Homebrewed Electricity > Storage

Making large PLANTE lead acid Batteries.

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clockmanFRA:
I have transferred my reply to 'joestue' to a new thread topic here.

Bruce, this may be a long topic as i have stuff started but cant give it all my time as i have hundreds of other tasks i need to get sorted, but i will report as i go.

 Although it might be a year or two, unless i get a little more investment money, the wife! to shift things forward a bit quicker. 

clockmanFRA:
Joestue,

I have been practically experimenting with the PLANTE battery components over the past 20 years. A PLANTE battery is all lead plates. I have experimented with lead, zinc, lead, zinc but its a hassle and zinc so easily distorts with any heat.

I have dismantled and had a 'look see' and repaired different standard commercial designs and types.

Most use a lead matrix grid system and imbedded a paste mix of some very unpleasant chemical pastes. The lead matrix is pure lead but only makes up about 1/3 rd of the battery weight, its the lead oxides chemical pastes that make up the rest.

Now i have seen a utube vid, a year back cant find it now,  of a backstreet company in India recycling commercial manufactured lead acid batteries. Crap! man, all very fascinating, but hell life expectancy and breeding a family is not very good in that environment.
They remove the plates and get everything off them back to the lead matrix grid.  The pastes are re-constituted, although this was not fully explained, and in a remade soft putty paste form re applied to the lead matrix grids and allowed to set. Then the battery is re-assembled into new cases.
The other day i received one of these, and was told by a French supplier it was New and high quality etc etc, Just under one sticker/badge, put on by the French retailer, was a stamp mark 'Made In India'.   I tested it with my battery test gear, and it had only 50% of the amperage capacity of a proper new, new commercial battery of the same size and case design. Yep it was one of the India recycled types.

As for just taking a battery and smelting it down. Nope could not recommend that concept.

For a good PLANTE battery i am going to use Uk industrial Lead roof flashing that comes in rolls of various thicknesses and widths. Its not  PURE, PURE lead in the true chemical sense of purity but its acceptable.

I do have smooth rollers to crush down to a specified thickness. Again this thickness depends on hanging lead sheets and seeing them distort and sag over time to optimise for the case length of a completed PLANTE 2 v cell at 50kg, and at the moment best i can achieve is 1.7mm thick, so this area needs a allot of thought.
 Each plate will get a thinnish Polypropylene woven material sock so the plates can be tightly packed into the case so there would be minimal use of Sulphuric acid 15 to 1 mix, and this tight packing would be similar to a true AGM structured cell with the glass matt cell separators. Although not as tight as a commercial AGM as these tend to bulge and crack the cases at the end of there life.
 Then there is the possible need for polypropylene plate comb separators at the plates base and at the top to avoid distortion contact between the main Plus and negative Bus bars.  Most AGM's, the ones i have had apart, cells fail on this as the cell ages it raises 7mm, and there is only a manufactured clearance of 10mm, and that cell is then toast.

Anyways, a fair bit to sort out in many parameters to get to a Do It Yourself PLANTE battery of 50kgs at 2 volts and about 400ah and publish a DIY book.

 Yes I do have chemical fume cabinets and even a chemical room so i can do most stuff on experimentation in a safe manner.

Bruce S:
ClockmanFRA;
Thank YOU for taking the extra time post this much information about a long term interest.
This statement "Yes I do have chemical fume cabinets and even a chemical room so i can do most stuff on experimentation in a safe manner." was very good to see as well. Had I not read it here , I would've certainly asked.

I've seen the u_tube posts showing how the batteries are torn down. Similar to this is "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l665eovBlEk"

Bruce S

Astro:
Clockman

I too heard a suggestion about using roofing lead. But I too am the type who likes to build something that lasts. Not saying roofing lead wouldn't, idk, like I said I have not looked into it much. Even a roll of that stuff is not cheap.
I am not sure if he is still around, but I used to sell my scrap copper to a 1 man shop not terribly far from where I live now.  He smelted as well. Seems to me that someone I was talking to many years ago said they bought smelted lead from him that they were making fishing sinkers out of. Well anyway, I do not know, but without some higher tech smelting operation, it would be chocked full of impurities. You know, that might be a good thing and make the battery perform better then any other on the planet, or it might make it junk. Problem is unless you know exactly what is in the lead and have all your plates of equal compound make up, you will not know what you started with.
Similar things have happened to me before. Something works great, but I am not exactly sure why and since I do not know why, I can't or have a hard time repeating it.
All that leads me back to what I mentioned when I first got here, when I said that I am not a big fan of "do it yourself youtube videos" Because the people that watch them have no idea of why something must ne done a certain way. They are like they are at McDonalds and just want their food. They fast forward and just try to skip to the answer without learning anything.
Anyway, best of luck it whatever you work on. Sometimes I think half the fun is not the I did it moment, but the getting to that moment that is so much fun.
 

Mary B:
NEVER attempt to smelt down a modern car battery! The plates are not pure and the released chemicals are a heavy gas similar to WWII gases and deadly. And the resulting lead if melted again can be deadly because the chemicals carry over! Arsine and stribine are the 2 main ones formed. Very good discussion of it here https://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?138362-Why-Car-Batteries-Are-Dangerous

The  commercial lead recyclers have fume hoods and ways to neutralize the bad stuff that gets released.

Yes guys used to do it many years ago, batteries were made different back then and were mostly pure lead plates. Battery tech has changed and now it is NOT healthy to mess with it!

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