Saturday, October 10, 2009

Battery Reconditioning Using EDTA

Battery Reconditioning Using EDTA

Renewable Energy systems such as solar or wind have a few drawbacks and that comes in the form of storage of the energy for use when the wind isn't blowing, and you have some cloudy days in a row where solar energy output will be minimal.

When you are not generating energy you either use it from your grid-tied system, or you potentially have a battery bank of batteries that you charge for these times. Deep cycle batteries are not cheap at all and some of the batteries that are created solely for the use of renewable energy can cost of upwards of $250 per battery!

So what can you do about this? Well there are a couple of things that you can do, especially if you make the right people contacts in just about any town you live in. This is where opportunity lies for getting some nice batteries on the cheap.

Deep Cycle batteries are used in marine, vehicle, RV's, Off-road ATV's, Golf Carts, ForkLifts, and just about any application. One of the largest manufacturer of these batteries is a company named Trojan Battery company and the batteries they have are great for renewable energy sources. They even happen to have a ine dedicated specifically for RE uses.

So.... Instead of buying a large bank of these batteries at $250 a pop you should hunt around local golf cart maintenance shops, forklift repair shops, and more for finding these deep-cycle gems. :)

Most of the time the batteries themselves are not in horrible condition beyond repair, some easy work they can be fixed up to practically new without much cost at all. One simple method of repair is for using EDTA in the electrolytic fluid in each cell that doesn't pass the test of a standard electrolytic hydrometer. Although some battery types are sealed most are recoverable with this technique. EDTA stands for ethylene diamine tetra acetic, and can be purchased on the internet rather easily. If you see people selling you "special" battery reconditioning mixtures this is what the main ingredient is.

You can also visit energyprojects.info for more information about battery reconditioning methods and see them in action. You can save yourself lots of money on your solar pv or wind turbine system by using this method. If you already know how repair battery cells then you probably have all of the information that you need.

How to Recondition a Battery - Sulfation is the Enemy of Lead-Acid Type Batteries

If you're like most of us, you know how much of an expense and inconvenience a dead battery can be. By the time you pay for a tow truck to come and boost or replace your battery, plus any lost earnings that you may have incurred, you can see that the costs quickly add up. And while being able to recondition a dead battery may not solve your immediate problems, it can definitely eliminate the expense of buying a new battery. Plus, if you're so inclined, you can turn it into a very profitable business. And the best part is that it's very easy and inexpensive.

Automotive lead-acid batteries generate electricity by using lead plates surrounded by sulfuric acid. Along with electricity, this double sulfate reaction also produces lead sulfate.

Normally in a healthy battery, the lead sulfate is converted back to lead and sulfuric acid when it is recharged. But in an older battery, or one that's been discharged for a long period of time, the lead sulfate changes to a crystalline form. It then coats the lead plates of the battery and reduces the capacity of the battery. This process is known as sulfation, and is a normal occurrence in lead-acid batteries. It's also one of the most common reasons that these batteries fail.

When sulfation happens, it causes a host of problems within the battery. It's responsible for lowered capacity, longer recharge times, higher working temperatures, and increased corrosion.

The good news is that sulfation can often times be reversed. A specialized battery charger that pulses a high current through the battery is often used. This allows the crystalline lead sulfate to be broken down and turned back into lead and sulfuric acid, thus cleaning the lead plates and regaining charge capacity.

So before you throw that battery away, you should look into battery reconditioning as a way to save it. And if you're interested, you can also earn a substantial amount of money by reconditioning free dead batteries, and then reselling them. A very small investment for a very large return!

How to Recondition Batteries

How to Recondition Batteries

Learning how to recondition batteries was something we undertook so that our off grid renewable energy system would be more cost effective.

We had heard that we could take old batteries and recharge them bringing them back to new condition. It sounded like a good idea, taking some old batteries and bringing them back to life. But how to recondition batteries?

We figured that a simple battery charger would be able to revamp old batteries but even when charged for days they still didn't work.

We really didn't want to take apart the batteries to see what was wrong so we did a bit of research first. It turns out that most batteries have plates in them surrounded by mild sulphuric acid. As the battery gets older and more discharged the plates tend to get oxidized. A buildup of this stuff eventually renders them useless. It is actually called sulfating.

We discovered there is some ingenious little device called a desulfator that sends a pulse through the plates and eventually breaks off the sulfates on the plates returning the battery to normal condition.

It sounded pretty cool so we set out to find a battery desulfator for ourselves and get better at learning how to recondition batteries.

We looked around but most of them came in around the $300 range. It didn't look like a very complicated device so we decided to see if we could make our own battery desulfator.

What did we need to get started?

Good reliable plans to build a battery desulfator Find a source of parts to make it Learn how to recondition batteries

We looked around for some suitable plans and found most of them were under $20 so we figured that wasn't too bad. One set of plans even told you how to build a business learning how to recondition batteries. That sounded interesting as there must be a tremendous supply of old batteries that could be revitalized.

We settled on the plans from the Off Grid Living website, but we are keeping in mind those other plans to start a battery reconditioning business.

It was pretty interesting and cost us only about $15 to build our own battery desulfator. It worked pretty good taking an average of only a couple weeks to bring a battery back to life.

We learned where we could get industrial batteries for free as well. Now we have all of the off grid batteries we could ever use. Only about half of them we are able to recondition but considering that batteries are a huge part of any renewable energy system cost that isn't bad. We have saved thousands of dollars.