20 years ago I became friends with a battery rebuilder. Mostly industrial
types.
Due to environmental problems and soaring waste disposal prices he is no
longer
in business. I do not know about the EDTA reported in Kevin Martin's well
written article but most of the proceedures are similar.
(note: bumbling fools need not read on, Please use caution and common sense
if you decide to use the following techniques...)
We would carefully turn over the batteries and drain the acid out of them.
Flush the batteries with filtered/distilled water. Hard water and soft water
are potentially deadly to batteries. Flushing until clear water with a
fairly neutral PH comes out. Then emptying the battery, completely.
The acid/water that is flushed out of the battery is usually muddy and full
of
scale from the plates. At this point we would check to see if there was
any freeze damage.
This usually looks like buldging or deformed plates in the battery.
These batteries are usually discarded because of the low prospect of sucess.
On industrial battery rebuilds, we would forcably separate the top from the
bottom and visually inspect the plates and place the top half in a "solution"
to
rejuvenate the plates. I cannot remember what the "solution" was made of but
it did arrive pre-packaged and had a greenish color to it. The tank that we
used
had a motor attached and it rocked back an forth sloshing the solution
between
the plates and constantly moving the solution for about 24 hours.
For the average auto battery rebuild, getting the scale out of the battery
was the most important item. Scale buildup in the bottom of the battery
was responsible for the majority of short circuits and "flat" batteries.
Some deep cycle batteries are the same as similar sized auto
batteries, but they have larger cavities on the bottom to catch the
scale and keep it from touching/shorting the plates.
Next filling the battery with new battery acid
would usually bring the battery up to about a 60% charge and we would
recommend that the customer charge at 2 amps or less for 12 hours to
top off the charge and then place into the automobile for use.
Batteries with holes were usually repaired with special epoxy after
they were flushed & drained as stated above.
JC Whitney has a product like this in their catalog.
My 2 cents and hope this helps,
Rgds,
Ken Breen
Still Mutt-crazed after all these years...
"J. Forster" wrote:
> Did you see this post a few days ago:
>
> http://www.scimweb.com/reports/battery.html
>
> -J
>
> > At 06:34 PM 8/16/2001 -0700, John Freeman,MD wrote:
> > >GROUP:
> > >Have pair new batteries which were in storage for
> > >one year wet and without charge.Now will not accept
> > >full charge , is there any chemical which may be
> > >added to battery acid to enable restoration of such
> > >batteries,or do I just have some more nice lead for my
> > >bullet molds?
> > >John Freeman
>
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Sep 02 2001 - 11:15:39 PDT