Lead acid batt analyser

[MrAl]

I use the boat's alternator to equalize my boat batteries. I store my boat at a location where there is no AC power line, so cannot use an AC powered constant-current supply to equalize them like I can do to my automotive and aircraft batteries at home.

I trick the boat's alternator Voltage Regulator into jumping the output voltage from a nominal 14.2V to about 16V. I installed a toggle switch that controls the VR.

At 16V, the battery initially absorbs an (over) charge of ~ 30A, but as the battery voltage approaches 15.5V and higher, the charging current naturally drops to 5 to 10A. Doing this for about 20 to 30 min once every three to six months gets me several years more out of a starting or house battery than I previously got without equalizing.

I routinely equalize my flooded aircraft batteries and batteries in little-used vehicles like my Jeep and Motorhome. I have found that periodic equalizing does more for infrequently driven or used flooded lead acid batteries than pulse chargers.

As to Mosaic's experiments, I see no real science there; just more claims and anecdotes...

Hi Mike,

Yes that is what i am talking about. How did you trick your alternator?
16v would be nice, even 15v would be nice for mine.

 

[Mosaic]

As to Mosaic's experiments, I see no real science there; just more claims and anecdotes...

I guess I would need to publish a paper to really present the science done over the last 2 years and then have it verified by an independent lab in order to establish veracity.
That's not really on the cards at the moment.
I am simply sharing with the forum what I have seen and done.
I can share Excel datalogs of battery recoveries/attempted recoveries as well as datalogs of battery Ah discharge curves, but those can be questioned as to authenticity as well.
It's disappointing to see a fellow member label my statements as 'claims' and 'anecdotes', presupposing I spent the last two years concocting data just to come back and make claims which have no merit.

 

[ronv]

Now you have me thinking. Maybe I can ramble a bit and you can help answer a few questions.
I agree in service is problematic. The ones I made ran all the time (power from the same batteries they were zapping) so no charge current. One of the problems was that if set to high it would fool the charger into thinking the batteries were charged when they were not. (Club Cars)
I know that changing the bad battery in the bank is kind of a waste of time as within a couple of months another will be bad. Even using a battery close in age doesn't seem to help this. I have always assumed this was because of different internal resistances that created an imbalance during charging. But I don't know that for a fact. Any ideas? So having said all that. I have a golf buddy that also services carts for a part time job. He probably replaces a set of batteries a week. I'm wondering if this might apply to strings as well as single batteries. If it did and provided useful life extension it would be a money maker for him. Right now a set is between $700 and $1000 depending on the capacity. If someone plays a lot this is about 2 -3 years. Another 8 to 12 months of life might make it viable.
Why do you need such an expensive transformer if the average current is only 2 amps?
Do you use this to charge the battery all the way, or do you charge it first and then apply the pulses?

 

[Mosaic]

In a battery string, should a battery discharge significantly before the others it can start to 'reverse' charge while the others are discharging. Sometimes that happens to cells in a single battery. Thus it is important to know the Ah rating of all the batts in the string for optimum performance matching.

I'd suggest your friend pickup a FLIR camera and take a pic of each batt after the cart has done a run or been freshly charged. The battery temperature profiles will show the weak ones right away and save servicing time or sudden failures on the greens.
http://www.flir.com/thermography/americas/us/

I use an E8 FLIR myself for that specific purpose as well as to track surface mount component hotspots and heat sinking/dissipation issues.

The current transformer 'monitor' is actually a measuring tool for pulse currents. I needed it for my design work to know how to spec. the FET drivers and their heatsinking. It's a large toroid with a 50ohm coax connector that goes to a scope. The actual power supply is a Meanwell switching PSU.
http://www.ionphysics.com/monitors.html

The battery is pulse charged all the way. A surefire way to find borderline bus bars or corroded/crumbling plates. If it doesn't break with hundreds of amps continuous stress, it won't break in regular service!

 

[Mosaic]

The latest battery recovery data is quite promising @ 7.6 millohms internal resistance after 200% rated Ah of pulse charging. That's approx 5000/7.6 = 650 HCA, just fine for starting a vehicle. It goes on a full C/10 discharge tomorrow to document the recovery. I'll also take another Pic of the sulfated cell#2 busbar to show the before & after processing result.
Cell #2 is weakest @ 1225 SG, Cell #4 is strongest @ 1265 SG at this time. Cell temperature spread is just 1 Deg C. Battery V is now 15.4V

 

[ronv]

Finding the bad one is not the problem. Fixing it so it plays well with others seems to be the problem.
Have you tried this?
**broken link removed**
I think this is what Mike & others are talking about.

 

[Mosaic]

Equalizing a battery is part of general maintenance. The problem is, ppl don't abide by general mtce and batteries sulfate and are unnecessarily replaced. I am focused on failed battery recovery, not general mtce.
The system I am working on recovers batteries after they have been left for dead. The system can also 'equalize' , but that is cracking an egg with a hammer. You don't need the hammer for that purpose.
Note that not all battery failures are related to sulfation. Some batteries develop physical defects or just shed plate material faster than others.

Many of the batteries I recover cannot be used because they are also genuinely spent, not enough plate material left to be useful. I recall one such which could start a car 10 times in one minute. But after 2 days it had no capacity left just from parasitic drains.

 

[MrAl]

I guess I would need to publish a paper to really present the science done over the last 2 years and then have it verified by an independent lab in order to establish veracity.
That's not really on the cards at the moment.
I am simply sharing with the forum what I have seen and done.
I can share Excel datalogs of battery recoveries/attempted recoveries as well as datalogs of battery Ah discharge curves, but those can be questioned as to authenticity as well.
It's disappointing to see a fellow member label my statements as 'claims' and 'anecdotes', presupposing I spent the last two years concocting data just to come back and make claims which have no merit.

Hello there,

I certainly dont think that everyone here feels negatively about your experiments. There will always be people who question data no matter who publishes it, so get used to it. Personally i appreciate any data like this, and i have already found some of it to match what i have seen in the past too. I just dont have the ability to see inside the battery like you do to see what is physically happening to the plates. Electrically though i can test it to see what it does. If it gets better, then i know i did something right. If it doesnt get better then i know i didnt do anything. If it gets worse then i know i screwed something up

I've had bad luck with a 'desulfator' circuit tested on a 6v lead acid battery, but i did not try every trick in the book. I pulsed it that was all, and i dont think one battery is a very good test.

Right now however i'd like to hear how Mike fooled his alternator and maybe i'll try that too. My battery could use a higher charge maybe once every two months and if i dont have to carry it into the house to do it that would be nice.

Good luck with the remaining tests.

 

[MikeMl]

...
Right now however i'd like to hear how Mike fooled his alternator and maybe i'll try that too. ...

Maybe we should move this discussion to a new thread in the Automotive Forum?

 

[NorthGuy]

I think you're doing great job and have a lot of data.

Scientists are not lawyers. They trust what you say. However, you need to organize your data, do controlled experiments, statistical processing. If you want to establish that the pulsing device can restore batteries that couldn't be restored with non-pulsed equalizations, you need to present data which demonstrate exactly that. Say, you take a failed battery, you randomly separate it into 6 different cells, each cell undergoes a separate treatment - some pulsed, some non-pulsed, possibly with different frequencies. Then you measure the results. You do that to 100 or so batteries. You get lots of data. You calculate statistics which show (or don't show) statistically significant difference between treatment methods. This is something worth publishing, and I guess any scientific journal will be happy to publish such an article.

When you say that used car salesman told you that he already did qualize their batteries (whatever he might mean by that), and after that your treatment worked, this is not enough for scientific analysis. The information on the treatments applied by the used car salesmen is missing, and, without this information, it is imposible to do a fair comparison between methods. Such comparison will be, as someone put it, "anecdotal", e.g. based on the "anecdots" passed on by, not on controlled experiments.

I've seen a lot of high frequency de-suplhators advertized, but I have never seen any scientifically viable data which would demonstrate if they work or not. Perhaps, someone already did the comparison, and searching scientific literature might reveal existing studies.

Instead of current sensor you could use a shunt. It is more accurate and much cheaper.

 

[ronv]

This would support your claim:
https://vershv.narod.ru/sdarticle.pdf

 

[Mosaic]

This would support your claim:
https://vershv.narod.ru/sdarticle.pdf

The conclusions certainly align with my data.

@ Northguy: Your advice is sound, I am mainly an engineer, not a scientist....and I am also trying to bridge the gap to being an inventor and then an innovator.
I have tested batteries vs commercial chargers which I acquired that purport to recover and desulfate. Batteryminder and Pulsetech come to mind. I have recovered batteries which these units fail to help. In fact the battery I just recovered would be rejected as a fail by those commercial units as its open circuit voltage was sub 4V.

My background is UK based Cambridge A' level Maths, Physics, Chemistry then Engineering then Electronics
When I started this I discovered that there are large amounts of claims, chemical additives (EDTA), pulsing gizmos and lots of general confusion on the matter of desulfation. So I decided to do it for myself and make my own mistakes & discoveries to create data I know to be valid. I even tested the magnesium sulfate additive approach widely touted on youtube. That actually helps IF the battery busbars and grid have microfractures that cause hotspots. It is a very temporary fix, like egg white to plug holes in a radiator.
I have reliable data now, albeit it may not be statistically sound yet. I use no additives.

My plan is to make a few of the automated systems and do live user testing in the field. Each system data logs its processing (up to about 3o days worth) so I can access genuine recovery data and not anecdotes from the users. That way I can not only derive statistically significant data, but I can deploy alternative 'treatment' recipes into the systems and thereby test new hypotheses for better results.

So in summary I am perhaps at 70% in my journey ( The Mission) with a technical proof of concept and some viable test data in hand to be validated in wider field tests. It'll probably be another year before I am done.

 

[Mosaic]

Instead of current sensor you could use a shunt. It is more accurate and much cheaper.

Based on this I went with the Ion Physics Current transformer monitor for the High pulse currents.
**broken link removed**
Using the monitor I developed a non linear opamp approach with a hand wound toroid sensor as a viable substitute with about +/- 5% accuracy for deployment with the systems.
I do use a 0.1 ohm, 30W precision shunt with an RC lo pass to determine the average current and establish average current controls to manage the pulse widths.

 

[Mosaic]

The process is complete for the battery I mentioned earlier on. It absorbed about 250% rated AH to get there. It was in poor shape with mostly water (SG=1020) for electrolyte and < 4V, O.C. voltage.
Minimum SG is now 1240 in Cell2, cell4 is 1275 as max SG. That's a 35 point spread which is ok depending on battery manufacturer specs, although Trojan says equalize for > 30 point spread. This is a Panasonic wet cell battery, 55B24 unit.

Its cranking amps are in the high 600's at ambient. I will perform a full discharge test (loaded @ C/10 to 10.5V) on it later on today after it has been sitting idle for 12 hours.
Here are the before and after pics of the worst cell's (cell #2) negative busbar. The changes are similar across all the others.
BEFORE

AFTER



The white 'glare' on the lower edge of the bar is due to the lighting on a smooth metallic surface causing an image 'bloom' note that this effect is mostly absent in the matte 'snowy' sulphate coating of the first pic. I achieve lighting thru the white translucent side housing of the battery. black batteries don't allow that flexibility.

There are still small bits of white salts here and there...on the surface of the bar. Usually these will dissolve once the battery is placed into proper service and properly maintained...equalization etc. Since the top of the busbar would receive the least improvement as it is out of the direct pulse path circuit, I would think that the plates are in better shape, sulfate wise.

I will take one more pic of the bar AFTER a full discharge/recharge cycle, to document any more improvements. The recharge will NOT be a pulse charge but a normal unit.
https://www.amazon.com/Schumacher-Sc-1200a-Speedcharge-Charger-maintainer/dp/B00KVDUIQC/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1415566509&sr=8-3&keywords=schumacher sc 1200


I need a medical laparoscopic camera for more precise exploratory macroscopic imaging..but no $$$ for that right now.

 

[NorthGuy]

This is a very nice restoration!!! Looks like the battery wasn't too old, only severely discharged and neglected.

There are low resistance shunts (as low as 25 uOhm), which are capable of measuring high amps. For example here: https://www.evwest.com/catalog/index.php?cPath=2_34

These are usually rated 1%, but with calibration you can get very accurate measurements.

If high precision is not a problem, calibration is possible, and temperature doesn't vary much, a piece of thick copper wire can be used instead as a cheap replacement for the shunt - can measure as good as 0.1% if properly calibrated.

 

[MrAl]

Maybe we should move this discussion to a new thread in the Automotive Forum?

Hi Mike,

Yeah sure, see "Higher Voltage: Fool Your Alternator".
I guess it could have been, "Trick out your alternator"

 

[NorthGuy]

I looked at your diagrams. I'm not sure I deciphered all them correctly. I can see that when you disconnect, the voltage reverses and current starts decreasing. Then, when current goes to 0, there's some voltage ringing. Is that correct?

I have two questions:

1. As current continues to flow after the disconnect, there must be a path for it. What is it?

2. Since you see voltage reversal, there must be some inductance in the circuit. Do you think the battery starts behaving as inductors at these high currents, or is it wiring, interconnect between cells, or something else?

 

[Mosaic]

NG: Your analysis is correct.

The battery and the cabling to it have parasitic inductance. The measurements you see are taken at the Spade terminals on the circuit board so the inductive kickback includes both the battery and the cable inductance.
I recall that both the inductance of the cabling and the battery tends to be in the 1 to 2 uH range. I use paired 12AWG audiopipe hyperflex cabling (18") to make each battery cable to combat inductance & resistance.

I have a snubber protecting the FET switches using a pulse diode and a voltage rated 1uf poly. cap in series forming a pulse path back into the battery +ve terminal. Before I had the snubber the FETS would avalanche at around 75V and get hotter. I had tried 49V , 600W TVS diodes x 4 but they would physically pop one by one, prob. had a NTC thing going to cause that, being diodes.

The full discharge Ah rating of the recovered battery is 27Ah or 65% capacity. It'll prob. achieve 30Ah after a couple charge/discharge cycles improves the amorphous nature of the grid paste plates, this was compromised by the crystalline sulphation. Not bad for a basket case battery, it is suitable for a sub/compact car application as those come with 30 to 35Ah rated batteries when new. There is some corrosion on the internal anode pole and bus bars but nothing major.
Discharge curve,Y = Voltage, X axis is # of samples (225 sec each). 3.8Ah average discharge load.

 

[tvtech]

Mosaic....if you believe in what you are doing and your heart is in it....and you know you are getting somewhere..GO FOR IT.

Just go for it. Remember people are generally skeptical about this kind of thing. Prove them wrong.

The most famous quote I can think of goes something like this....and I remember only 1oo tries from Edison ......the Internet made it 10000...

Edison said" I know 100 ways it wont work"........and then he nailed it. I think it was the light bulb.

Anyway, point is, persevere. Failure will lead to triumph eventually. If you learn and remember along the way with something really exceptional you are trying.

Best part for me is that you are throwing ideas around and testing here on ETO....not to the World. Yet.
So, you are going to get shot down, very gently by people here. Nevertheless...shot down.

So...make and prove. I personally think you are on to a good thing.

I admire your Two Years and then coming back to the same thread to report. You have some conviction/dedication of note. That takes balls....
But then again you know in your heart you are onto something really cool .

+1 again.

Regards,
tvtech

 

[Mosaic]

A short short story.

Once I had an idea .
Then I talked to ppl who generally reacted like:
Which made me feel:
But the idea wouldn't go away..
So I did R&D and got some results:
Then some folks doubted me:
I felt:
Others encouraged:
Others advised:
I felt

I have come too far to stop now, ...how will the story end?