EEVblog #176 - Lithium Ion/Polymer Battery Charging Tutorial
Why Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange recommends it
Electronics Stack Exchange answerers point people to it when someone needs a clear, engineering-level explanation of how Li-ion and LiPo charging works, especially the constant-current and constant-voltage stages.
Recommended by 2 people across 2 different months, 2012 to 2019.
What it is
Dave Jones of EEVblog walks through how small lithium-ion and lithium-polymer cells work and how they are charged, covering the constant-current then constant-voltage charge curve and how to choose a charger IC. He also shows protected cells and the thin pouch-style cells, and cautions about using circuit-protected cells for safety.
What people said
Recommends AndrejaKo · 2012-01 · Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange · on “Battery charging questions Parallel charging and battery balancing of LiPos”
After seeing your comments, on the answer, I'm not sure that you understand how lithium ion, lithium polymer and lithium ion polymer batteries are charged. When you have ~40 minutes available, take a look at this [this video] video. This guy explains how process works from engineering point of view. You don't have to understand everything (unless you want to go into electronics and make your own charger), but it should give you an idea how charging process works and what are major components of a charger.
Recommends Gabriel Gosmann · 2019-12 · Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange · on “Balance charging and protecting 4s LiPO battery pack”
First of all, I think these 2 videos can help you a lot: BMS: [LINK] Li-ion charging: [this video] But back to your question: I currently have it hooked up to this HX-4S-A01 protection board, which apparently lacks balancing features As far as I can see from the AliExpress page, your current board is based on and S-8254A IC, which has plenty of security features: over-charge protection over-discharge protection over-current protection However, as you said, It lacks balancing. It is mainly a protection board to avoid anything going bad but It is not recommended as your only option for charging and discharging circuit. Am I fine, if i just add such a balacing module and hook it up to a 16,8V Power
Cites graham · 2014-12 · Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange · on “Li-Ion Charging - Constant Voltage Stage”
The charging curve for Li-Ion batteries (explained here [this video] ) has a final constant voltage stage where the charge voltage plateaus and the charge controller slowly shuts off the current until it reaches some threshold (10% in the video's example) and charger considers the battery full. I can take a battery and measure the voltage. But here the voltage is constant, so how does the charge controller know when to cut off the current?
Cites MicroservicesOnDDD · 2019-01 · Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange · on “Why the actual charge current of a battery is not improving when I shifted to larger current capacity battery charger power supply?”
More Cells in Series Enables Full Current Charges If you need faster charging at the upper end of the voltage range, you may have to use a different configuration, such as 2S1P, 2S2P, ... The 2S part is 2 cells in series. The nominal voltage in that case would be 3.7 x 2 = 7.4 volts. So, to charge really fast, right up to 4.2 volts, which is the typical max, you actually have to be able to charge up to the 8.4 volts (4.2 x 2), or even 3S at 12.6 volts (4.2 x 3). Nearly-Charged Batteries Charge Slower in Constant Voltage Mode Most likely, you have a low charging current because the constant voltage part of the charging curve has already kicked in. This actually means that your cell or battery