| Battery Desulfator Experiment [message #139824] |
Thu, 18 August 2011 13:49  |
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Matt Colie
Messages: 8547
Registered: March 2007
Location: S.E. Michigan
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Senior Member |
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Did you ever wonder about "Desulfators" and other things that might well fit in the snake oil catagory?
Well, so did I. I know I am not the only guy with batteries that die from cycling and deep discharging. It is annoying and expensive.
I have recently managed to recover two 12V batteries that would have otherwise have been forced to replace.
- The first was the battery in our poor old POS tracker. The battery that came in it was marginal and that was two years ago. It got to where I had to jump it and hope it didn't stall in the early part of the trip, or put a battery charger on it for at least the prior day. If it was off a charger for more than a day, no bets. It sat untended for a month after the recovery and the battery had no difficulty starting the engine at all.
- The last time the lights went out, the housenet was in trouble after 6 hours (but the power came back) and it should last about three days. After the Tracker, I moved the little box (described later) to the group 31 AGM that is the power for the housenet UPS. The box ran on that for about four weeks. Then, when I disconnected line power and watched the terminal voltage drop, it was decreasing at a rate that looks like we should be good for at least two maybe two and an half days.
This just may work - I am continuing my experiments.
I did a great deal of research and found that most lead/acid batteries die from a very simple problem. I don't want to get into semantics and maybe some P-chem person in the group can straighten out the names, but there are several lead-sulfur-oxygen sets that form easily and some are better at going back into solution than others. The wrong one can reduce an LA battery's capacity. It turns out that the wrong kind can be pushed up the energy ladder to become the right kind without all that much effort.
The electric way to do this is to fire 40+ volt pulses only a few milliseconds wide back into the battery. If the battery has any power left, you should even do it with the battery's own power as not much is lost. The test cases I have run so far, this was simply not possible, the Tracker was too flat and the housenet UPS would have required it be out of service.
If you search the web for "Battery Desultaors" you will find kits and assembled units that run the price gammet between twenty and eighty dollars. I decided that I would start on the low end (we had a houseful of little boys such that a kit was out of the question) an E-Bay survey lead me to choose a unit that had a delivered price of thirty-one dollars total. That unit was one with the dubious label as WizBangPlus.com. I am not recommending that supplier at this time, but only because I don't feel I have enough data to do so. My little box - and favorite battery charger are currently at the home of a friend (another engineer) and running the same test on a third battery that is known to be toast.
All I am saying at this time is that there does seem to be hope. The solar power people have been talking about this for a while now, and just maybe they are right. Stay tuned, but be patient as I don't expect to have solid data for another few months.
Matt
Matt & Mary Colie - Chaumière -'73 Glacier 23 - Members GMCMI, GMCGL, GMCES
Electronically Controlled Quiet Engine Cooling Fan with OE Rear Drum Brakes with Applied Control Arms
SE Michigan - Near DTW - Twixt A2 and Detroit
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