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[PSUBS-MAILIST] Battery Desulfation
Hello All,
I have been doing some research on ways of extending lead-acid batter
life, or in some cases, bringing a "dead" battery back to useful
life. Reading the literature, it seems that the biggest culprit of battery
failure is lead sulfate crystals forming on the battery plates. Even
batteries with a constant trickle charge suffer from sulfation.
What I have seen on the net seems very interesting. There appears to
be two methods of dealing with sulfation. The first involves a variety of
different types of chargers that pulse the battery with a high-current
spike causing the natural resonate frequency of the battery to be driven
much like plucking a guitar string. This resonate action causes the
sulfate crystals to break lose and fall free of the plates. Another method
employs a complex organic salt, most simply called EDTA, to be added to
each cell. This material pulls the lead out of the sulfate allowing the
crystals to go back into solution.
I have ordered some EDTA and plan to test it in two of my sub
batteries. I have also constructed a simple electronic desulfator (not my
design) that I found on the net. It seems to be working from preliminary
testing but I have not see what it can do on a battery to increase its stamina.
If anyone is interested I suggest looking at the follow sites. If you
scroll down and look for the "original article" from home power magazine,
the schematics should be there.
Electronic Desulfator shown below:
http://www.phantombooks.com/desulf.htm
Some articles on EDTA are shown below:
http://www.kopico.com/y2k/edta_specs.htm
http://www.webspawner.com/users/trailheadsupply/
http://pureresearch.co.uk/
Please note that I am NOT endorsing EDTA or the desulfator shown in
the articles. I have no idea if they have a downside or if they are even
effective, but if you have a sub or plan to have one, you might want to
read some of the literature. I plan to make some more posts when I know more.
Gary Boucher