admin | 
08 25th, 2008| 
You may or may not have heard some of the stories circulating about exploding CR123 batteries inside of a lithium flashlight.
Doug Ritter from Equipped.org has an excellent post about what to look for when selecting a lithium flashlight and purchasing lithium batteries, along with some simple precautions one can take to prevent lithium battery mishaps.
In short, there have been reports of battery explosions for a long time (not just the lithium variety). But CR123 lithium batteries are higher voltage and generate and contain more power than common alkaline cells and accordingly can build up more pressure and heat.
Keeping in mind that the number of occurrences of exploding lights is tiny compared to the number of lithium cells in use, here are some basic precautions that Doug recommends:
1. Never use Chinese manufactured lithium batteries! Most reports of exploding batteries seem to be centered around Chinese lithium cells rather than American or Japanese.
2. Do not mix batteries (by manufacture, type, age, or charge level). Doing so could be very dangerous. Mixing batteries of different charge levels seems to be the faster route to running into a problem than anything else.
3. Stick to high quality flashlights. This is especially important if the lithium flashlight uses multiple lithium cells. Be careful of Chinese knockoffs and low-cost look-a-likes.
4. A single-cell lithium flashlight tends to safer than multi-cell lights.
Enough emphasis can not be placed on the importance on buying a high quality lithium flashlight and American made lithium cells (such as the Surefire E1B and SF123A-cell pictured above)
If you would like to read more in-depth, be sure to check out Doug Ritter’s original article found here.
