Pulse Desulfators: Fact or Fiction?

[sonicj]

np gale!

strange that your batteries saw a 50% gain in capacity as these gained exactly 50.81%. they still fall well short of their original 5Ah rating, but imo a 50% gain in whatever is left is pretty impressive! do you know if your batteries now hold a higher voltage under load?

at this point, i think i need to find another test subject in a similar state and repeat the tests using a low ripple, float voltage power supply. this should identify whether the gain in capacity was from the pulsing charger or from simply being connected to constant power source ("trickle charge").
-sj

[bgwdummy]

Thanks! How about continue testing on the original battery to see if it regains even more capacity after longer, say a month or two, desulfaction process? Thanks!

[Gale Hawkins]

While in the one case where run time had decreased by 50% and using the B&D Desulf Mode option enabled to regain 50% of that lost amount enabled us to get another 12 months of service before they were pulled was a big deal in my mind. I mean I had chargers with that feature but had not tired the feature because other said desulfators are BS.

Well I know that is false when it comes to the B&D feature because I have objective numbers that prove it.

Now does every Desulfator being sold on E-bay do as they claim? My research (reading) leads me to think NO they do not. There is a lot of physics and chemistry involved in the soild state desulfator units.

I know enough about the technology to think the BatterMINDer Model 36271 should do what states on paper so I just hooked it up and in fact due to the weather have not ever been to where the cart is parked for a week so I am glad I have it running after the EZGO charger finished.

Since getting the BatteryMINDer Model 36271 desulfator/2.7 amp charger I have purchase new replacement for my hydrometer (SG tester) and a 100 amp 6v-12v battery load tester. The last two nights it has been 5F degrees in an open shed so clearly I am not doing hands on testing in those temps.

I will do some testing on other batteries and will gather some base line data on those in the cart as well but it will not be pretreated data.

If I lived 58 years without using a Desulfator one can make a case they are not required but currently we have 21 deep cycle batteries that at some level are still functioning so my interest is higher you might say.

What really got me to thinking about desulfators was the interest the off grid people have in them.

Let's face it the cart crowd posting here have little concern about costs unless our wives are going to be on our case about it.

The off grid folks may have $10K, $20K, etc total investment and they are in the dark if their systems do not work unlike a toy that can just be parked.

For me understand the soild state desulfator technology is of a high interest. The poster from the UK shared a lot of good info about thier experience with the technology that he discussed.

It is just going to take a while before the cart crowd as a whole is going to care much about their charging/run times when just going and buying a new of batteries is an option. Maybe some can come up with a handi-cap scheme that lets one add 1 MPH to top speed or 15 minutes to run time numbers for every 2 years of age of the battery bank. That would drive some interest in battery sulfators and testing of the ones that do the best jump of renewing aging batteries.

Who is going to be interested in getting their bank back to 80% when they can not brag or keep up with the guy with a new bank.

[Gale Hawkins]

Originally Posted by sonicj

np gale!

strange that your batteries saw a 50% gain in capacity as these gained exactly 50.81%. they still fall well short of their original 5Ah rating, but imo a 50% gain in whatever is left is pretty impressive! do you know if your batteries now hold a higher voltage under load?

at this point, i think i need to find another test subject in a similar state and repeat the tests using a low ripple, float voltage power supply. this should identify whether the gain in capacity was from the pulsing charger or from simply being connected to constant power source ("trickle charge").
-sj

sj in the last post I was reading fast and short on time to an appt and missed how you pulled together these two different testing results. Thanks for catching that. I agree to regain 50% of lost function of a battery (bank) is indeed a huge thing.

I will have my IT manager pull the logs on the 48v bank run times so I can determine how long the 50% gain from the desulfating process lasted.

In just steping out to the UPS I see the new set are dated Apr 2010 which will be when the desulfated batteries were pulled but as a guess tonight they were in service about a year after that process. They were first put in service in Nov/Dec 2007 (they are dated Nov 2007 from the factory) and I only buy four at a time of the same size and dated the same or one month old. They are WM DC-27 115 ah trolling batteries.

This set that I desulfated as noted above were last pulled in Apr 2010 and set over to the side without any charging for about 6 months then one day I removed a third set for WM DC-24 75 ah trolling batteries dated Feb 2006 from the parallel harness I made up for balanced charging of four at a time and put these Nov 2007 bank of four on trick charge but did not pull any voltage/SG reading.

Wed evening without doing any testing I charged them on the 40 amp charger for several hours and got SG up to 1.27 then added 2 oz. of distilled water to each cell and gassed them hard for about one hour and the SG tested 1.25.

Off course I was not happy they were not fully charged but I still pulled them so I could put the charging harness on the old Feb 2006 bank of 75 ah that had been sitting on the side without any charging/attention for months. On inspection I found low electrolyte levels in all four batteries with some cells requiring 2 oz of water to just cover the plates.

After a little charging they could float one ball in my $1.54 WM SG tester. By the way I use this SG tester more than the big one with temperature correcting feature because it is not simple to read and drips acid unlike the $1.54 tester. Today these 75 ah batteries after being on trickle charge for two days floated two balls (50% charged) and while I am here today they are on the 40 amp setting and gassing hard.

Change gears back to the Nov 2007 bank that gained 50% of lost run time after a round of desulfating using the B&D charger Desulf Mode. When I pulled them off the charge Wed evening the SG was as noted above at 1.250.

What was cool today after resting for two days the voltage on each of four was either 12.55 or 12.56 volts. I even checked them twice because for four 3.5 year old batteries not well cared for to all have the same voltage reading after 48 hours setting solo impressed me. That voltage is expected with the SG reading of about 1.250.

I will determine from company records if possible next week more info on this set of batteries when the IT manager gets back into the office.

[redriderno22]

how did i miss all this info??

good stuff

[sonicj]

lol, i was wondering where ya went!

by request, heres another graphed test. this time, the battery was paralleled with 4 other similar style batteries so the results obtained likely would not match had the test battery been the sole load. this test was taken roughly one month after the 2nd test.

not much gain in capacity this time around... what it did gain was a consistent 1/4 volt or so throughout the discharge cycle. higher voltage under load means less current is needed to achieve the same amount of work.

would have been interesting to see the results of 1 month without sharing the load, but i have too many other batteries that also need attention. if i build a couple of 12v desulfators, i'll put one back on this battery and we'll see if there is anymore room left for performance gains.

hmm... i could float the battery and measure again in a month and see if it gains anything... yup, i think i'll do that!
-sj