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Mikey writes -
I recently ordered a $37 battery desulfator kit. It looks like a pretty simple device that sends pulses to lead acid batteries to help clean the battery plates. There are many success stories on the net about resuscitating essentially "dead" lead acid batteries. Since we have two electric vehicles and live off grid we have a lot of motivation to take care of our batteries. I've seen kits that sell for hundreds of dollars, but this 555 based kit seems to kick out a lot more juice than the fancy ones with wimpy solar panels.
Yum yum Spam for a worthless product.
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@just me again - how is this spam?
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Don't know either way, so please educate. Why do you think this is snake oil? I'm nearing the end of an electric motorcycle build, so if it does do some good, might be worth it, but if it is more magnets on the fuel line...
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I've heard about pulse desulfation, or resonant desulfation. I think I remember reading somewhere that NASA was looking into this (I couldn't find any references unfortunately). There are a lot of sites out there where people have built and tried their own desulfators with pretty good results. Even I would be suspicious about such claims, but a lot of these sites aren't selling anything and supply their schematics for free. The basic idea is this. If you try to charge a lead acid battery with a voltage above 14V, electrolysis and heat causes the water in the electrolyte to split into separate H2 and O molecules. The sulfite left behind coats the plates like an insulator. Simply adding more water, more acid, or dumping the fluid and replacing doesn't remove the insulating material. If you briefly pulse the voltage to way above the charging voltage, due to the inductive and capacitive effects of the battery you get a high frequency ringing effect. This is assumed to cause the sulfate to separate from the plates and rejoin the water to rebuild the acid. The high voltage pulse is supposed to be short enough and repitition is slow enough that the battery or electrolyte doesn't have time to heat up or electrolyse into H2 and O.
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I've heard about pulse desulfation, or resonant desulfation. I think I remember reading somewhere that NASA was looking into this (I couldn't find any references unfortunately). There are a lot of sites out there where people have built and tried their own desulfators with pretty good results. Even I would be suspicious about such claims, but a lot of these sites aren't selling anything and supply their schematics for free. The basic idea is this. If you try to charge a lead acid battery with a voltage above 14V, electrolysis and heat causes the water in the electrolyte to split into separate H2 and O molecules. The sulfite left behind coats the plates like an insulator. Simply adding more water, more acid, or dumping the fluid and replacing doesn't remove the insulating material. If you briefly pulse the voltage to way above the charging voltage, due to the inductive and capacitive effects of the battery you get a high frequency ringing effect. This is assumed to cause the sulfate to separate from the plates and rejoin the water to rebuild the acid. The high voltage pulse is supposed to be short enough and repitition is slow enough that the battery or electrolyte doesn't have time to heat up or electrolyse into H2 and O.
ps. Is anybody else having difficulty trying to add comments?
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Ugh. Sorry for the double post. When I tried to post the first comment I was sent to a page saying it failed, so I posted again. Dear mod, please delete this post and my second one.
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desulfators are not scams as far as I can tell. This is the original article from Home Power magazine that started the desulfator hacking scene: http://windpower.fleettrikes.com/desulfator.pdf.
The site listed that sells the kit is pretty commonly accepted as one of the best resources online for the subject.
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so have you assembled and tried the kit yet?
i'm getting frustrated with my batteries dying on me
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