How to calculate battery capacity from its size

batteriescapacity

If the battery is for example 3.5mm x 14mm x 20mm and is 3.7V what is it's capacity?

How accurate can such calculation be?

Best Answer

While you could use a "Energy density per volume" calculation, I think the safest bet would be to search for similar sized/priced/application batteries and make an estimate from there.

Since you know its 3.7V, I'll assume its Li-ion. From Wikipedia, we could say 250 to 620 W·h/L. Since your battery is roughly one milliliter, we can estimate from 0.25 to 0.62W.h, or 67mAh to 167mAh.

Now, we can double check that by looking for small Li-ion batteries on the web:

This one is a little bigger, offering 110mAh, while this other seems to be a bit smaller offering 40mAh.

From that I'd say the wikipedia numbers are a bit optimistic, because probably it takes into consideration the whole range of batteries (from the cheap ones we are looking at to others with super high density, etc..).

Next step is a guess, if you think this battery is new, good quality, from a good manufacturer, you can be optimistic. If its old, cheap and not taken much care for, then be a bit more pessimistic.

Anyway, its not a safe method at all, but should give a ball park. Ideally you would charge it and measure with different loads to be safe.