Is there a difference between lithium ion and regular alkaline batteries in how this happens?
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Batteries are not “electrons simply circulate through a circuit”. You could describe a capacitor as something similar that stores energy by just moving elections even if the reality they are a bit more complex. Electromigration will move atoms and electrolytic capacitors has electrolytes that can react with the rest of the capacitor.
Batteries store energy in chemical bonds wi the molecules. If you look at a lithium-ion battery like in [this image](https://media.springernature.com/full/springer-static/image/art%3A10.1038%2Fs41928-018-0048-6/MediaObjects/41928_2018_48_Fig1_HTML.jpg) you see the lithium ions move from the ion to cathode when you discharge the batteries and the opposite way when you charge it. It is not perfect and there is reactions in the batteries that you do not what to occur that reduce the amount of lithium available to move around.
So the problem for the battery is not a movement of the electrons in the circuit it is the moment of chemicals in the battery. You have a reaction where atoms move around and new chemical bonds are formed.
Because the circuit doesn’t connect through the battery on the inside.
Batteries (to put simply) have two cells in them, one cell containing a material that wants to give up electrons, and one cell containing a material that wants to accept electrons.
Those two cells aren’t connected in the battery, because then the electrons would just flow from one to the other inside the battery.
You connect the two cells when you put the battery in some other circuit, and the potential difference between the two cells in the battery is what makes the electrons flow through the whole circuit.
But eventually, one cells runs out of electrons to give up and the other cell runs out of room to accept electrons, which is when the battery stops working.
A battery has two ends – the positive and the negative. Electrons come out of the negative end, run through the circuit, power everything etc and end at the positive end.
For comparison, consider two buckets. One is full of water (the electrons) and at the top of some stairs (the negative). One is empty and at the bottom of the stairs (the positive). There is a pipe running from the bottom of the full bucket to the top of the empty one (the wires in the circuit). Also, for the sake of analogy, the buckets cannot be moved. Water will naturally flow down the pipe into the lower bucket because of gravity. You can use this flowing water to maybe run a water wheel or something (doing work). However, eventually the top bucket runs out of water and all of it is stored in the bottom bucket. This is like the battery “running out of charge”. If you want to run water through the pipe again, you have to somehow force water to run backwards through the pipe (which is what is done in rechargeable batteries) or replace the buckets with new ones (getting new batteries). The amount of water (charge) is the same at the start and end of this experiment, but it’s in a useless form at the end as it no longer has gravity pulling down on it.
Similarly, a battery’s negative terminal exhausts all of its charge while pushing it to the positive terminal. Instead of gravity, a difference in potential is used (this is a voltage). Once all of the charges have been pulled to the positive terminal, the voltage drops to 0 and the battery is dead. You have to put in extra effort to get the charges out and put them in the negative terminal again to reuse the battery.
The main difference between lithium-ion and alkaline batteries are the materials used to make and store electrons within the battery.
The important thing to remember is that “electricity” is a verb – it’s a process that happens- not a noun, a thing. It’s something electrons *do*, under certain circumstances. One of the things he they need to do electricity is electromotive force (EMF) or voltage (we’ll just call them synonyms). In a common analogy, electrons are water, wires are pipes, and a battery is a pump. If the pump stops working, the water stops flowing. The specific mechanics of how that “pump” works varies a lot but isn’t super relevant to your question. But most batteries are like a windup spring: energy is put in when they are made/charged and it is released when they discharge. Once that energy is gone, there’s nothing pushing the electrons around. And even when there is power, electrons just don’t move that quickly. They mostly stay put and shove their neighbors. It’s the shove that moves around, mostly. Think of a Newton’s cradle with clicking balls: the middle balls never move, just a smack of hitting does.
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