Electronic Desulphators - do they work?

[Mac]

I can charge them and they retain approx 12.4 Volts for a day or so and then slowly drop off over a week. They do not seem to approach anything like their C20 rate.

I was wondering if the electronic pulse desulphators actually work or if I am reduced to scrapping my batteries?

Thanks for any help or advice.

Cheers

Andrew

[Psycogeek]

The OPINION part

seems like some of it is FM, fricking magic.

basically no one has made a bad battery act like NEW

alegedly 1/2 the ones out there are BS

 and dont even have electronics that would DO anything

Sometimes if you FOLLOW the manuel of a placebo it works (huh?)

take a sugar pill with 2 glasses of water, you will fell better.

but dont follow the manuel and just take the pill, and you wont.

take a sugar pill with a good attitude, and you will have a better attitude

if your happy and think your well adjusted , then your healthier (less stress and all)

Charging overcharging a battery de-sulphates (at least some)

keeping a battery wet and recharged helps it

if a placebo has you tending and maintaining, then it works :-)

cleaning the stuff that discharges it

hygrometer checking it, lets you know more

replacing the batteries out of discust, makes them work great

adding a placebo to a new battery will make it last for Years :-)

Sulfating isnt the ONLY problem with older batteries

especially ones with little lead.

there is shorting, and general falling apart

Some Psudo Facts

pulse charging, makes metal electrolyte batteries last longer

pulse charging can improve a bad battery , till its totally dead

Because batteries are like HUGE arse capacitors for low frequency stuff

it is unlikely that a high frequency pulse is any more effective

than normal pulse charging.

SO

i kinda liked most the circuit HERE that somone posted for pulse charging

with hard hitting caps, and am presentally testing it, with good results

(ok so its MY placebo :-)

[Psycogeek]

ahh there is more, but i shouldnt go into it, because i am still testing

but i forgot this

pulsing doesnt:

overheat or overcharge as much when slamming the battery, depending totally on the pulse, but putting less in does the same (and pulsing puts less in)  but it is different than trickle charging, which is more like JUST undoing self-discharge.

and it also is more like overcharging, without boiling off.

anyways i hope you see the logic in some of that.

move the metal back, desulphate , without torture.

[KHB1]

Do a Google search on Battery EDTA, read www.scimweb.com/reports/battery.html  Lots of other sites also. This site has some people using EDTA search here too see what members say.  www.oshun.ca/  is selling EDTA $11 1/2kg   best of luck KHB1

[wooferhound]

Here are some links about batteries and reviving them

Battery and Desulfator Discussions

http://p198.ezboard.com/bleadacidbatterydesulfation

Battery Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

http://uuhome.de/william.darden/carfaq.htm

Links to Battery information

http://www.uuhome.de/william.darden/batlinks.htm#solar

[Kwazai]

only success I ever had with 'shot' batteries was by sticking them in the freezer for two hours- lasted a few weeks (like new performance) and then back to dying quickly overnight. just my .02$.

Mike

[Aelric]

Just wanted to throw in a link I saw

http://www.homepower.com/magazine/downloads_batteries.cfm

There is a pdf in there for a battery desulfator, uses a pulse charge the author claims it works.  I have never tried it but there is a full schematic in there :-) might be worth a shot plus it wouldn't be nearly as expensive as the commercial premade things industrial america tells us are good, and that we must give them all our money LOL.

[Psycogeek]

Crasy man rebuilds batteries :-)

FROM: http://members.optusnet.com.au/~weza/

(additional disclaimer , sulpheric acid burns, and its not nessisarily a fast process, if you get that stuff on your skin, and dont netralize it , the smaller damage can show 2-3 days Later even.)

says

Yep that's right - you can rebuild lead acid batteries.

Lead acid batteries can die from a number of causes but no matter what the cause they can be rebuilt.

According to all the battery manufactures and other sources of information I have read - the leading cause of battery death is due to sulfation (Although I have never seen one). The second cause is shorted cells (I have seen heaps of these).

The third is cell interconection failure due to corrosion (I have also seen a few of these).

Other causes are excessive top up with contaminated water, broken casings and general old age.

In my experience every failure I have seen can be attributed to anodic corrosion. The positive plates have simply corroded away.

i thought it was interesting that he thinks the biggest problem aint sulfation.

I dont think i will be trying to make batteries this week.

[nothing to lose]

I took a bunch of batteries and pulse charged them with a store bought charger with the  desulfate mode. It seemed to work well.

Out of 10 big trojan deep cycles I got 6 back that worked very well. How bad these actually were I am not sure, some would not charge well nor hold it any amount of time, and a couple read 6V when I got them. These 6 I have been using alot and they have been working very good.

4. more I have only show 2-4 Volts still, pulsed a few times, but I haven't been pulsing those for along time now since I got busy with a remote house and have to keep charging the good ones I am using. These 4 take a charge, but loose it pretty quick and settle to low volts.
   
1. 12V deep cycle appeared to be shot, after pulse charging it for several days or more it now starts my 1 ton truck with a 460ci engine, and this truck is often hard to start and barely runs, lots of cranking. Battery is not like new, but very good, and it did nothing when I got it.
   
   

Over all, I would say pulse charging is worth trying. Basically I got several hundred dollars worth of useable batteries at only 8 cents a pound (scrap price). Maybe they aren't quite as good as new ones, but they are well worth keeping for awhile longer.

I had decent results with others also, but again I only had one charger and needed it for 40 amp charging of working batteries and have not pulsed any for awhile now.

[Psycogeek]

I dont have any more RESULTS from pulse charging myself, but here are some more IDEAS.

i made a (very simple) curcuit from a 555 timer, that switches a relay on and off

i was able to make it do a simple 1.5 second on, 1.5 second off pulse , that would disconnect the charge and reconnect it.

add in a capacitor on the relay switching to reduce the damage to the relay contacts, even though there is little voltage differential this might keep the relay alive longer.

then i realized, when i set this to work on my solar cell stuff i would be Losing 1/2 of my power , what a waste.

luckily it was a DPDT relay (can switch 2 things), so i got my head out of my behind, and started pulsing 2 sets of battereis with the same curcuit.

this might be important to these big battery bank things, that you could hit with a 60AMP pulse , and they would just look around and wonder where the mosquito was :-)

i really think that the pulse needs to incurr a reaction in the battery, not a trickle charge.  so EACH 450A battery would need something like a 10-20A hit.

i dont know anything about your big huge batteries, the biggest i have now is a 100A deep discharge marine, that is probably just a advanced auto battery.

and i dont know how a relay would be smacking 20A around.

so this is just information, and mabey has no value to the sizes the rest of you use.

but for MY uses , i think i found a way to pulse without losing 50% of the juice, i only loose the time between the relay positions.

i also dont know about how dropping the load on solar cells works.