Battery sulphation removers

Marty, you might want to ask that question here:
http://p198.ezboard.com/fleadacidbatterydesulfationfrm1

BTW, I built one of these gadgets, do not expect instant miracles would be my advice.
I have no idea how good/bad the Jaycar version is.
My gut feeling is that they are for flooded batteries only, they rely on the knocked off sulphation to sink to the bottom off the cell - not going to happen without a liquid.

Klaus

marty,
i dont know anything about the jaycar stuff but Inox make a liquid desulphate that you simplu pour into your battery and it does the rest. it is even supposed to increase the life of your battery. depending on the age of the battery they even guarantee it. they have an internet site with all the info. it costs around $10-$15 at auto shops.
i used it many years ago on a nearly dead battery. helped a little but the battery was too far gone and i had to buy another one.
dont know if it can be used on agm or calcium batteries. you would need to ask the inox people to find out.

peter

Marty,

This device should be suitable for any battery, but sulphation is more common in wet cell batteries especially when improper charging or discharging has occurred.

I have a 3 stage charger which also checks for battery sulphation as part of the charging process. If it detects sulphation, it generates a Pulse charge at a specific frequency which breaks down the lead sulphate crystals adhering to the plates, therefore "regenerating" crook batteries.

The device you have identified would probably do the same and should not cause undue damage to your battery but check with Jaycar and ask if it tests for sulphation before it belts a high voltage charge through it.

Marty,

Had a guy try to sell me a popular brand of these units, I asked him to honesty reply whether it was worthwhile in my Silver/Calcium battery and if so would he guarantee results.

Only good for old fasioned lead acid batteries was the reply

Rolande

I've been using Megapulse battery 'optimisers' for a few years and my start battery is about 5 years old and two Deep Cycle Calcium batteries are over 4 years old and are in as new condition as of their last test in mid feb '06.

www.megapulse.net

Thanks for all the replies, I had thought that these were only suitable for flooded cells. I listened to a talk from Solar Panel Xpress & he said the Megapulse brand were suitable for all types of batteries. Comparing prices, I can buy 4 from Electus for the price of 1 Megapulse so I will get 1 & try it.

from Marty.

My father has a small collection of about 10 lead acid batteries at his house(well...some are mine! )1 Calcium and 1 AGM (a very old Odessy).

Most had been sitting for years, and possibly died due to extremely low voltage....

But none have come good with the desulphating zapper I made from the JayCar kit.

In fact the Calcium battery appears to be OK(I didn't zap this), good voltage and good current when tested with the 'cheap and nasty' battery load tester, but will not crank his 60series diesel!

The AGM gives good voltage and load, and will only just crank the diesel.

Maybe one of the standard SLA batteries may be coming good....but it seems to be a very slow process.........So far it's been about 2months!

Overall I'd say money well spent on the zapper, (I love a challenge!!) and worth the effort to realise that a battery is DEAD!!
I'm in two minds about the battery load tester (from SuperCheap).
It cost around $60-70, it does a load test on the battery with an internal heating element, and instantaneously indicates how many volts the battery has under this load. The tester get very hot if used more than 20 seconds!

of the 12 batteries tested so far only three have been accurately indicated by this tester. All the others failed the real test.
It sometimes says that the battery is good, when in fact it won't perform it intended function!

The battery collection consists of various 7-12 Ah 12 volt, for powering the kids(his grandchildren) electric vehilcles, 3 or so car batteries, a couple of 70ZZ's and 1 deep cycle 70ZZ @ 120Ah.

The main charger used to rescusitate the batteries is my 20Amp Arlec charger, and some are kept on a float charge with a 4 amp 'lil tacker.

ps. If you buy the Zapper KIT, there are some fiddly bits when it comes time to screw the completed PCB board to the the supplied case.
You may need several longnosed very slim pliers, or the 4 machine screws supplied to do this job, should be replaced with ones of double the length.

good luck with it! :))