If you’ve seen recent headlines about awful events such as a recent surge in e-bike fires, you’re painfully aware of the potential fire risk associated with lithium-ion batteries. Although battery technology is generally very safe, there is always a slight chance of a fire if a battery is mishandled – and recent headlines might have caused you to wonder about the safety of disposable vapes.
Can a disposable vape explode or catch fire during charging?
If you mishandle your devices and ignore the proper safety procedures, the answer to that question is definitely “yes.”
If you want to enjoy The Vape Life to the fullest extent, the first step is ensuring that you always use your devices in the safest manner possible – and that’s exactly what we’re going to discuss in this guide.
We’re going to start with the one thing that you should never do if you want to recharge a disposable vape: You should never follow the tutorials that you find on YouTube and social media sites. R
Why You Should Never Follow a Disposable Vape Recharging Tutorial on YouTube
If you usually use disposable vapes that don’t have charging ports, you’ve probably wondered if it’s possible to recharge those devices and continue using them after their batteries die.
If you’ve checked YouTube, you’ve learned that it is technically possible to recharge these devices in some cases – but doing so requires disassembling the entire device and stripping a USB cable down to the bare wires.
That isn’t just a massive amount of work – it’s also a horrible idea for five reasons.
If a disposable vape doesn’t have a charging port, it most likely has a primary battery that isn’t designed for recharging.
In this type of battery, the electrons are supposed to flow in only one direction. Attempting to recharge a primary battery can cause permanent chemical changes that reduce the battery’s stability.
If a disposable vape doesn’t have a charging port, it won’t have the circuitry necessary to manage to charge and can’t discontinue the charging process automatically when the battery is full. Overcharging any battery is a severe fire risk.
Recharging a disposable vape without a charging port requires disassembling both the device and a USB cable. There’s a high risk of breaking a component while you do this.
Non-rechargeable disposable vapes are designed to run out of e-liquid and battery power at approximately the same time. If the device’s battery is dead, it’s out of e-liquid anyway.
Rechargeable disposable vapes are readily available if you want something capable of delivering more puffs.
Want a Disposable Vape That You Can Recharge? Buy One with a USB Port
The last item on the previous list is very important. When you look online for tutorials about how to recharge a disposable vape, most of the articles that you’ll find were published before rechargeable disposable vapes existed.
Today, it’s much more common for disposable vapes to have USB ports for recharging. If you want to be certain that you can continue using a disposable vape until every last drop of e-liquid is gone, just buy one with a USB port.
Better yet, if you’re trying to save money, you can skip the disposable vapes entirely and buy a refillable device such as a pod-based vape kit.
How to Recharge a Disposable Vape Safely
At this point, this article has hopefully made it extremely clear that the only way to recharge a disposable vape safely is by using a device that has a USB port and is actually designed for recharging.
Even if you have the correct type of device, though, it’s still important to avoid mishandling it.
Here’s how to recharge a disposable vape safely.
Vape as normal until your disposable vape starts blinking. When the light blinks, the battery is dead.
Use any compatible USB cable to connect the disposable vape to your computer. When the device starts charging, the indicator light will either pulse or turn on solidly.
Wait until the light changes to indicate that the charging process is complete. Depending on the device’s design, the light may switch from pulsing to solid, change from red to green, or turn off completely.
Charging a disposable vape usually takes around an hour depending on the device’s battery capacity and charging speed. When the charging process is complete, you can disconnect the device and resume using it.
You can continue using a rechargeable disposable vape until it runs out of vape juice. When that happens, the device will either taste burnt or won’t produce vapor at all. At that point, it’s time to buy a new disposable vape.
Disposable Vape Not Charging? Here’s What to Do
As we described in the previous section of this article, the light on a disposable vape should always turn on when you connect the device to your computer. That’s how you know that the battery is charging. If the light doesn’t turn on, the device may have a problem. Here’s how to troubleshoot a disposable vape that isn’t charging.
Connect the device to your computer only. Don’t ever charge a vaping device with a wall adapter unless the adapter is specifically approved by the device’s manufacturer. If you connect a disposable vape to an incompatible charger, it might not charge at all and could potentially overheat.
Clean the device’s charging port. If you carry your disposable vape in your pocket, it’s likely to attract dust and lint. Some of the debris could find its way into the device’s charging port, which can prevent the charging cable from making a good connection.
If your disposable vape’s charging port is dirty, you can remove the debris with a toothpick.
Use a different charging cable. USB cables are manufactured very cheaply, and it’s common for them to break down internally from the constant pushing and pulling that happens during everyday use. After months of daily use, a USB cable may stop delivering power at all.