Building a 2.5kWh battery from disposable vapes to power my workshop [video]
33 comments
·November 3, 2025jonesjohnson
trollied
They are illegal now in the UK.
erinnh
From what I know the law is passed already. And they will become illegal end of 2026.
userbinator
On the other hand, free parts!
Everything is reusable if you're determined enough.
garyfirestorm
The problem is how do recover these parts from a heap of trash
agumonkey
i see more and more of them thrown in small streets and parks these days (FR).. if I had secure storage i'd take them just like that youtuber, alas
Gigachad
They are illegal in Australia, but they are all over the ground. Littered like cigarette butts. Only now instead of just being plastic and some slightly toxic substances. It's a whole e-waste package.
skopje
i did not know these existed. very sick indeed.
crmd
After all networked smartphones and computers were placed under control of the regime, resistance hackers relied on microcontrollers harvested from ordinary household devices like smart lamps and vape pens to slowly rebuild the covert but resilient mesh internetwork that became known as FreeNet.
viraptor
Just curious: if you wanted to do something like that, but prevent a... thermal event, how would you protect an experimental battery realistically? Build a brick enclosure? A fire safe?
hamdingers
If you have the space for it, just put it outdoors 5' from anything flammable and you're good to go. This is not a hobby for folks in apartments unfortunately.
I've had one of my DIY ebike batteries short and fail spectacularly at near full charge and was able to push it with a broom out of the garage into the driveway before any damage was done. Now I have a bench with wheels that I can take into the driveway for initial testing.
PaulKeeble
Current building regulations in the UK are moving towards outside storage of batteries now because of NMC's having a high tendency to combust. The battery management systems do detect a lot of issues, thermal and shorts but at some point I think government is going to force these to be on the outside of houses.
The right answer is LifePO4 for home storage, does not combust and has good enough density.
Animats
Agreed. I think that about ten years out, when solid state batteries are widely available, lithium-ion batteries bigger than laptop-sized will be prohibited.
PaulKeeble
Once we have solid state cells I really hope the entire industry moves over to them and we just have solid state, LFP and Sodium Ion, all nicely non combustable chemistries that offer different price, power and weight density trade offs.
killingtime74
Doesn't matter. If you try any of these techniques your insurer will still void your home insurance if your house catches fire.
jonesjohnson
Proper cooling seems to be the primary thing to do.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S259017452...
Proper Home Storage systems are pretty safe:
https://www.bves.de/en/2024/12/17/study-home-batteries-fire-...
There are special containers for transport of (even damaged) lithium batteries, which don't look overly bulky:
https://www.zarges.com/en/solutions/transport-and-storage-of...
mlsu
I think there’s not much you can do other than placing it very far away from the house. Those big packs just have way too much energy.
Animats
Small outbuilding. Concrete pad. Cinderblock walls. Sheet metal roof. Safe distance from anything important. Typical cost is $3000-$4000. Farms often have little buildings like this.
(There are pictures of such buildings online. Search is returning awful LLM-generated garbage landing pages, so I don't have a link.)
oulipo2
Shameless plug: we're building a repairable e-bike battery where you can use your own cells at https://infinite-battery.com
We worked on a very sturdy casing, with some specific features to release pressure and limit the fire event propagating cell to cell, you can check it here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0NXXfCA2CY
louwrentius
A runaway NMC battery is notoriously difficult to extinguish, so the best thing to do is to not do it and investigate LFP prismatic cells instead.
Many people building home storage batteries use a shed a few meters away from their home.
knowitnone3
what's a NMC battery?
jonesjohnson
Nickel Manganese Cobalt - a type of Lithium battery chemistry
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_nickel_manganese_cobal...
yurishimo
Nickel manganese cadmium maybe?
Fwirt
The amount of e-waste in general is truly nauseating. My employer just cleaned 30 years of “junk” out of our in house IT “tech shop” and the number of working but obsolete computers that went out (many simply because they couldn’t support Windows 11) is sickening to me. The amount of carbon generated from the mining activities, steel production, etc. that went into producing “obsolete” computers has to absolutely dwarf any carbon “savings” you get by replacing them with more “efficient” machines. Especially when you consider that renewable power is taking over and many places aren’t burning coal to run the things anymore. A 12 year old i7 server runs my NVR, home automation setup, web server, and network router (not to mention a small handful of other services) without even breaking 25% CPU usage. We could replace so many data centers with old desktops.
null
mosfets
There are a million ways this can turn into a fireball, dont' try it, at least don't put it at home.
wpm
The creator of the video made this very clear already.
tiernano
Don’t try this at home. Try it in someone else’s home first.
louwrentius
Never ever consider doing something like this.
There is a good reason why most home battery storage solutions are based on LFP batteries and not NMC as used in vapes.
LFP is a much safer chemistry that can withstand higher temperatures and won’t bust into thermal runaway like NMC.
embedding-shape
> Never ever consider doing something like this.
Unless you're a hacker, and you like hacking on stuff, then by all means, read through all the warnings and please do consider doing similar to what OP did, it's a lot of fun and you'll learn a lot!
neuroelectron
Does he ever once mention where he gets all these disposable vapes or what we can do about stopping them from entering the landfills?
embedding-shape
When I first read your comment, it makes it sound like you've been watching the video for 20 minutes and it wasn't mentioned once. Turns out he starts talking about it around the 2:00 minute mark...
halfmatthalfcat
Yeah he does, watch the video.
The thought that disposable vapes are still not forbidden in my country (EU) is making me sick.