Re: (ET) Fw: Lead Acid Battery Question

[JEFFREY ANTONUCCI <jlantonucci comcast net>]

I tried the Epsom salts and Soneil trickle charger route on an old set of 
batteries years ago and I got good results.  I nursed those batteries for 
a few more years and sold them with the tractor.

> On 07/12/2020 2:07 AM David Roden <etpost drmm net> wrote:
> 
>  
> Sulfation is a normal process of discharging a battery.  It's reversed 
> by 
> charging.  That's how a battery works.
> 
> If you don't charge the battery soon enough, or if you chronically 
> undercharge it, the sulfate crystals grow and resist being turned back 
> into 
> lead.  They'll eventually loosen and fall to the bottom of the cell.  
> Enough of this and they short the cell or increase its self-discharge.  
> Even if they don't buld up that much, they represent a loss of active 
> material from the grids, which is a loss of capacity.
> 
> There is no way to reverse this "hard" sulfation, period, end of story.
> 
> Some of you other old-timers may recall a well-advertised battery 
> additive 
> from the 1950s and 1960s called VX-6.  Its makers claimed it was a 
> miracle 
> cure for old batteries.  It contained cadmium sulfate!  That's not 
> something you want to mess around with.  
> 
> The VX-6 ads suggested this "test": Turn on your car's headlights until 
> the 
> battery is flat.  Turn the lights off, and add the stuff to the battery. 
>  
> Wait a few minutes.  Turn on your lights.  Look, they work again!  Your 
> battery is rejuvenated!
> 
> What they didn't mention is that if you'd just left the battery alone 
> for 
> the same few minutes, the same thing would have happened without the 
> VX-6, 
> because that's just how batteries work.  
> 
> Cadmium is restricted these days, but the snake oil battery additives 
> are 
> still around.  Now they use other chemicals, often various kinds of 
> other 
> metal sulfates.  Cobalt sulfate has been used in the past.  Other 
> compounds 
> have been tried too.  Some of the Home Power magazine guys used to use 
> EDTA, with (they said) varying degrees of success.
> 
> A temporary fix for a sulfated battery that actually sort of works is to 
> charge it, drain the electrolyte, rinse out the precipitated lead 
> sulfate 
> with distilled water, and fill it with fresh electrolyte (1.27 - 1.3 
> SG).  
> This will restore some of the capacity, because the sulfation has kept 
> sulfate ions from being returned to the H2SO4 in the electrolyte.  
> 
> The problem with this method is that you still have less active material 
> in 
> the grids.  When you use that apparently restored capacity, you over-
> discharge the grids.  This leads to further battery degradation and 
> rapid 
> decline.  That's why the improvement is only partial, and only temporary.
> 
> As for the stuff you're looking at on Ebay, most likely it contains 
> magnesium sulfate.  The main benefit of using it comes from the 
> instructions that the sellers post, and probably include with the 
> package 
> they send.
> 
> The instructions will usually tell you to slow-charge the battery for 12 
> to 
> 24 hours.  They may also suggest discharging the battery and repeating 
> the 
> slow charge for several days.  Both of those happen to be pretty good 
> prescriptions for maximizing what limited capacity a degraded battery 
> has 
> left.  So the stuff will seem to work.  When you go back to using the 
> battery normally, though, the "restored" capacity will soon vanish.
> 
> If you still want to try out this additive, for goodness sake don't send 
> $22 to that Ebay seller.  Go buy a bottle of epsom salts at the drug 
> store, 
> and put a pinch in each cell.   Then slow-charge your battery for 12-24 
> hours.  Discharge it and do another slow charge.  Repeat this over 
> several 
> days.  
> 
> Or skip the epsom salts, and slow-charge your battery for 12-24 hours.  
> Discharge it and do another slow charge.  Repeat this over several days. 
>  
> The results will be about the same. :-)
> 
> To sum it up, the Ebay stuff is going to do a better job of emptying 
> your 
> wallet than of filling up your battery.
> 
> I'll close this with a little semi-related story.  
> 
> There used to be a battery dealer in my area which did a brisk trade in 
> "reconditioned" batteries.  I never had much interest in those, but I 
> did  
> buy a few new batteries from them over the years.   Their customers for 
> the 
> "refurbs" were mostly owners of vintage land yachts and used-car 
> dealers.  
> 
> One day as another customer left with a $20 reconditioned battery for 
> his 
> big old Buick, I asked the guy who'd just fetched my new battery, "So, 
> what 
> exactly do you DO to a battery when you recondition it?"   
> 
> "We charge it,"  he said.
> 
> Caveat emptor.
> 
> 
> David Roden - Akron, Ohio, USA
> 
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