Dead CMOS Battery - NEC Powermate portable - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

11 Feb 2002

On Feb 10, 23:04, Tony Duell wrote:
...
  >    Some (mostly non-consumer type) Lithium
batteries use sulfur dioxide in
...
  > them. Not the kind of thing that you want to
rupture inside your PC (or in
...

 But presumably in solution, not as a gas... 
Yes, but I'm not sure what it's dissolved in; it's not very soluble in
water.  Probably there's something else there to help (like dissolving
iodine in potassium iodide solution).

...
  > your house!). For the ones of you that aren't
familar with the stuff,
 > sulfur dioxide is nuseating and toxic, and it also reacts with moisture to
...
   form sulfuric
acid, INCLUDING the moisture inside your lungs! 
 No it doesn't. It forms sulphurous acid (H2SO3), which is a much weaker
 acid than sulphuric (which is what you get if you disolve sulphur
 trioxide in water). 
Except that SO3 isn't very water soluble either, commercially it's normally
dissolved in concentrated sulphuric acid, to make more sulphuric acid.

...
  I an not suggesting that SO2 is particularly pleasant,
but I am sure most
 of us here have burnt sulphur as part of a school chemistry experiment
 and lived to tell the tale. 
It's used as a bleach, and as a preservative in foodstuffs (look for sodium
metabisulphite on the label -- it releases SO2 in acidic conditions).

-- 
Pete						Peter Turnbull
						Network Manager
						University of York