From: John De Armond Newsgroups: alt.energy.homepower,alt.energy.renewable,alt.solar.photovoltaic, rec.outdoors.rv-travel Subject: Re: Does the battery desulfators work? Message-ID: <vqna5v0hlckmgba210o88cpj7b3o79n296@4ax.com> Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 18:19:56 -0500 On Tue, 18 Feb 2003 23:12:47 GMT, "Norman Winters" <norman@norman.com> wrote: >Hi, there, > >Has anyone here run tests on those widely touted >de-sulfating pulse packs on *industrial* lead-acid batteries? >(the type which emit a very low-level but high-frequency current) > >they are advertised as "returning lost life due to battery sulfation" > >I've always said that if a battery is properly changed and >maintained that a pulse pack (even if it could breakdown sulfation) is >irrelevant >as the battery would not be sulfated in the first place Then you always said wrong. > >http://pub36.ezboard.com/bleadacidbatterydesulfation > >I'd appreciate any comments from anyone else who has run a similar >test. Yes, I've extensively tested both the design presented there and a commercial model (battery tender) in my lab. Both work as advertised, with this homemade design working better. I wrote a paper on the results of my research but given the current quality and ambience of RORT I decided to just keep my information to myself. From memory, a few bits of data. The Battery Tender took a shot Group 27 deep discharge battery from a measured 18 ah capacity to 86 ah after about 6 weeks of application. The capacity was measured using a computerized data acquisition system with the discharge rate controlled to C/20. Testing this homemade design on a completely shot (would not accept any charge) Group 24 deep discharge batter, 2 weeks of operation brought the capacity up to about 35 ah. This restoration did not last long after the pulser was removed but as long as the pulser operated, the capacity remained at that level. In both cases I operated the pulser until it showed no further improvement in capacity. Since the unit is very inexpensive and works as advertised, I see no reason not to install one on a new battery and let it do its thing from the very beginning. The only downside I can think of is the pulsing might generate enough EMI to interfere with TV or AM radio. I've personally seen no evidence of that. John From: John De Armond Newsgroups: alt.energy.homepower,alt.energy.renewable,alt.solar.photovoltaic, rec.outdoors.rv-travel Subject: Re: Does the battery desulfators work? Message-ID: <bi1e5v8h4gjmh9sd2g031ijvur2suse3tv@4ax.com> Date: Sat, 22 Feb 2003 04:09:46 -0500 On Thu, 20 Feb 2003 23:24:00 GMT, "Bob Peterson" <petersonra@aol.com> wrote: >In any case, was the battery able to be returned to normal service? Or was >it something that was so temporary that it was of little long term value? > In this particular case, the batteries were removed from service in my MH. I put them back in service on my computer room UPS. They're still there and working. I recently had a power outage that lasted most of the day. The batteries kept the systems up during that time. By my calculation this required about 50 ah which indicates that the batteries are still in pretty good shape. In other testing I'm seeing evidence that the battery will fairly rapidly revert to sulfation if the pulser is disconnected. But it appears that the fix is "permanent" as long as the pulser is left on the battery. No big deal because the pulser has no effect on normal operation. I don't have enough evidence yet to state the above as fact but the indications are strong. John From: John De Armond Newsgroups: alt.energy.homepower,alt.energy.renewable,alt.solar.photovoltaic, rec.outdoors.rv-travel Subject: Re: Does the battery desulfators work? Message-ID: <ijqf5v8v8ssa61edh2kft12qma0b28crcn@4ax.com> Date: Sat, 22 Feb 2003 16:33:17 -0500 On Sat, 22 Feb 2003 17:42:07 GMT, "Bob Peterson" <petersonra@aol.com> wrote: >One would be inclined to believe that battery chargers would be made with >the pulse technology built in. Modern electronics makes this kind of thing >dirt cheap. I wonder why its not? Possible reasons: a) they are. You just don't (yet, perhaps) find 'em at Wal-mart. The Battery Minder is a little trickle charger and pulser. About $45 at $CW$, Northern Tool, etc. Larger ones are available from reputable companies on the net. b) Consumer battery chargers are commodoties. Adding pulse circuits would add significant cost. c) Given the endless combinations of electronics found in cars and the possibilities for interference from the pulser, and given the woeful technical ignorance of the typical consumer and given the lawyer plague this country is currently suffering with, I don't imagine many consumer grade manufacturers are beating a path toward built-in pulsers. The one consumer-grade unit that I know of, the Battery Minder, is such a mild pulser that interference is unlikely. That also means it takes weeks to work and probably won't work on badly sulfated batteries where a more powerful one would. d) The pulsing won't work in all cases and the instances where it won't are not yet well defined. Given the conditions in item C, no one is going to risk the warranty exposure or the possibility of a "60 minutes" confrontation for a consumer product. e) Many of the companies that market battery chargers also market batteries. It would be very counterproductive to market something that would cut into the new battery market. From: John De Armond Newsgroups: rec.outdoors.rv-travel Subject: Re: Battery Life Saver Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2003 01:48:18 -0400 Message-ID: <74npovklgnl5rhmcvnh6c7g6ncp7c5ahq2@4ax.com> The pulse desulphators do work. Without wasting too much time on this site, I can just guess how overpriced this thing is, given the hype. A pulse desulphator that I've tested extensively in my lab is the BatteryMinder: http://www.vdcelectronics.com/batteryminder.htm This is available from Northern Tool and $CW$ for under $50. It works as advertised. In one test where I took a defunct Group 27 battery that tested out at under 20 amp-hours on my discharge tester, after 3 weeks of pulsing it returned to almost 80 amp-hours. That is while discharging at the C/10 rate. The recovery leveled off after about 3 weeks. I should note that the battery fairly quickly reverted to a deteriorated state when the pulser was removed. As long as the pulser remained, however, the battery's recovered capacity remained useable. That is, the battery could be charged and that much energy recovered during discharge. I'm currently doing a long term test on the device to see if it will prevent the deterioration of a new battery. This test will of necessity take several years. Stay tuned. Meanwhile, if you don't want to pay $50 for the device, here is a place to start for a DIY one. http://shaka.com/~kalepa/desulf.htm Lots of good information and plenty of links to elsewhere to follow. At my urging a friend recently built the low power pulser described at this site and has observed better results than with the battery minder. To be expected, since the homemade one delivers more energetic pulses than the Battery Minder. His test was simple: Old battery would not run his trolling motor before, it will after. I'll put it in my computerized discharge tester when he's finished experimenting and see how well it worked. Meanwhile my friend is now in the process of building the high power version. For more information I suggest scanning the patent database at uspto.gov. Search for "battery desulphator". There are scads of patents for these devices, most of the patents involving complications to get around the earlier patents. The patents have better than average usefulness as a result. John On Sun, 12 Oct 2003 12:46:05 -0700, "Deano" <happycamper22@hotmail.com> wrote: >Anybody here ever use this product, "Battery Life Saver" on your RV battery? >Seems like a pretty good way to extend battery life. Information shows these >can be used on RV/Marine batteries too. > >http://www.battery-rechargeable-charger.com/car-auto-battery-life-saver.html > > >Deano > From: John De Armond Newsgroups: rec.outdoors.rv-travel Subject: Re: Golf cart batteries Date: Fri, 02 Dec 2005 14:34:54 -0500 Message-ID: <8d71p15e889ank9q0829et6in2nbe9r2m5@4ax.com> On Fri, 02 Dec 2005 15:13:25 GMT, "Rich256" <nospam@nospam.net> wrote: >That was just a response to your comment: > >"It requires high voltage for a period of time to break down the >hard sulfate and get charging current going again." > >I think that is what an equalization charge is all about. It does what you >say in bringing back more of the original capacity. No. An equalizing charge is designed to bring every cell back to the fully charged state. The weaker cells in a string normally limit the overall charge because they let the voltage rise to the chargers cutoff (in the case of smart chargers) or regulation point (in the case of dumb chargers) before the stronger cells are charged. The cells can be weak for a number of reasons. Hard sulphate. Loss of active material. Weak electrolyte (from, say, splashing a little baking soda in the cell during "maintenance"). Maybe a combination of these. The hard sulfate only partially obscures the cell's active material. That's why the cell is weak and not dead. The stronger cells will gradually become weaker because they never get a full charge and thus the spongy sulphate has the opportunity to grow crystals of hard sulfate. An equalizing charge starts with a nominally fully charged battery. It consists of a current limited over-voltage charge. Most of the energy is dissipated as heat and in electrolyzing water (gassing). The most fully charged cells gas first, allowing the others to catch up. The extended overcharge will convert some/most of the hard sulfate back into active material. The vigorous gas evolution in the plates will open the pores at the expense of shedding some active material. It won't address weak electrolyte - the owner has to do that after taking post-equalizing SG readings. In contrast, a high voltage recovery regime addresses a completely dead, hard sulfated battery. When a discharged battery is allowed to sit, the spongy lead sulfate crystallized to hard sulfate. Under the microscope, the surface of the active material looks somewhat like the inside of a geode. Crystal sulfate is an insulator so essentially no current will flow. One can apply 100 volts or more to a hard sulfated battery and see very little current flow. The extended application of high voltage causes a little current to flow through the cracks and gaps in the sulfate surface. This flow cause some of the sulfate to convert back to active material. This lets more current flow which in turn converts more material. This appears to be an exponential process as one would expect. The low current slowly ramps up until some point where it quickly rises toward infinity. At that point, the battery is still essentially fully discharged but it is now ready to start accepting a more normal charge. There is still a lot of hard sulfate in place so the battery impedance is still high and it won't accept a lot of current. Several days' worth of slow charging is necessary. A desulfating pulser will speed things along. A charger with an "equalizing" mode can be used in this application because all that equalizing involves is jacking up the voltage while limiting the current. But an even higher voltage still greatly speeds the process. I've found 24 volts to be a good compromise between speed and having to watch the thing closely. John From: John De Armond Newsgroups: rec.outdoors.rv-travel Subject: Re: Battery Questions Date: Sat, 17 Mar 2007 13:58:51 -0400 Message-ID: <9qaov2ll5qmelov5kbgv21n9fk2sud89pa@4ax.com> On Sat, 17 Mar 2007 10:59:10 -0400, John Kinney <jwkinney@smoke-island.com> wrote: >I don't know, but Vector recommends the following device for batteries >which resist reconditioning by the charger itself: > >http://www.battery-rechargeable-charger.com/why-battery-life-saver.html Bad case of trademark infringement. The REAL Battery Minder costs under $50 and works. This infringer probably works too because they both do the same thing but the trademark infringement certainly is confusing. http://www.northerntool.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/product_6970_200332201_20033 The Northern link is just for reference. I'm pretty sure I've seen this same product for less than $40. Not to be confused with the same company's Battery Tender, a charger without the pulser. And the place to read all about desulfators, buy a kit or build your own from scratch. http://www.shaka.com/~kalepa/desulf.htm From: John De Armond Newsgroups: rec.outdoors.rv-travel Subject: Re: PING NJ desulfator Date: Wed, 27 Aug 2008 11:45:58 -0400 Message-ID: <g4sab4hu9hjpl098pnh62bqshs0csq00cc@4ax.com> On Wed, 27 Aug 2008 08:05:18 -0700, Mickey <mickey@webster.com> wrote: >I think this was discussed some time back but not sure. > >What's your take on battery desulfators? Do they work? > >Don't have time to build one myself so was thinking of a commercial >unit. I see they can be had for as little as $25 and go up from there. > Any comments on the commercial units? Yes. I've tested two. One is the Battery Minder (or Tender, I can't recall which is which, anyway, the one with the pushbutton in the center) and one built from plans from this website that is now deceased. http://shaka.com/~kalepa/desulf.htm (still available at the Wayback Machine) This page is still live and has some of his work on it. http://www.dallas.net/~jvpoll/Battery/PerformanceDoc23/PerformanceDocumentation_Un Both worked as advertised. The one that I built is much more powerful than the Battery Minder but the BM (heheh) does work. In the test I applied it to an old Group 27 battery that had been sitting around for a couple of years. Some folks allege that merely doing a long term charge will bring 'em back. After several weeks of sitting on a dumb charger adjusted to equalize voltage, it tested out at 20 amp-hours and didn't improve over several cycles. I put the BM on and left it for a couple of days. The improvement, if any, was statistically insignificant. As I do more often than I should, when I get an adverse result from an experiment, I tend to walk away, at least for awhile. That's what I did in this case. I shoved the battery with the BM attached under the bench and forgot about it. About 3 weeks later I thought about the battery and hooked it to my discharge tester. Amazingly enough, it now registered right at 80 amp-hours. Essentially new. Most batteries that I've actually discharge-tested have their capacity over-stated. I did some more experimenting with the battery and found something curious. As long as a maintenance charger remained attached, the battery maintained its capacity. It could be discharged and recharged as normal. But if allowed to sit idle for awhile, it lost much of its recovered capacity. Not stored energy but the ability to store energy. I have no idea why, though I speculate that maybe the pores in the hard sulfate that pulsing is supposed to open closed shut again. In any event, that battery and the one just like it that I tested the home-made unit on are still powering my UPS as part of a large string of series-paralleled 24 volt batteries. Pulse power matters. The one that I built from plans is much more powerful than the BM and it did its thing in days. It's self-powered from the target battery. You might want to look around and see if you can find a kit based on the Alastair Couper design. Most anyone can solder that small of a kit together. Or heck, have it sent to me and I'll assemble it and send it back. I've had a BM attached to my house batteries continuously since I ran the test. It is not plugged in. The pulser part works without AC power. I've made so many other changes that I can't say if it made any difference or not but it sure hasn't hurt anything. John From: John De Armond Newsgroups: rec.outdoors.rv-travel Subject: Re: desulfator - update Date: Sun, 28 Sep 2008 13:55:55 -0400 Message-ID: <q8fvd4ll20l4qtpnuuigodkjbpgnsmqrlf@4ax.com> On Sun, 28 Sep 2008 10:35:16 -0500, Bob Giddings <bobg@escapees.com> wrote: >On Sun, 28 Sep 2008 11:21:12 -0400, Neon John <no@never.com> >wrote: > >>>Right now I'm thinking money well spent. >> >>Yep. Thanks for verifying that vendor. I don't think that I could build one >>for $25, even using perf board so I'm going to order some. >> >>John > >The Progressive Dynamics inverter/chargers with the Charge Wizard >have a desulfator mode built in that charges up to 14.6 V . Any >idea how that compares to this one? That' more commonly known as an equalization charger. It's designed to overcharge all the cells a little to make sure the weakest cell is brought up to full charger - equalization. When a battery discharges, the sponge lead and lead dioxide on the plates converts to lead sulfate. In this form it is a soft spongy matrix of micro crystals. The stuff is so soft that it crumbles at the merest touch. Charging reverses this process if it goes to completion on ALL cells. The weakest cell (by that I mean the one with the lowest charge acceptance efficiency) will typically not have all its lead sulfate converted. Over time this residual lead sulfate agglomerates into larger hard lead sulfate crystals. These crystals are non-conductive and so insulate the underlying active material from the electrolyte. They are also physically larger than the active material they formed from and so they damage separators and jack active materials off the plates. In a badly sulfated battery, the coating of sulfate looks like frost covering the plate. Often times sharp crystals of sulfate can be seen protruding from the plate like little glistening hypodermic needles. An equalizing charge stops this process by making sure all cells are fully charged, that is, all the sulfate is converted. The pulse desulfator works by a different mechanism that as far as I've been able to learn, is not fully understood. It addresses the hard sulfate crystals that have already formed. One theory is that the pulses stimulate mechanical resonance in the sulfate crystals causing them to fracture and allow electrolyte in. I'm not too sure of that theory because the crystals aren't large enough to resonate at the low frequency involved. That one makes as much sense as the alternative explanations that I've read, though. It's one of those situations where the effect was accidentally observed and now they're trying to figure out why it works. From the outside, the battery does look like it has a resonant point. If a variable frequency oscillator is connected to a battery and observed with a scope, when the frequency is swept across the audio band, there will be one or more frequencies where the battery is resonant. That is, it much more strongly absorbs the AC signal than at surrounding frequencies. The pulse desulfator does its thing by hitting the battery with a series of narrow, fast rise time high voltage pulses. Typically 40-60 volts with a pulse width of around a microsecond, repeated a couple thousand times a second. This very fast rising and falling pulse is rich in harmonics and one or more is the right frequency to stimulate the resonance. Several things lend credibility to the resonance (of some sort, at least) theory. One, the higher the amplitude, the faster the action. Two, a power oscillator running at the resonant frequency accomplishes the same thing. Third, a battery plate that has been pulsed for awhile loses most of its frosty look. There are some rather loud-mouthed detractors (not in this group but elsewhere on the net) who try to claim that extended equalizing charging does the same thing. The fly in the ointment for that theory is that most all of the pulsers available, either ready-made or as kits, are parasitic devices. That is, they're powered by the battery being treated. No external power is supplied. Extended high voltage (equalization or above) charging will bring back some capacity but not to the extent that the pulsers do. A pulser isn't strictly necessary for a new battery and a competent charger. However, it doesn't hurt a healthy battery and is there if something happens to the charger or connections that result in an incompletely charged battery. Cheap insurance. John |
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