[PSUBS-MAILIST] Lead-Acid Oil-Filled Batteries and Catalysts

[SFreihof@aol.com]

Don't get confused.  A barrel of oil, with no air, will not sink to the Titanic.  Oil is lighter than water and will float, not sink.

Hydrocaps are a catalyst which should not change the pressure in the battery pod.  The catalyst simply combines hydrogen gas and oxygen gas to form water, without the explosion characteristic of this exothermic reaction.  I suggested to you that another reaction may be causing the pressure drop. I suspect some oxygen (O2) is being tied up in PbO2: 
Pb + O2 ---> PbO2
but that's a guess.

Relevant chemical reactions:

Pb + 2H2SO4 + PbO2 <---- Charging    2PbSO4 + 2H2O
                    Discharging---->

Hydrolysis:  2H2O ----> 2H2  +  O2

I'm not sure why a vacuum happens, but knowing that it happens enables you to plan for it if you intend to use hydrocaps.

Stan

In a message dated 2/1/2005 12:59:16 AM Eastern Standard Time, "Akins" <lakins1@tampabay.rr.com> writes:

>Thanks for correcting me on that Stan. For some reason I interpreted writings here as meaning the water floated atop the acid in a seperate layer. Good to know my first notion was correct after all.
>
>I already understood that the oil filled pod stopped any water pressure as in your baloon analogy below. Learned that a long time ago. Drop a barrel totally filled with oil and no air into the ocean and it will sink to the titanic with no water pressure
>
>affecting it. Water-uncompressable. Oil-uncompressable. Ergo--no water pressure effect on totally oil filled container.
>
>But what I do not understand and need help on is this....
>
>How EXACTLY does that vacuum that Vance and others mentioned form in a battery pod if you are using hydrocaps? If the hydrocaps are having to rob the ambient air in the pod for oxygen to create water because there is not enough oxygen from the original seperation of the water into hydrogen and oxygen for them to totally recombine again, then where did that originally seperated oxygen go and whereever it went, what is it doing?
>
>I believe someone mentioned it somehow formed an oxide? But they only briefly mentioned it and did not elaborate. Is this correct? If it is, then what happens to make the oxygen bond and get trapped making an oxide so that it can't recombine with the hydrogen? Does ALL of the oxygen that was seperated go into making an oxide, or is any of it left to recombine with the hydrogen? I have to know this before I can understand why the vacuum forms.
>
>Thanks Stan.
>Kindest Regards,
>Bill Akins.
>
>
>  ----- Original Message -----
>  From: SFreihof@aol.com
>  To: personal_submersibles@psubs.org
>  Sent: Tuesday, February 01, 2005 4:11 PM
>  Subject: Re: [PSUBS-MAILIST] Psubs-for-Dummies
>
>
>  Hang in there Bill, you were right before...
>
>  The water and the acid are mixed... They do not form separate layers in the battery.  When I refer to the water in the battery, I am referring to dilute sulfuric acid.  Water mixes with the acid and dilutes it.
>
>  In an oil-filled lead acid battery, the oil floats on the dilute acid....
>
>  This is not a complex concept.  Take a balloon and fill it with air.  Take it 10 feet underwater.  The balloon will shrink because the water pressure compresses the air inside until the air pressure inside the balloon equals the water pressure outside.  Boyle's law, pressure and volume of a gas:  since the pressure is more, the volume is less.  Now take an identical balloon and fill it with water.  Submerge it 100 feet underwater and it doesn't get any smaller because the increased pressure doesn't compress the water.
>
>  Now, instead of a balloon, think of a battery box...filled with lead, acid, and oil, all non-compressible materials...
>
>  Stan
>
>



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