Re: [PSUBS-MAILIST] Compressed air battery? Homemade lead-acid?

[David Buchner <buchner@wcta.net>]

On Tuesday, Jan 7, 2003, at 23:45 US/Central, Nero Wolfe wrote:

> Compressed air scares me... I've had two very scary experiences with 
> hpa...  And from my understanding i'ts not quite as efficant as 
> storing energy in a battery.
>
> though this homemade lead-acid battery deal seems to be a viable 
> option.  Two big worrys though.  Hydrogen production.  Otherwise...  
> making them can't be more expensive than buying them.  And heck we 
> could probaly get better cell density if we define what shape the 
> cells are ;-)

I seriously doubt one could home-make a battery that would be useful 
and cheap enough to make all the dinking around with it worthwhile 
(other than being able to say "I made it myself," of course). Battery 
manufacture seems like one of those things that has enough investment 
in it, research and equipment and other capital, by the those actually 
in the business, that we're better off picking an off-the-shelf 
product. [insert rant about "I'm so delighted to be living here and 
now, in this bountiful capitalist economic system, where I don't have 
to reinvent all these amazing things, because somebody already went out 
and invested all the research and mass-manufactured them, and all I 
have to do is plunk down some money and BUY them! Wow!" here...  :-)   
...]

There are lots of kinds of deep cycle batteries available -- what 
characteristics would you be looking for that couldn't be met by 
selecting one of those many fine products?

  My only interest (other than just being silly, that is) in the 
homemade battery discussion/experimenting was in learning a bit more 
about battery chemistry. I sure wish somebody would post a picture of 
the inside of his sub, with big red and black 2/0 cables sticking out 
of a grapefruit...


David
buchner@wcta.net
Osage, MN, USA
http://customer.wcta.net/buchner