Inside the Macbook Pro battery

[jonicus]

This is more of an FYI to those out there that may be curious about what's inside their MBP battery, or worse want to take it apart! I cannot, first off, stress enough that you should never, ever take apart a Mac battery. The information that follows is for academic purposes and should not be duplicated at home. Why? Because the batteries have a tendency to explode. That's why.

About six months ago my 2006 Macbook Pro battery started to die and would only hold a charge for about 30 minutes. Typical of all laptop batteries I finally got around to buying a new battery from FastMac. However my geek side got the better of me as I tried to decide what to do with the old Macbook Pro battery.

Previously I had seen several DIY guides to replacing the Lithium Ion batteries in laptop batteries. However this is not the case with the MBP. The Macbook Pro batteries use a Lithium Polymer battery. From Wikipedia:

"[T]he lithium-salt electrolyte is not held in an organic solvent as in the lithium-ion design, but in a solid polymer composite such as polyethylene oxide or polyacrylonitrile."

and "They are similar to Lithium Ion batteries in that they each have a nominal voltage of 3.6 volts, but dissimilar in that they do not have a hard metal casing but rather a flexible material encloses the chemicals inside. The "normal" lithium polymer batteries are thin rectangle shapes with two tabs on the top one positive one negative."

I took apart my battery pack and snapped a few photos of it. The case was rather difficult to get into and involves prying off the "top" silver casing. When removing the battery packs there was a little flame up here and there but luckily it didn't blow up on me. Hence why I say just don't do this!

The batteries look to be three sets of two, taped together, manufactured by Sony Fukushima model US604496 "Lithium Ion polymer cells", according to the UL Certification database. That's all I can find with Google, anybody else have any knowledge of these batteries?

Photos!

And others...

http://www.twinkiesandmilk.com/mbp/mbpbattery1.jpg
http://www.twinkiesandmilk.com/mbp/mbpbattery3.jpg
http://www.twinkiesandmilk.com/mbp/mbpbattery4.jpg
http://www.twinkiesandmilk.com/mbp/mbpbattery5.jpg

Interesting look but won't be doing that again anytime soon.

 

[Radio Monk33]

You're a brave guy! Want to elaborate on flameups?

 

[gpeden]

Hi there,

The built-in protective circuitry keeps things things safe. I'm an active R/C modeler and these batteries have revolutionized electric flight in the past few years. I've completely switched from nicads and NiMH batteries as have most of us. Of course, we use these cells "raw" and manage the risks with expensive chargers and careful charging routines. Here's a couple of interesting threads from a forum:

http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=719116

http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=209187

Since crashes happen from time to time, damaged, punctured, shorted packs are an interesting problem to deal with And a friend of mine burned down his garage with improper, unattended charging.

Cheers!

Glen

 

[alphaod]

I've ripped apart battery before; just don't short circuit them by accident or dunk them in water. Lithium fires are very very bad.

 

[hitman45400]

I've ripped apart battery before; just don't short circuit them by accident or dunk them in water. Lithium fires are very very bad.

haha, have you done it?

 

[gpeden]

Actually.... one method of disposal of these batteries (raw cells/packs without circuitry built in) is to immerse them in water for some time to slowly draw off the remaining energy in the batteries.

Cheers!

Glen

 

[alphaod]

haha, have you done it?

Yes; I had to call the fire department because I didn't know what to do with the smoking battery.

 

[duykur]

Actually.... one method of disposal of these batteries (raw cells/packs without circuitry built in) is to immerse them in water for some time to slowly draw off the remaining energy in the batteries.

Cheers!

Glen

ya and why not take a bath in the water while your at it