End of life wet cell battery needed for tests please

T

TopDonkey

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I'm now interested in proving or disproving my desulphater that i built last year, and wondered if anyone had a battery that they were considering throwing away that i could have to do my tests on ?

It would have to be in the Portsmouth area really, i sometimes travel to poole and over the brighton, so between those locations i can collect from

The type of battery i'm looking for ideally is one that is more than 5 years old, has been seldom charged properly, probably been mostly flat a lot of its life and is showing signs of looking flat most of the time, but when you put it on charge, it charges up to 14+volts within half hour or so and struggles to turn over an engine even after charging fully as these are signs that the battery is heavily sulphated and an ideal candidate for my testing.

the type of battery that cant be recovered is one that has a shorted cell internally where the cell plates have swelled and are touching each other, symptoms of this are if the battery voltage is hovering around 9-11 volts even after charging, and you will probably find the cells are bubbling vigorously during charging, but 1 or 2 cells wont be, and after charging, the voltage will barely get up to 12 volts

If anyone has anything suitable that they were just going to recycle or throw out, please let me know and i'll collect it if i can, and obviously post on here all my results, but it could be a couple of months before i get any meaningful results, its not a quick fix overnight thing

Thanks
 
If it's any good can I borrow it? :)

(I have bought a boat in Belgium that had two super dupa new looking expensive marine "Maintenance Free" type batteries in it & I am very loathe to throw them both away.One seems remarkably to be charged up despite not having been used for at least two years while the other one is as flat as a pancake.
I am intending to sail the boat back very shortly & expect I'll have to buy one of those Cteck type chargers.......unless I'm very lucky & Lidl or Aldi do one of their offers).
 
I have one of the Aldi ones.
It's excellent on small batteries but my experience is that it can't cope with big ones (75Ah) even given lots of time.
 
Yeah, i dont mind you borrowing it, but someone on here has offered 2 dead batteries that wont take a charge and are flat, so i will be collecting those soon and starting my experimenting on them, it takes about 2 months in total to revive a sulphated battery, but your welcome to borrow it after that.

Be aware that as i built it myself, i didnt bother to put it in a case, its just a bare circuit board with components and wires hanging off it, so its a bit experimental i'm afraid, I'll try and put it in a case, but i have a million an one other things to do on my boat before winter arrives as i'm a liveaboard

And i agree with Troubadour, the aldi chargers are great chargers, but only for smaller batteries, i use it on my motorbike only, i think it would take about a week to put any charge into my boat batteries, i use a 25a charger for my boats main house batteries and just let the alternator sort out the engine battery

Cheers
 
Although I can't offer batteries I can tell you that Emsworth Yacht Harbour now has a battery bin near home marine. I can't imagine you'd get in trouble for checking it and taking any knackered ones :)
 
Needing a battery to bench test a few items ie small PC and an Eber, I am literally just back from my local auto electricians who, when asked, found me a (very) suitable heavy duty cranking battery which was lying out the back. He dropped tested it for me and it is as lively as a new one!! He asked £5 for it which I gladly offered -he suggested that was the basic scrap value of it.

Anyway, just a suggestion if you are looking for duds to test you kit on!
 
lustyd said:
Although I can't offer batteries I can tell you that Emsworth Yacht Harbour now has a battery bin near home marine. I can't imagine you'd get in trouble for checking it and taking any knackered ones :)
Click to expand...
Dont be so sure ! Battery theft is becoming quite common. Not only is there a scrap value to them, but they are also classified as hazardous waste.

A marina I know very well has helped the police to prosecute individuals who have been helping themselves.
 
Blimey !, i'll stay away from helping myself then !, although, i would have popped into the marina office just to check anyway, what is someones scrap, is another persons living
 
Jabs (Tony) on here, has very kindly supplied me with 2 very knackered leisure batteries (cheers tony !)

The first one, is a Bosch L4 12v 110ah leisure battery, initial tests before i start on it, are a voltage reading of 4.14 volts and a gravity reading that doesnt even register on my hydrometer, its less than 1100 (thats the lowest my tester goes and its lower than the lowest mark)

I put it on charge and it instantly jumped to 14.2v (less than a second) and is showing no current at all being taken, so i think i have got a deader than dead battery here, and an ideal candidate for my Desulphater testing, apparently, its been sat in his garage for a couple of years and hasnt been touched.

I'll put it on a standard charger overnight tonight and see if it has any life at all in the morning before i connect the desulphater to it

If anyone wants me to do any more specific testing before i start with the desulphator, let me know and i'll do it

This is hopefully going to prove or disprove how useful desulphators are
 
Hi,

Can you post a link to the kit you mentioned to make a charger?

Did you say there was a forum on it??

Good luck!

Tony.
 
Jabs said:
Hi,

Can you post a link to the kit you mentioned to make a charger?

Did you say there was a forum on it??

Good luck!

Tony.
Click to expand...


Hi Tony

Yes, this is the link to the desulphater forum batterydesulfation/

And this is the diy kit you can buy to experiment with courtiestown

I've had both your batteries on charge now for 24 hours, and both are responding very differently

The 110ah bosch one is still not taking any current at all, but the voltage has risen very slowly and is sitting at 15.7 volts, none of the cells are bubbling, if i disconnect the charger, it drops straight down to around 13 volts, and if i connect a 50w car lightbulb to it, it lights dimly and the voltage drops to 7-8 volts within 30 seconds, i anticipate good results with this one, its showing all the classic signs of being heavily sulphated up, so will start on this one and hope to have news within a few weeks or so, but 24 hours on a decent charger and its still dead as a dead battery can be, and most people would throw it out at this point

The other smaller 80ah battery takes no current, but voltage stays at 12.3 volts on charge and as soon as i disconnect it, the voltage drops straight back to 8.6 volts and lights the headlight bulb very faintly for a few seconds before going out, I fear this battery is internally shorted on a number of cells and ready for the skip, but i'll put the desulphater on it in due course just in case it can do anything for it, but i dont expect it will recover
 
TopDonkey...

I see that you are in Portsmouth.. so am I!

I also have a matched pair of Trojan deep cycle (rather expensive batteries) of unknown usage. They were on board when I bought the boat. I just replaced them as a matter of course.

You could try out the two of them.. One could then be desulphated and the other as used as a comparative reference.
 
Martin_J said:
TopDonkey...

I see that you are in Portsmouth.. so am I!

I also have a matched pair of Trojan deep cycle (rather expensive batteries) of unknown usage. They were on board when I bought the boat. I just replaced them as a matter of course.

You could try out the two of them.. One could then be desulphated and the other as used as a comparative reference.
Click to expand...

Thanks Martin

I have PM'd you, hopefully meetup sometime this week, I might need to build a more powerful desulphator for the trojans !, they are very powerful batteries, but being wet cell and very well built (thick lead plates), they are perfect for this type of project
 
I'll be curious to see your results. I have done some very in-depth long term testing of desulfators and found none of them to do anything at all.

I used used batteries as you are looking for. I have access to lots of them. I then measured and examined any changes in the battery using very expensive battery analyzers, one made by Midtronics and one made by Argus. I measured them at baseline and then at 2 weeks, 1 month and then 1 month intervals.

I also conducted controlled 20 hour capacity tests at baseline and after six months of desulfation. The "equalized" batteries beat the desulfated batteries in every instance. I did not do this for all batteries and all batteries and all desulphators as the "capacity" tests take lots of time. The analyzers tell 99% of the story very repeatably.

I even had some batteries that came out of parallel installations, one battery went onto the desulphator and one onto an equalization protocol. For these I conducted standard equalizing charges and some cycles and slow charging then another equalization. With equalizations I could physically measure improvements such as a slightly lower internal resistance and measurable improvements in cranking capacity, beyond the resolution of error for the analyzers.

Not a single one of the commercially available desulphators I tested showed any improvements that extended beyond the resolution of error of the analyzers.

I would LOVE to find a desulphator that is more than snake oil in a box. Please keep us informed with your findings and also please let us know how you will be measuring changes in performance such as changes in capacity, cranking ability and internal resistance..
 
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