of it asap.

From the little googling I did on that battery, even though it claims to have built in over/under voltage protection, it seems it may not have it at all.

Hi,

Well I tried looking at some Utube help videos on .....Re Charging a 3.7 battery of the aforementioned spec and there is one two minute video no voice but the person uses the same multimeter that I have and the same battery spec.....after that person removed the charged battery and put on the pos and neg leads of the multimeter it too read 4..7V at full charge.

So....should I be looking only for 3.7 as a fully charged battery of this nature...and how about the other time to charge equation anyone?

Berne


P.S.

Charger: XTAR MC2:

1. 0V activation function could wake up over-discharged batteries, even those newly drained to 0V.
2. Safely charging. It could charge a battery precisely up to 4.2V, and automatically stop charging when complete. Thus, you no longer worry about whether the battery is overcharged or under charged, achieving a great insurance to battery's lifespan.
3. Compact and very portable. 42grams very light weight and compact size could charge 26650 battery with no adaptor or spacer, along with USB port, always make your travel easier.
4. TC-CC-CV 3-stages charging method. It slowly ramps up the charge rate, soft charges even nearly empty batteries, then uses great CC/CV charging, which never hits batteries all-at-once.
5. Over-heating protection, short circuit protection and polarity-reverse protection. 6. Cost-effective. Besides of the above mentioned, only cost a battery's price, you could get a 2-slot charger which could charge 2 batteries with 0.5A simultaneously, and make your plenty dead batteries back to life.