Can a Car Battery Explode?
The electrical systems installed in cars aren’t so complicated as most people believe. However, dealing with them hides certain risks and you must know how to do it properly without harming yourself or the people around you.
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A single mistake while hooking the cables or the charger can lead to a hazardous situation and even an explosion. Luckily, all you have to do is take certain precautions to ensure that nothing bad will happen.
How to connect the charger or the cables safely?
Before you decide to use a jump starter, it is better to try to get a charge from a donor vehicle. Check the car’s manual to ensure there aren’t any connection points other than your battery. Reading the battery’s manual is also essential to do this process correctly.
In some cases, you have to use a remote connection such as a jump box. This is required when the battery is hidden somewhere. Simply, connect the cables of the donor vehicle to the dead battery and ignite the engine a few times until it starts.
Remember that positive must be connected to positive and negative to negative. Doing the opposite could lead to serious issues for both cars and even an explosion of the battery.
Step by step procedure:
- Turn off both cars
- Connect one of the cables to the positive terminal of the dead battery.
- Connect the same cable to the positive terminal of the donor battery
- The other jumper cable should be connected to the negative terminal of the donor battery
- The other end of the cable should be connected to a good ground on the vehicle with faulty battery
The procedure is similar when connecting an external charger. In certain cases the positive is ground, but this happens relatively rare. Thus, connecting a jump starter to a bare metal of a car and still have a current flow to the battery.
Note that, it’s possible to connect directly to a negative, but it might cause the battery to explode, and you don’t wish this to happen for sure.
How do they explode?
Car batteries have been around since the 18th century, and they are also known as “lead acid” due to the fact that they consist of lead plates submerge into sulfuric acid and water to store and release power. They are extremely good at providing the current needed by engines to start.
The big problem with these batteries is that they are composed of hazardous materials that could lead to dangerous situations. You must be careful when you handle a battery as the acid could burn your clothes and skin. Moreover, you must dispose them in specific areas due to the lead.
The explosion often occurs due to the existence of hydrogen gas, which is produced when the battery is being charged or discharged. Not handling it right, could lead to an ignition and therefore explosion. That’s why charging must happen slowly because the high voltage creates oxygen and hydrogen.