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Re: [PSUBS-MAILIST] batteries
At 1906 -0600 02/10/0, Subscuba@aol.com wrote:
>If you could find some Ni Cads in someone's garage I would sure be
>interested. The problem is that the cells appear to go bad, in part, due to
>carbonation of the Potassium and Lithium Hydroxide electrolyte. I read
>articles about 35 year old Ni Cad wet cells that exceeded their original
>capacity after replacement of the electrolyte. They do still have the gas
>evolution problem plus the alkaline electrolyte eats the hell out of aluminum.
>
>You know anybody with large capacity Ni Cads??
Hmm, this is all very interesting. Yes. My girlfriend's dad bought a photovoltaic setup they've never used, in the late 80's. It includes a kinghell pile of these reconditioned Ni-Cd batteries. The individual cells are like I dunno, 18 inches high and skinny little rectangles viewed from the top, with white-translucent plastic cases. It seems like there were ten, enough to make a 12V battery, which were damaged in shipping and he got replacements for. The ones with cracked cases are still sitting around all shoe-gooed up and missing a bunch of electrolyte. A friend of mine also has this set of "telephone company" batteries, also Ni-Cd, with the cells in cool-looking metal cases, and the whole works in wooden crates.
Actually, now that I go and describe them, it all sounds pretty scary to get inside a sub with. Especially when compared to the tidy cleanliness of driving home from WalMart with sealed off-the-shelf gel batteries.
But I have wondered if the battery part of the system is still viable after sitting all these years discharged.
--
David
Osage MN USA
buchner@wcta.net - http://customer.wcta.net/buchner