Would you believe hundreds of times? The trick is to stop using the battery well before it has given up all of its available stored energy. Note that this is directly opposite to the instructions that were packed with your battery-operated drill or screwdriver with its NiCad batteries. When the drill stops turning, charge the battery, but not before. Good rule for NiCads, but not for alkaline batteries.
Assuming you now have a charger to safely charge alkalines, don't wait for the battery to stop working. In order to achieve ten times extension of the normal life of an everyday alkaline battery, you will have to recharge it frequently, many more times than ten. It makes sense to use a second set of batteries for a high drain device. Take out one set of batteries when the device is not being used, and put in the second set that has been recharged. Charge the first set and carry it with you as a backup if necessary.
You will be surprised how easily children will be attracted to charging their own batteries in their toys and possessions. Managing their own batteries is fun, and they know it helps the environment by not having to throw batteries away when they can recycle them.
Recharge non-rechargeable (alkaline) batteries...
Batteries! Can't live with them, can't live without them. In this day and age, everyone is walking around with electronics in their pockets, purses, and backpacks. The invention of rechargeable batteries provided consumers a cost efficient alternative to alkaline (non-rechargeable) power sources. Over my lifetime, I have thrown away hundreds of non-rechargeable Duracell, Energizer, Rayovac, Maxell, Panasonic, Sanyo, and store brand batteries. However, now I recharge them!
I bought the Battery Xtender for myself as a birthday gift, plus it was another way for me to save money. The Battery Xtender lets you recharge alkaline, zinc-carbon, Ni-Cad, and NiMH batteries! Ni-Cad and NiMH are rechargeable types of batteries. So with this one charging device you can recharge non-rechargeable and rechargeable batteries. Now you can recharge Duracell, Energizer, and other disposable batteries. "What?!?! You can't be for real. I thought you can't recharge disposable batteries" you say. That's what the battery companies want you to think. I'm actually recharging a pair of AA batteries from my Wii controller as we speak.
Essentially, you could recharge non-rechargeable batteries in your "regular" battery charger, however you need to know when to stop charging them before they explode and leak. This is the thing that separates the Battery Xtender, it can sense and detect when to stop charging non-rechargeable batteries, therefore preventing explosion and unsafe leakage. The catch with alkaline batteries is can only be recharged about 10 times before they can no longer be recharged. Alkaline batteries also take a longer time to recharge than regular rechargeable batteries (8hrs+ if battery is almost completely drained), therefore it is recommended to recharge them when the battery is about 30% full. With alkaline batteries, you do not want to totally drain them of before recharging. If you totally drain these types of batteries you may not be able to recharge the cells any longer. So on the first notification of "low battery" I rip them out and start recharging them.
I had a bunch of alkaline battery sitting in my draw to be thrown away, but I just never did for some reason. When my Battery Xtender came, I was amazed I was able to recharge and use them. These batteries have been dead for months! Now I just have an army of alkaline battery ready to be used. Yeah, yeah, someone will ask, "Why don't you just buy rechargeable batteries?" Well, I used to, but it got annoying when I lost them, couldn't find them, or accidentally threw them out. Throwing away rechargeable batteries is expensive, throwing away disposable ones are not. So for $40 + handling, it doesn't really matter which types of batteries you use the Battery Xtender charger for, it will eventually pay for itself. Now imagine if you bought a 40 pack of AA from amazon.com for $10, you would have a supply of rechargeable AA batteries for years (without the hassle of keeping your non-rechargeable and rechargeable batteries separated)!
I really like to recharge regular alkaline batteries while so much effort has been made to keep people from actually trying it. Fear of trying to recharge regular alkaline batteries wastes money and is hard on our increasinly fragile shared interconnected environment. In order to recharge regular alkaline batteries< i use a charger I just bought at Staples for about $10.00. I'll make that back in a month or two. The kids in my household use up a lot of batteries in their talking dolls and related electrically driven toys. It's really fun to get a successful rechage instead of DRIVING to the store to spend more money. Recharging regular alkaline batteries saves money and is alot easier on the environment.
Quote from another battery charging person found on the internet:
"I used some big power resistors and a big blue led/smurf dildo to discharge the battery as fast as I could, and used a stopwatch to time how long it took. When the led became as dim as Doom 3, a pretty redhead told me that it was time to stop the watch. I measured the 'dead' voltage to be 7.5V. I did two discharge runs, with current drains ranging from 530mA to 150mA. That's a lot btw- 5 to 10 times more than a remote control or an mp3 player would drain. The average capacity of the battery worked out to be 148mAh. Proper 9v NiMH rechargeable batteries are typically rated at 160mAh. When you take into account my high discharge current and their BS marketing, I think its safe to say the capacity of a recharged alkaline 9v is on par with a real rechargeable battery.
Trying it on AA batteries
I used the same 63mA current source to charge a pair of dead alkaline AA batteries in series. Since AAs have higher capacity than a 9v, it took all day to fully recharge them.
I discharged them at a current of 330mA for hours, and they still hadn't gone flat. I said screw calculating capacity and decided to call it a fully charged success.
Destructive testing: After two full days of charging the AAs eventually popped open making a fizz noise, and leaked 3 drops of weak acid that was easily cleaned up with my bare hands. The experience was about as life threatening as a squirrel urinating on my lawn. The final measured voltage that killed it was 2.0V, which doesn't surprise me. Charging a 1.5V battery past 1.8V is kinda dumb. "
This blog owner was an electronic technician from age 12 (1953) to about
(1980). I currently recharge my 9 led flashlight aaa batteries using the usb port on my Dell.... preferring to use Energizer alkalines as the Duracels leak or pop ["safely"] (explosion is an uneccessarily over dramatic term probably motivated by being over safe to avoid law suits etc and to make huge profits while filling landfills with reusable technology). It is not without risk. The risks are minimal from lots of experience, or I wouldn't still be saving money by recharging.
Read about recharging from other sources, protect your eyes and young people.
It's one more way to stop ruining our precious earth.
