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Forum Index : Other Stuff : Battery Rescue?
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isaiah Guru  Joined: 25/12/2009 Location: United StatesPosts: 303 |
Hi Pete, Bub and I seen some utubes where the bloke was taking a new 3 amp motorcycle battery and putting the alum sulphate in it rather than the acid that came with it. WE seen where the guy took the old acid out and rinsed the battery with baking soda solution then rinsed it with water, then put the alum in and charged it and then started his truck. I did here of a fellow here in the states that made a battery for his house using a plastic garbage can and stainless gutter guard for the plates, I never got any more info on that. Bub and I have a tendency to accumulate junk battery's to experiment with. If the volts and amps would come out close it would make a less expensive fix. Maybe some one will come along with more info??? '  '
Isaiah URL=http://www.motherearthnews.com/Renewable-Energy/1973-11- 01/The-Plowboy-Interview.aspx>The Plowboy Interview[/URL> |
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Downwind Guru Joined: 09/09/2009 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2333 |
From the quick look i had (yes i seen tha same utube videos too) it would appear you need to recharge at about 2-3 volts higher than a lead acid battery, and the working voltage of a Alum battery is about 2-3 volts lower than a lead acid, and the current is about 1/3 to 1/2 a Pb battery. So yes it can all work but it dont fit in with our standard voltage systems for recharging and lower working output voltage. For example most inverters would shut down thinking the battery was below its operating range, and the recharge would likly not fully complete as the voltage might not go high enough. Perhaps a good replacement for some applications like an electric fence or other remote power supplies, as it dont seem to hurt the battery with it being fully discharged and sitting around flat for a while, where a lead acid battery would crap out very quickly when stored flat. Something like a battery for a tractor could be ok to, where it gets used now and then and often needs a charge before use anyway. The higher output batteries appear to be the ones with the lead oxide plate removed and replaced with another lead plate and a Alum paste used. (gel cell) That means a lot of work and the need of 2 batteries the same to rebuild a single battery, or you make 12v batteries into 6 volt batteries and series them. All very interesting but i dont think i could be bothered with doing a full rebuild of some large batteries, i might try a test on a small SLA just for the hell of it, and perhaps try an old car battery with a washout and refill with Alum, although my gut tells me it aint going to be worth the effort. So before you raid the cupboard to steal mums deodorant crystal and go shoving it into your batteries i think a few small tests would be warranted. Also some do a reverse charge first to activate the plates, but most seem to just add alum and bung it on the charger, then complain it dont work. Also some time needs to be allowed for the fluid to wet out the plates fully before charging, which is also often not done. Pete. Sometimes it just works |
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| Downwind Guru Joined: 09/09/2009 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2333 |
I guess you seen this link too, although its rather long and best have a lot of time to view it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqF1hjFduP4 As you will see he uses a small amount of Copper Sulphate in the Alum paste. There is many Hacks at making this work, where some are just adding Alum to water and dump it in the battery and expect all to work. Pete. Sometimes it just works |
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| isaiah Guru Joined: 25/12/2009 Location: United StatesPosts: 303 |
We found some alum reasonable at a bulk food store so when it warms up again we have a couple old blinger car battery's we will try it on . More Later Isaiah URL=http://www.motherearthnews.com/Renewable-Energy/1973-11- 01/The-Plowboy-Interview.aspx>The Plowboy Interview[/URL> |
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Bub73 Senior Member  Joined: 10/12/2009 Location: United StatesPosts: 116 |
The winter has been rough on us up here in the States ,a lot of snow and around or below 0 deg F at night. Almost no place to put any more snow. So we haven't done to much and we haven't had many good solar charging days. Hope every one else is doing fine this winter! Isaiah & Bub |
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powerednut Senior Member Joined: 09/12/2009 Location: AustraliaPosts: 221 |
sorry for the loooooong post. I had a couple of really dead 4wd "hybrid" starter/deep cycle batteries, and I decided to take a crack at trying the alum battery solution. I wasn't able to find any alum in the supermarkets, so I checked ebay and bought 450g from here The battery I selected to test was a 12v 4wd battery that was dead when I pulled it out of my ute around 4 years ago. Symptoms were: - at rest (no load or no charging): 4.5V - under load (3 Watt 12V Led downlight): dropped to 0V within 1 second. gradual return to 4.5V over about 30 minutes. - under charge (smallest input tested was 13.8V 500mA, largest was 12V 100W solar panel, most tests were with a 12V 3A car battery charger): instantly went to "full charged voltage", dropped back to 6V immediately after, and then to about 4.5V over the next hour It had then been left (no attempts at charging or loading) outside for 4 years, suffering everything from -14C to something over 40C. Voltage reading prior to draining was 2V. There is minor bulging on the +V side. I drained the battery and then refilled with a fairly strong bicarb + water solution. 3 litres of the mix were required. I repeated that 5 times, and then rinsed out with straight water another 2 times. Significant amounts of loose whitish/silverish metal (i'm assuming was lead or lead sulfate) precipitated out of the the waste liquid while I was doing this. I mixed 1/3rd of a cup of Aluminium Sulphate (alum) into 5L of distilled water and refilled the battery, again using 3 litres to fill the battery. I measured the battery and had 6.5V reading. At this point my experience diverged from the youtube videos..... I put it on to charge using a 12V 4A "smart" car battery charger. Within 30 seconds the battery was reading as full, and measuring the voltage showed that the charger was pulling it up to 14.4 (i think, hard to tell), then it was dropping back to 6 as the charger disconnected, then back up etc. When disconnected the battery read 6.1V I left this charger going for 12 hours, but had no change to the situation the next morning. Thinking it was a failed experiment at this point I decided to hook it up to a constant voltage current limited (750mA) power supply that I set to 14.4V. This was left for 12 hours and afterwards the battery dropped back to 10.8V. I then put it on the smart charger, which went into an "absorb" cycle for about 36 hours (with occassional interruptions from me to disconnect and read the steadily increasing "at rest" voltages. The battery has now been disconnected from charge since monday night (thursday night here now) and reads 12.4V at rest. It has not had any load applied to it as yet, but I will start experimenting with that tomorrow afternoon. I'm hoping I can press the battery into service as a power supply for 4 3W led lights for my workshop. I intend to charge the battery using a small solar set up. I plan to use the full 12W of lighting for about 3 hours 4 nights a week. To me it looks like the alum is worth a shot, if you can get the old dead battery for free. Cost to me was $50 waste disposal (lucky to get away with it that cheaply judging from the guy's reaction to how much waste liquid I took him), $12.60 for 10L of distilled water (still have 5 litres distilled + 2 litres alum solution), $11.85 for the alum (still have x G left) and several hours worth of stuffing around. so roughly $75 + labour. Cost of a new battery of the same sort is around $230. I've got another battery to try (symptoms: 0V, on voltage supplied jumps to full charge, back to 0V within 5 seconds), but I'll wait until I know if the other one has worked or not before I do anything to it. |
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| Georgen Guru Joined: 13/09/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 462 |
To me it sounds like success !!! Since it holds 12.4V after about 24 hours it must have some power to give back. Hate to think how I was grateful, when my old car batteries over the years were accepted for disposal free of charge, leaving me now with no battery to experiment with. Will have to look around for something. (Can't wait for your next post :) ) George |
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| powerednut Senior Member Joined: 09/12/2009 Location: AustraliaPosts: 221 |
I didn't get to do much testing last night. about 30 minutes with a single 3 Watt LED. The voltage dropped by approx 0.5V while loaded, but came back up to the same 12.4V mark. So it looks okay for the light loads at least. I'm tempted to lug it out to my ute and test it as a starter, but I'm not convinced its fully charged yet. I'm going to knock together a quick (ish) logging thing to keep track of the battery voltage vs amps out. I think I can make one tonight, and hopefully I'll be able to post some graphs by the end of the weekend. |
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| isaiah Guru Joined: 25/12/2009 Location: United StatesPosts: 303 |
Powerednut Keep us posted on your progress on this project. '  '
We have some to try but are waiting for the weather to stay above freezing '  '
I found the best price on the Alum at a bulk food store in a Amish town. We have been working on updating a couple old battery chargers over the winter I just like the old ones, usually have to replace update the old rectifiers, Bub 73 is getting good at updating the rectifiers.' '
Isaiah URL=http://www.motherearthnews.com/Renewable-Energy/1973-11- 01/The-Plowboy-Interview.aspx>The Plowboy Interview[/URL> |
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| VK4AYQ Guru Joined: 02/12/2009 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2539 |
Hi All Just a suggestion, it may be beneficial to try to desulphate the batteries first rather than tipping the lead sulfate out to the disposal, I have resurrected a few batteries that had sat flat for several years by the little desulphator as mentioned in the start of this thread, while it may not rejuvenate the battery as a lead acid it may put some more active material on the plates of the battery rather than out in the waste. All the best Bob Foolin Around |
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| powerednut Senior Member Joined: 09/12/2009 Location: AustraliaPosts: 221 |
Hi Bob, Yeah, that is a really good suggestion. When this battery first died I didn't have a desulphator. Now i've got one of the jaycar ones, and I wish I'd thought to run it for a while before starting this process. I'm guessing it was about 1/4 cup of lead sulphate and lead oxide that came out of the battery. I'm not sure if this was sitting at the bottom of the battery and was shorting out the cells, or if it came off the plates during the bicarbing. Either way, if I could have gotten some more lead oxide on the plates It would have been better. I've got another 4wd hybrid battery (currently reading 0 volts), which I'll try out after I get a bit more testing done. I'll run the desulphator on that for a week or so first. Anyways, progress wise there has been none - sorry to those waiting. I've decided to use a attiny85 microcontroller to do most of the logging, and today I put that together into a LittleWire usb development board, with a few changes from the base littlewire design (just minor stuff). I intend to use that to do switch various charging sources (probably: mains, solar, desulphator) based its two analog inputs. The inputs will be battery voltage (simple voltage divider), and probably output current to the test loads. I've also designed a simple port expansion thing to allow me to take the remaining two outputs from the littlewire and turn them into 8. I'm doing the pcb transfer for that tonight as soon as I'm done here and I'll solder it up tomorrow. I'll post circuits and pcbs in the electronics section at some point too. |
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| Bub73 Senior Member Joined: 10/12/2009 Location: United StatesPosts: 116 |
Hi Bob I was going into the barn and tripped over a Miller 225 stick welder. it is 30 volt D.C.out put at 200 amps, this has plug in cables one is HI one is LO the last one is work, I would guess it is ground. If I hook this up backwards with the positive on the negative post and the ground on the positive,would this cause the lead sulphate to re attach to the plates? The other thought is setting it up to power a reverse electrolysis de rusting tank. Isaiah |
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| VK4AYQ Guru Joined: 02/12/2009 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2539 |
Hi Bub Sounds like it could make a good battery booster but I wouldn't connect reverse polarity as you may have a high decibel event. Desulphating is a slow process of revering the chemical reaction in the battery and reconverting the lead sulphate back to lead, if you try to hurry it to much the sulfate is popped of the plate and may settle as sludge in the bottom of the cell, there it is no longer in circuit so to speak and isn't redeposited as lead on the plates. Slowly slowly chachee monkey. An old coil type telephone bell with the ringer arm removed to increase the frequency will work or a T model ford trembler coil also works. Aim for high audio frequency 15 to 20 K cycles, if it makes RF hash it is working. All the best Bob Foolin Around |
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| Bub73 Senior Member Joined: 10/12/2009 Location: United StatesPosts: 116 |
Thanks Bob You mention the Ford T coil do you just use the coil for the vibrator or do you use the output to the spark plug ? We started to set one up for a desulfator but got side tracked and haven’t got back to it. I do have a Servwell combination tester that you can use to adjust that old ford coil and also tests spark plugs and light bulbs. Isaiah & Bub |
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| VK4AYQ Guru Joined: 02/12/2009 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2539 |
Hi Bub I just used the coil across the battery with a spark plug in place to stop high voltage spikes ruining the winding's, set the plug gap between .040 and 060 gap and it is a good indicator if it is working but keep well away from the battery if it is gassing. Love your Servwell tester we had one in the workshop 60 years ago, not the same brand but same purpose. Hi teck for the time antique now. All the best Bob Foolin Around |
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| powerednut Senior Member Joined: 09/12/2009 Location: AustraliaPosts: 221 |
sorry about the slow update guys. I finally got around to doing some basic load testing on the alum battery. Load at this stage was 4W (12Vish, 3.3Aish), on for 12 hours. Arduino was set up to log battery voltage and if necessary disconnect at what I deemed to be a low cut off (11.6V). Start Voltage was 12.11, which droped to 12.02 as soon as the load was put on. Finish voltage at the 12 hour mark was 11.98. At 1 second intervals this makes for the worlds most boring graph (looks kind of like the learning curve on one of my coworkers - very very flat, with a slight downwards incline). The next test will be at around 12 Watts, which is the load I'm intending to put on it - though generally only for around 3 hours at a time. I'll do the same 12 hour test with a low voltage disconnect if necessary. The final test after that will be starting my diesel ute... Both those tests will probably happen in two weeks. At this point i'm pretty happy that the battery is good enough for the use I'm going to put to it. I'm also pretty confident that it'll start the ute, though I expect the graph for that will be more interesting (will switch to 100ms logging intervals). If anybody is interested I'll post the logging code, but its pretty much just the basic analogread example code from arduino. I'm logging back to a Raspberry PI via USB, which is handling all the sd card writes. It was just easier to set up that way. My assessment: if you've got a dead battery and ability to dispose of the waste its definately worth a go. |
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| VK4AYQ Guru Joined: 02/12/2009 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2539 |
Hi Powerednut Very interesting, it would be interesting to do a new unbuggered battery as a comparison, as the lack of plate area may hide the true potential of the battery. It may also cloud the starting performance test as well, due to limited plate area. All the best Bob Foolin Around |
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| powerednut Senior Member Joined: 09/12/2009 Location: AustraliaPosts: 221 |
yeah, it'd be useful. The closest I have is the battery in my ute, which isn't new any more... |
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| Bub73 Senior Member Joined: 10/12/2009 Location: United StatesPosts: 116 |
Hi Bob Would I hook the spark plug wire to the neg post and the positive to the positive on the battery and ground the metal part of the spark plug to the negative away from the battery so it wouldn’t ignite battery gas ? Some of the cheap coil testers are a spark plug with a plastic cap over the sparking end. Today’s Briggs & Stratton coil testers are sealed or explosion proof. |
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| powerednut Senior Member Joined: 09/12/2009 Location: AustraliaPosts: 221 |
Bob suggested I try a smaller (and much cheaper) 7 plate starter battery for comparison with the larger lead-alum battery. It might produce some very interesting comparison data. I'll pick one up shortly, but I'm doing some travelling and wont be able to do any tests for a couple of weeks. Sorry to those waiting on results. |
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