Lost your charger or maybe you want to try different ways to charge your batteries? Whether you have a deal lead-acid battery, a dead lithium-ion battery or you want to give your AAA batteries some juice, you will find the right fit for them in this article.
How to Recharge a Lead Acid Car Battery Without a Charger
Most car batteries use lead-acid technology. While there are other kinds of car batteries out there, we will focus on lead-acid rechargeable batteries for this guide. Here, we will talk about how to recharge a dead car battery when you are without a car battery charger.
- To get started, you need to first check and confirm that you have an emergency tool kit in your car. This kit should contain tools like jumper cables, screwdrivers, flashlights, and other essential tools, some of which will come in handy when you need to perform a recharge without the car battery charger.
- To recharge the battery, bring out your jumper cables. These often have two metal clamps on their ends. These clamps are encased in black and red plastic insulations that help you to identify the negative and positive terminals.
- Ensure that the ignition is off. Your car should also be on an even surface so that there won’t be any sudden movement from the car.
- When done, open the car’s bonnet or front and connect the jumper cables. Connect the ends of black clamps on the jumper cables to the negative terminals of the dead car battery and the good car battery, respectively.
- Repeat the same process with the red clamps on the jumper cables. Each end of the clamp should be placed on the positive terminals of the good and dead car batteries, respectively.
- When done, the car with a good battery should be started and allowed to run for a while. During this process, the dead battery will begin to charge.
- Wait for two to three minutes, then try to start the car. With this, the car will definitely start. If it does not, you need to wait a bit longer for the car to draw more charge before restarting it. Once the car is running, you can remove the jumper cables.
How to Recharge a Lithium Ion Smartphone Battery Without a Charger
Lithium-ion batteries like those in your smartphone are one of the easiest to charge. With this process, you can actually use one battery to charge the other. However, keep in mind that most Lithium-ion batteries in smartphones are irremovable, and removing them might damage the battery,
To use another battery to recharge your lithium-ion battery, follow the steps below.
- Start by taking out the battery that needs to be charged from the device. You need connectors to be exposed since you won’t be using an actual charger.
- If you are using a Windows or an Android smartphone, you might be able to reach the connectors with ease.
- If your battery is built-in, it is best to leave the battery that way until you get a battery charger.
- Once the battery is removed, you will need to get another set of batteries. That is, double-A (AA batteries) and triple-A (AAA) batteries used in most household devices like remote controls, flashlights, game consoles, etc. You will need an electric source to charge your phone battery. The AA batteries will provide an alternative source of energy.
- The next step is to, locate the negative and positive terminals or connectors on the batteries. These areas are usually marked out on regular AA or AAA batteries.
- You can easily identify these points on your phone’s battery. Start by looking at the terminals on the battery. The one in the middle is not an option, its function is to monitor the battery’s temperature. Once you skip that, you’re left with a connector on the outer edge close to the edge and another far from it. The first is positive and the other is the negative connector.
- Check and confirm that the cell voltage power on the set of double-A or triple-A batteries you want to use have enough direct current. This is what determines if they would be able to charge the battery. For the best results, you will need a bunch of AA batteries. The batteries would have to be connected together in series.
- Take two plastic insulated metal wire pieces. You will have to connect the ends of each of them to the batteries.
- After that, make sure one end of the wire is connected to the negative connector of the AA batteries, then you need to attach the other end to the negative connecting point of the battery you want to charge. Do the same for the positive end. Take the second wire and connect its ends on the positive connectors of the batteries.
- With the setup complete, you can leave it to charge. This method is really very slow and your battery would not be fully charged in the end. However, it will definitely charge your battery.
How to Recharge a Pair of Rechargeable AAA Batteries
Charging AAA batteries might be something you think is not possible, but since these batteries are rechargeable, there is definitely a way to charge them without using the official charge.
With this hack, you would be using lemons to charge the batteries. You can call this a natural fix to your battery problem.
Why lemons? Well, Lemons are said to have acidic contents which have the capacity of triggering and causing a flow of electrons in the battery. This flow can actually recharge the battery.
However, it might sound impossible, to have to recharge your battery with lemons, but the process is rather easy. To do this;
Gather the lemons you can find or purchase. You will need as many as you can get because you will need a lot of its juice.
Cut the lemons and squeeze out the juice into a bowl. You can also use a juicer or any other juicing mechanism. When done, put the rechargeable AAA batteries in the bowl. Ensure that the batteries are completely submerged. You will have to leave them inside for 1 or 2 hours before removing them.
With this method, your batteries will receive some charge, but they will not be fully charged. In most cases, you would get a 70% to 85% power capacity restoration. Keep in mind that this is a dangerous process to try with Lithium-ion batteries in your cell phones. The moisture from the lemon juice will damage the batteries rather than charge them.
