Extend the life of your PB or NiCAD Batteries

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electricvehicles
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Extend the life of your PB or NiCAD Batteries

Postby electricvehicles » Wed Apr 02, 2008 3:26 pm

A good friend of mine has just been awarded the UK dealership for these :( Cos I wanted it !!!
Anyway this is some of the literature, I dont know if it really works, but who knows, only time will tell.
As Follows:
1. What are sulfated batteries?

According to studies by the “Battery Council Internationalâ€Â

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ChrisB
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Postby ChrisB » Wed Apr 02, 2008 5:41 pm

Theres been loads of claims and counter claims of vairous types of de-sulphators etc , I tried EDTA (think thats what it was called) like a powder that your mixed into distilled water and added to a duff battery to de-sulphate.

Used tons of the stuff on my Bedford CF batts that had been laid up in a field for 4 or so years.

Results where ............. about what I suspected, some batts recovered some didnt (CPM tubulars) to this day I dont know if just a very long slow charge would have cured them the same or if the EDTA actually did anything ???

Reading round the web a lot of these types of things seem to get mixed results, are you planing on testing any as I would be interested in your findings 8)

ChrisB
Last edited by ChrisB on Thu Apr 03, 2008 12:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.
I reject reality and substitute my own !!!!!!

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MaryRCrumpton
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Postby MaryRCrumpton » Wed Apr 02, 2008 6:30 pm

Interesting reading, thanks.

Though, like Chris, I would be interested to read about results of testing.

Mary.
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qdos
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Postby qdos » Wed Apr 02, 2008 9:50 pm

I've just recovered some Silicone Gel batteries from a long long idle standing by a combination of charges and discharges. They were as good as dead but now they live again :D

Think some experiments and controls would be interesting to see results from.

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Teslas fag packet
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Postby Teslas fag packet » Wed Apr 02, 2008 10:06 pm

<SMUG>
Some time ago i designed a charger for the mini that uses ultrasonic pulses to charge the lead acid battery's, the ultrasonic pules are a PWM using the CI CV and float charge scheme. But the secret is to use a VERY fast discharge pulse after the charge pulse to shake the plates.

This effectively turns the battery into its own ultrasonic cleaning bath. Have recovered battery's with this and it works very well
8)

</SMUG>
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http://www.minievolution.com/

MalcolmB
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Postby MalcolmB » Wed Apr 02, 2008 10:43 pm

Oy, Mr Smug
Good to hear your lead revivifier actually works ... not that I ever had the slightest doubt of course. 8) How long does it take? How much improvement in capacity have you seen ... and how much do you want for a 50 per cent share of all profits?

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MaryRCrumpton
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Postby MaryRCrumpton » Thu Apr 03, 2008 7:09 am

Well, naturally he'll be donating all the profits to the BVS!

;-)

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qdos
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Postby qdos » Thu Apr 03, 2008 9:30 am

Tesla's fag packet wrote:<SMUG>
Some time ago i designed a charger for the mini that uses ultrasonic pulses to charge the lead acid battery's, the ultrasonic pules are a PWM using the CI CV and float charge scheme. But the secret is to use a VERY fast discharge pulse after the charge pulse to shake the plates.

This effectively turns the battery into its own ultrasonic cleaning bath. Have recovered battery's with this and it works very well
8)

</SMUG>


Ultrasonics ..... Hmmm now if this was dated 1st April..........

I kinda did it much more simply myself with a varied random charge and discharge cycling over a few weeks. It worked and very quietly too :wink:

hyve
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battery rescue

Postby hyve » Fri Apr 04, 2008 8:23 am

http://www.marine-electronics.net/techarticle/battery_faq/b_faq.htm#12 gives a very detailed coverage of lead acid battery sulfation and rescue, without trying to sell anybody anything. Worth looking at.
Peter Ph

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ChrisB
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Postby ChrisB » Sat Apr 05, 2008 12:53 pm

Theres loads of articles on electronic gadgets that you can hook up to batteries or washing out of cells or adding dopes to cells etc etc but I've always found just a long slow charge seems to work just as well on a battery that is able to be recovered.

The thing is you can have two types of sulphated liquid PB batteries, a new battery that has just been left in an uncharged state and an old battery which has been left in an un-charged state. Also how long the battery has been left in this state and the type of battery i.e flat plate

Lets take the new battery, generally I've found that a long slow charge will recover them to a reasonable level and sometimes back to pretty much normal. If the battery wont actually accept a charge then I've found dropping a bit of electrolyte from a fully charged battery is enough to get things moving without the voltage going over the top. While the sulphate causes quite a bit of expansion a new battery I've found they can cope with this sort of abuse.

An old battery though is generally a different ball game alltogther, for starters its plates will be a lot more fradgile and suffer hugely from the expansion due to the sulphate crystals this can cause them to crack and fracture particularly near the tops of the cells, if this has happened then without actually stripping a battery apart you have no chance of ever recovering the cells/battery, I've recovered batteries like this and they appear to be fine showing healthy spec. gravity readings and good voltages, everything seems fine except when you go to load them up and then it all goes pear shaped :cry: they are still fine for low levels of discharge and they work fine for that but you just cant pull any high levels of current off them any more.
Also you've got the issue with older batteries of sediment build up in the bottom of the cell causing more issues.
Active material loss off the plates which again causes further issues.

I think because there are so many ways a PB battery can fail this is why you see so many different views on these vairouse recovery ideas and gadgets and why some appear to work and some dont.

The only way would be to carry out some very carefully recorded tests on some very carefully chosen test subjects that are very much in a known condition, but this would take lots of time and considerable resources I would think.

ChrisB
I reject reality and substitute my own !!!!!!


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