Smartcharger.. reconditioning

[VicS]

What's it actually doing?

While the car is out of action for a few days and the battery removed I thought Id put it on charge but my smartcharger has gone into recondition mode.
Not surprising, perhaps, as the battery is I think nearly 10 years old, ( Badged Halfords but made by Yuasa) and without doubt past its best.

I checked with a voltmeter and found almost 16v DC and 34 v AC. I wondered just what is it doing. Anyone have any ideas?

It'll be interesting to see if it gets a new lease of life or whether I'l have to replace it.

Charger is nothing fancy or expensive, only a Ring

 

[NickRobinson]

I've got an issue with chargers that promise to fix old batteries, loads of people selling stuff but no clearly accepted scientific (ie repeatable, peer reviewed) evidence.

Hopefully, however, the charger won't take a functioning battery and recondition it into a non-functioning one...

N

 

[macd]

Conditioning is another word for equalisation, and 16V sounds right, assuming open lead-acid battery. Current should not be more in amps than 5% of the battery's capacity in Ah. Temperature should be monitored. It will gas and probably need topping up afterwards. Battery should be disconnected from all loads during this process.
Conditioning should stop when voltage reaches 15 to 16.2, max. If the smartcharger wants to carry on indefinitely with your old battery, then it ain't that smart.

 

[VicS]

Conditioning is another word for equalisation, and 16V sounds right, assuming open lead-acid battery. Current should not be more in amps than 5% of the battery's capacity in Ah. Temperature should be monitored. It will gas and probably need topping up afterwards. Battery should be disconnected from all loads during this process.
Conditioning should stop when voltage reaches 15 to 16.2, max. If the smartcharger wants to carry on indefinitely with your old battery, then it ain't that smart.

I dont know what the current is. The charger was set at 4 amps max ( that isthe bench charge rate for this battery.) Normally the cooling fan runs when set to 4 amps or more but it is not running during the reconditioning so presumably the current is quite low.

Since the original post the charger has stopped reconditioning after about 4 hours and is now in "float" mode.
It can make 5 attempts to recondition the battery. If it does not think it has been successful it will then give an error message to say that the battery should be replaced

 

[lw395]

Is it putting high voltage spikes onto the battery in an attempt to 'desulphate' it?
Some people have seen some success with these circuits.
My own results are inconclusive in terms of not knowing if the old battery would have recovered a bit anyway, but you can certainly observe the voltage spikes reducing over time, implying that the high frequency impedance of the battery has reduced.

 

[Spyro]

I found this lot very interesting
http://www.progressivedyn.com/battery_basics.html

 

[lenseman]

What's it actually doing?. . . . . .
I checked with a voltmeter and found almost 16v DC and 34 v AC. I wondered just what is it doing. Anyone have any ideas? . . . . . . .

As has been suggested, spiking it to try and 'burst through' the sulphation on the surface of the plates.

It would be good if you can look at the 'AC' on a 'scope to see if it changes?

.