Author Topic: Desulfator. can bobbin inductors be used instead of toroid (Read 8004 times)

DragonFly III · « **on:** July 13, 2010, 08:41:43 PM »

i was just curious if bobbin inductors can be used instead of toroidial

tecker · « **Reply #1 on:** July 14, 2010, 03:16:55 AM »

I don't think so the toroid will give a spike that get choked down by the over wind of a standard coil .

DragonFly III · « **Reply #2 on:** July 14, 2010, 08:17:44 AM »

Thank you for your response. I kinda figured since I haven't really seen any with bobbins except for one. This one had a bobbin and I didn't even see the other inductor. If I can find that one again I will post a link. My electronics knowlege is limited to when I was in college back in 1995-96. I didn't finish and when I went to go back, most of what I knew was obsolete.

joestue · « **Reply #3 on:** July 14, 2010, 06:33:20 PM »

toroidal inductors have much lower leakage inductance over C core or E-I cores.
As such a typical iron transformer core will saturate with 1/10 or 1/100th what it would take with an air gap.
ferrite emi cores are the same, intended for use as a transformer or emi choke.
It is much easier to adjust the gap on a C core or E core, as this is an energy storage application.

DragonFly III · « **Reply #4 on:** July 14, 2010, 11:46:46 PM »

I so wish I understood what you said. I am actually the guy that can build it from nothing so I'm limited and have to take what I get.

I just recently started buying supplies for my current project, but don't exactly have a deep pocket and am steered to use what I got till I can't.

Flux · « **Reply #5 on:** July 15, 2010, 02:53:33 AM »

As long as you have the same inductance and it can carry the same dc level without saturating then any inductor will do but an air cored one will most likely have too much resistance. Gapped ferrite cores should be fine.

Toroids are generally better for transformers where you need high permeability with low flux linkage. For energy store inductors you need a small air gap in the core. Normal hard ferrites are not good as energy store inductors as they saturate with little dc current. Powdered iron cores have gaps within the particle structure and do work well as inductors.

I have no idea what was specified for your design but it was most likely a powdered iron toroid, you can replace it with a decent gapped ferrite core but some of the very small and cheap bobbin inductors will be too resistive and will probably have little inductance if you pass a significant dc current.

With a desulphator you are relying on recovering most of the stored energy from the inductor so you need a good quality one.

My personal view is that these things don't work anyway so if you make changes and find it doesn't work you will blame yourself, if you stick to the original you can blame someone else if it doesn't work.

Flux

tecker · « **Reply #6 on:** July 15, 2010, 05:33:00 AM »

Take a look at it in circuit . You have a circuit here in which the coil is in resonance . As far as desulphators go on battery banks you may or may not have the overall impedance configured with a circuit . I have yet to see a battery bank that a cap bridge circuit on line power can't overwhelm but you have to start with fairly new batteries .As the energy will finish off cells that are damaged .

joestue · « **Reply #7 on:** July 15, 2010, 08:19:49 AM »

Acquire a copy of John Bird's book "Electrical circuit theory and technology", and if/when you make it through the first 10 chapters it will all make sense to you.

TomW · « **Reply #8 on:** July 15, 2010, 08:23:56 AM »

Quote from: joestue on July 15, 2010, 08:19:49 AM

Acquire a copy of John Bird's book "Electrical circuit theory and technology", and if/when you make it through the first 10 chapters it will all make sense to you.

Nothing quite beats a bit of light reading before lights out!

Tom

DragonFly III · « **Reply #9 on:** July 15, 2010, 11:51:38 AM »

Wow. I gotta tell you guys. You just blew my mind.
In 94-95 I went to college for electronics Tech. It was an accelerated learning program. I tutored dc/ ac electronics and was student teacher. I also Tutored math 101. Oh and I never had lower than a 3.2 GPA. And that was only once. Any way, Why am I telling you this? Cause I forgot it all. Got sick almost died, had a nervous breakdown and now trying to rebuild for the last 15 yrs. Basically I guess what I am saying is that I pretty much only understand, yes they work or no they don't work, but at least I know where to go when I need the info. Sweet.

I recently used a lightbulb desulfator on several batteries. A jumpstart batt. was killed by me after being revived with the desulfator to the point that it ran a 100w motor for almost an hour on the first charge and increased with each additional charge. The other batt. was just scrap. The successful batteries were 26ah battery back up battery and 20 or so 12v 3.5amp emergency light batts.

The only plan with my current VAWT right now is to have a little bit of power for led lights when the power goes out. I have night blindness and carrying a flashlight around doesn't do it for me.

Ungrounded Lightning Rod · « **Reply #10 on:** July 15, 2010, 11:28:21 PM »

Quote from: DragonFly III on July 15, 2010, 11:51:38 AM

I recently used a lightbulb desulfator on several batteries. A jumpstart batt. was killed by me after being revived with the desulfator to the point that it ran a 100w motor for almost an hour on the first charge and increased with each additional charge.

Don't run 'em all the way down until the motor slows noticeably. That will kill 'em by yet another mechanism. Instead measure the voltage while you do this and shut it down when it reaches 11.75V or so.

DragonFly III · « **Reply #11 on:** July 16, 2010, 09:31:54 AM »

The Only reason I ran It till It slowed was cause I wanted to make sure I had cleaned it all. (or at least as much as I could. I read an article that said sometimes you need to run a revived battery down and then Hit it again with a dumb charger. I'm far from an expert on the subject, i can only go by what I learn on the internet. Being a beginner makes it hard to decide witch is fact and what is fiction till I either read a topic to death or from trial and error. If I kill a Batt. or 2, I will still learn a lot about the batteries and how to prevent the same mistake on batts that are worth while in the long run. These are small batteries. The biggest one I have right now is a 26ah battery backup batt. that I was able to revive. When I started it read around one volt. I know that everyone says that these are pointless to try, but I had nothing to lose. It actually turned out to be a positive experience.

Thank you to every one for the input. I don't know if anyone remembers the movie "Short Circuit" The Robot kept saying "need more input"...that's me.

DFIII

tecker · « **Reply #12 on:** July 17, 2010, 02:05:30 AM »

The internal design of the 26 ah sla is not really good for anything in my opinion It's good for maybe 10 full discharges . The reason ? the wading dries out . Stick with Flooded cells for your system tests .

DragonFly III · « **Reply #13 on:** July 17, 2010, 07:43:22 AM »

The only Thing i think I will be using that battery is for a little extra juice for say...Portable power for LED lighting When we go fishing or camping. I'm sure it can Handle that. I currently using 2 3.5 ah emergency light batteries and they last a while. Especially when I add an LED pwm controller.

DragonFly III · « **Reply #14 on:** July 17, 2010, 07:58:04 AM »

The battery is a GP12260

DragonFly III · « **Reply #15 on:** July 22, 2010, 09:51:22 AM »

I have several toroidal inductors from stripping PCBs. I have an electronics trainer which has a signal/frequency generator, it will produce square, triangle and sine waves. 1Hz - 100kHz+.
I'm not 100% sure yet but I believe it will go to 5v PP.

I have an oscilloscope (that i have long forgoten how to use but relearning)
also have a frequency counter on my multimeter.

how can i figure out the values and what do the different color cores mean

joestue · « **Reply #16 on:** July 22, 2010, 05:12:32 PM »

http://webpages.charter.net/dawill/tmoranwms/Elec_Magnetics.html
start here.

tecker · « **Reply #17 on:** July 23, 2010, 04:22:50 AM »

If the circuit is not under copyright post the circuit /link and we can zero in on the parameters .

DragonFly III · « **Reply #18 on:** July 23, 2010, 11:34:32 AM »

As in the circuit I use for testing?

joestue · « **Reply #19 on:** July 23, 2010, 08:08:02 PM »

no, the circuit you're trying to build.

DragonFly III · « **Reply #20 on:** July 23, 2010, 09:50:15 PM »

I am looking to build a desulfator. I found places that help you construct the inductors but they are very vane on the core or they send you to a site to buy them.
I have several different colors. most of them are all one color except for the face that is a different color. Is there a way to tell what core is what and then be able to measure them to find the inductance.

joestue · « **Reply #21 on:** July 25, 2010, 01:42:18 AM »

build the schematic in the web page i linked. all the necessary parts can be found in a typical switching power supply.

you can find the inductance by resonating the inductor with a capacitor, using the sine wave from your signal generator, as you have an oscope this will be rather easy.
however the inductance don't matter so much in this case. so that test is useless. if the desulphator is a typical boost or flyback type, then the schematic on Tim's website will be the most helpfull.

or you can just build the desulphator and via trial and error find a good number of turns.

the (typically) yellow mix 26 iron cores will work find but they only have a permeability of 20-50, so you might need to fill the entire thing with 18 awg wire to get any real power from them

DragonFly III · « **Reply #22 on:** July 28, 2010, 10:36:46 AM »

With the 18ga. wire do I lay them single or double layer.

DragonFly III · « **Reply #23 on:** July 28, 2010, 10:38:50 AM »

I do like my lightbulb desulfator cause it's saved quite a few batts but the point of this is to get away from using the power company and it's a 120v AC device. I like the Idea of not needing to plug it in, and not having to lug my batts around to get to an outlet.

joestue · « **Reply #24 on:** July 29, 2010, 01:22:48 AM »

Quote from: DragonFly III on July 28, 2010, 10:36:46 AM

With the 18ga. wire do I lay them single or double layer.

it don't matter

whoever is out there saying that double layer coils will suck up the power is full of $h*t
electrically the battery is a decent capacitor, and its not like you are trying to get Mv/usec anyway. at best you are going to hit double digit volts in 1-500nsec, depending on what you use to turn off the switch.

TomW · « **Reply #25 on:** July 29, 2010, 07:43:18 AM »

Quote from: joestue on July 29, 2010, 01:22:48 AM

whoever is out there saying that double layer coils will suck up the power is full of $h*t
electrically the battery is a decent capacitor, and its not like you are trying to get Mv/usec anyway. at best you are going to hit double digit volts in 1-500nsec, depending on what you use to turn off the switch.

Joe;

Sounds like another misapplication of "facts" from one application to another. Been there, done that myself.

Batteries are a strange beast as far as electrical theory is concerned. This confuses many folks.

Like we see a lot here. Just have to point them out so the uninitiated don't chase their tail on useless and wrong info.

Just an opinion.

Tom

DragonFly III · « **Reply #26 on:** July 29, 2010, 09:07:07 AM »

In the car audio world Caps and batteries are used to filter the power coming from the alternator. It allows the amps to pull the serieous power they need for those windiow shacking subs. With some people the jury is still out on witch is better. A 50 Farad cap cost several hundred dollars and works well as long as the bass beat isn't consistant and doesn't pull the power out faster than it's comming in. You can only put power in at the rate that an alternator can put it out. That's why in some systems witch don't include either a cap or batt. the lights in the car will dimm everytime a bass beat hits.

Batteries don't have the issue of not being full enough when the system is running because it stores much more energy and lets the power out more smoothly. In any competition system that is worth a damn will have multiple batteries in the back of the car, ussually some sort of deap cycle batteries. Auto batteries do not last long but do work.

Anyway
I was just putting in my 2 cents on batts and caps being different.

joestue · « **Reply #27 on:** July 29, 2010, 03:12:10 PM »

there's like 4 orders of magnitude difference, those caps are supporting a current greater than what the battery can handle for as much as a tenth of a second.
your desulphator is probably pushing single digit amps at a lot of volts for a few micro seconds.

one theory on how they work(if they do or not) is the sulphate that is not electrically conductive (gamma, as opposed to the alpha and beta forms of the crystal) can be recharged by sending current into it via the capacitive coupling between the crystal and the plate.

btw, and i've said this before elsewhere, the most efficient place to put those capacitors is on the 80-120 volt dc bus after the boost converters inside the audio amp, as the boost converter's losses follow the square of the current, if the caps can average out the bass beat it will require significantly less volume of capacitance, as the cap can discharge proportionally farther than can the 12 volt side.

DragonFly III · « **Reply #28 on:** August 03, 2010, 05:41:20 PM »

I found that I have a bunch of green/ blue torrioids kicking around. Any good.

DragonFly III · « **Reply #29 on:** August 11, 2010, 02:45:35 PM »

52 Mix (Green/Blue) DC-1 MHz, high perm. u=75

joestue · « **Reply #30 on:** August 12, 2010, 12:55:45 AM »

just do it. its not like you can blow them up or anything

feel free to send me the schematic you are using, i'll build it myself as well.
i've got a car battery that is a perfect candidate for testing a desulphator on.

DragonFly III · « **Reply #31 on:** August 13, 2010, 09:28:58 PM »

I haven't picked exactly which desulfator I am going to build cause there are a few versions out there. One thing about all of them that is the same is the inductors. Some are better explained than others but it doesn't seem hard to find a decent explanation on how to build it.

I'll search for the plans I have seen and post them here.

dnix71 · « **Reply #32 on:** August 13, 2010, 10:21:54 PM »

Sorry I'm late in this discussion, but why use an inductor? There are simple capacitive discharge desulfators based on HomePower magazine designs and others.

http://home.comcast.net/~ddenhardt201263/desulfator/desulf.htm This guy in th UK has kits for sale and some schematics posted on his site that you could download free and do it yourself. His standard warning at the end is that they are not FCC approved, which means they will cause radio interference unless properly shielded.

He also has plans for a STAMP operated smart desulfator and has posted the text of the program in Basic needed to run it.
http://home.comcast.net/~ddenhardt201263/desulfator/desulfparts.htm

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Author Topic: Desulfator. can bobbin inductors be used instead of toroid (Read 8004 times)