This weekend I pulled apart a bunch of old laptop batteries that were on their way to the recycle center. I recovered about 60% good cells, and managed to restore another 15% discharged or reversed cells.
So far I have about 60 3.7V cells of these two types, and I'm going to grab a bunch more batteries to recover cells from over the holidays
http://www.allelectronics.com/cgi-bin/category.cgi?item=LBAT-43T (15 of these)
http://mlftech.en.alibaba.com/product/50032111/50146729/General_Batteries_and_Battery_Packs/Lithium_
Ion_Cylindrical_Batteries.html (45 of these)
Anyhow, what I'm thinking of doing is setting up a battery bank with these cells. What I'm thinking is putting 15 of these cells together in parallel as a "battery", then hooking up 4 of these batteries in a series battery bank to get 14.8 volts and a decent amount of amps. As I recover more cells, I'd add them to each battery. I'd keep the whole bank charged with 1 or more Ametek-based wind gens (or a gen built out of hard drive mags, once I get around to building that).
What I'd like to do is eventually collect enough cells that this battery bank could be used to run a small inverter. I know that these types of batteries aren't the most ideal for what I'm thinking, but they are free and I can get a lot of them. The questions I have are:
- How many cells should I put together in each battery before the bank will have enough ummph to fire off a decent inverter?
- Any problems with mixing the types of cells, or should I just stick to the more plentiful 186650 cylinder cells?
- Any other problems anybody can think of?