Author Topic: Salting batteries with Na2SO3  (Read 1279 times)

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dnix71

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Salting batteries with Na2SO3
« on: May 23, 2012, 11:09:27 PM »
I have a bank of hybrid marine deep/start flooded lead acid batteries. The ones I bought originally lasted two years and then went flat. That's about the realistic life (700 cycles), so I can't say they didn't work as advertised, but it's way too expensive to continue that way, so I bought Na4 EDTA and Na2SO3 from eBay and tried salting the second set to see if it helped. The second set was used for about a year before they were salted.

The tetrasodium edta ruined two of the batteries by shorting out one cell. One of those shorted batteries was allowed to sit for several months and was revived by repeated charging, but it failed again same way when I added the sulfite to it. All the rest have done just fine. The brand of battery seems to make a lot of difference. The ones I bought from Pep Boys didn't last long, but the brand from Advance Auto have.

The EDTA lowered the resting voltage but in the long run didn't seem to increase capacity. The sulfite also lowered the resting voltage but has actually boosted the capacity, after a month of cycling. I was about the ditch the whole bank and go with something else and then I noticed the capacity begin to return.

If I just get 4 years of daily use from a battery then it's well worth the time and expense of sulfite salting. But I'm allergic to MSG and apparently sulfites as well. I had an upper-body hive rash for a week after doing the salting. It didn't itch but I looked like I had the measles from the waist up. Last time I had a rash like that was a reaction to some flea cream I put on my cat. It warned not to get it on you, but the cat like to sleep on my pillow and next to me at night so I wore long sleeves to work for a week so as not to look contagious.