When an old battery or electronic device looses its charge after not being used for several months or years, where does the lost energy from the previous charge “go”?

Question

Is it just lost in thin air? Lost as heat even though the device is not used? Thank you for the insight.

In: 0

Answer 1

Yeah passively rechargeable batteries loose charge as it is very slowly transferred to the air, it’s a bad conductor but it can still do it. Heat is only produced when the transfer is inefficient so the heat transfer passively is negligible. Chemical batteries slowly decay becoming less and less effective when not used.