Trojan T-105 Battery

[horsefly76]

I just brought home 8 T-105's from work (2yr's old) because after an over-nite 10 amp charge some cell's only had s.g. of 1.175.

Now the equipment they come out of just have a simple 24volt 20 amp 3 stage charger. (Genie 19 foot scissor lift -4 batteries in series per unit for 24 volt system)

I found by giving them a good equalization charge and after sitting over-nite I get an s.g. of 1.300 on all cell's

I will be adding to this new bank because management won't let me take the time to equalize the batteries in our fleet (30 plus unit's)

Boss said "I don't want to mess with that crap just put in new batteries" (At a cost of $400+ per unit)

For you off grid guys what do you do to bring a battery back other than running a de-sulfate cycler/equalization charge?

Has anyone used any of the liquid/power products that you dump in the cells to "make them like new again"

My other battery bank is C&D tech AGM's so I don't have to do much to them.

I'm tired of reading stuff on the net and would like a real world "This is what I did/worked for me"

Yes it's 5 am on a Sunday, I have a pregnant wife so sleep is a bit hard to come by these days

[mobile_bob]

if you are tired of reading about desulfators (both electronic and chemical) stop going to those sites

in my opinion they are all crap, snake oil

you did what was right by doing the equalization charge on them, they are now as good as they are going to get.

save you money and your time with all the desulfator stuff, with a kid on the way you are going to need it.

bob g

[MacGyver]

I (respectfully) disagree with Bob about desulfators!

I have one that I built almost 7 years ago, and I think it's one of the greatest things since the invention of the lead acid battery.
I have successfully recovered many batteries with it that "conventional" methods couldn't fix.

In 2002 I acquired a large forklift battery for free that I hoped to salvage. I had read a lot about desulfators on some of the alt energy forums I belonged to and decided to build one. Back then, there weren't many commercially available ones around, but quite a bit of DIY info. So I built one.

My desulfator generates a brief (less than 5 millisecond) pulse with a fast rise and fall time. It delivers about 70 amps into a battery during that short pulse, while the average current may only be a couple of amps. The voltage across the plates may reach 20 volts or more during that pulse also, although the average voltage is regulated to 13.8 volts on mine.

The big forklift battery turned out to be a failure. It had a shorted cell and couldn't be saved.
But shortly after that, I acquired a VW van with 6 year old battery that had sat way too long and was *severely* sulfated. You could see the crunchy white crystals on the plates and it wouldn't take a charge at all. So I put the desulfator on it and left it about 2 weeks and it worked like a charm. My first success! Most of the white "fuzz" on the plates was gone and the battery was now well charged and worked great.

That battery is still in the van. It's 12 years old now and still works great. Once a year I put the desulfator on it for a few days and let it run.
I've had many other successes with it too. Enough that I'm a firm believer and if mine blew up today I'd be building or buying another one right away.

It can't fix everything and I've had plenty of old batteries that it couldn't save. But for mechanically sound batteries that don't have shorted or warped plates but do have heavily sulfated plates from chronic undercharging, the desulfator is fabulous!  I love mine and can't recommend it highly enough.

I have no financial interest in the things. I can't even recommend a "good" brand to buy, because I've never used a "store bought" one.
The schematics for mine died with my old computer, so I've got no schematics to share, but it's based on a SG3525 PWM chip (because I had some) and a big hand would inductor.
I'm sure there must be schematics on the web for those who want to try their hand at it.

Don't dismiss a good desulfator as "snake oil" until you have some experience with them. All I can say is if they are no better than snake oil... well... I'll take 2 please.

Edited to add:

But I would never put any weird chemicals in my battery. I'm NOT a believer in chemical desulfation techniques!
My experience is only with electronic "pulse" type desulfators.

[mobile_bob]

MacGyver:

my issues with pulse desulfators stems from there being no, none, nada data where there was a double blind test
done to prove that they actually work, and perhaps if they do "why" they work.

for instance you mention using one for 2weeks to recover a badly sulfated and crystallized battery, my bet is you would have gotten
similar results with a standard charger if you had left it on the battery for several days.

having researched this battery charging stuff for many many years now and desulfators for the last 10 years of so
in my opinion the jury is still out on this one. plenty of anecdotal evidence but not a single double blind test done by an independant
lab of some repute.

in theory i understand how the pulse units might work, but what is not clear to me at least is what actually happens to the sulfation crystals
are they broken down? or simply dislodged from the plates exposing new material but degradeing the plate? i don't know
and so far i have not found anyone that can answer that one either.

on the other hand, if one has tried every conventional method to recover a cell, then as a last resort i suppose any method is fair at that point.

i just would not suggest using any other method on an expensive battery that i cared anything about.

bob g

[Stan]

The crystals settle to the bottom of the battery and commence to build up in depth.  When they reach a depth equal to the level of the bottom of the plates, your battery shorts out (slowly).  That's why all of the better CD technology batteries have clear cases and an inch or more of clearance, so you can see the level of crud building up at the bottom, and it takes a long time to do so.  Cheaper batteries have less clearance and crud (technical term, sorry) build up to short out the plates faster.

You used to be able to take the top of cells and lift out the plates, dump out the acid, clean out the crud and replace the plates and acid.  Can't you imagine the average person today doing that?  What a disaster waiting to happen! 
Stan

[Doug]

I have been doing that with the flooded cell NiCd batteries at work dumo flush and refill to extend their lives.
I understand its possible to do the same to even modern flooded cell lead batteries and squeeze a little more life out of them.

A local company with a " secret " process does this for us.
I suspect chemical cleaning, flushing of the plates followed by a refill with new acid.
No complaints but most of the batteries he gets from us were never bad in the first place and often just needed a charge
 

[mobile_bob]

Doug:

precisely!

we have a local chain of battery stores here called "budget batteries"
i took a bunch of cores to one of their stores one time to get rid of them for a couple bucks
and took some time to talk to him about warrantee issues with batteries

he told me 9 of 10 times the issues are related to charging problems, he had a rack in the back
where batteries that were heavily sulfated  were left to charge sometimes for days or even weeks to get them
back up again. they don't use chemical or electronic desulfators either.

from what he told me, which coincides with what research i have done, charging is the name of the game.
most times folks aren't charging properly to start with and have problems.

he see's lot of issues with deep cycle consumers, they have the worst problems with understanding the need to
charge properly.

recently i read a letter to the tech editor in homepower magazine where a guy was looking to replace his trojans
after 11years of offgrid use ( a couple batteries were beginning to use a lot of water), the bottom line is that guy
was doing alot right with those batteries to get 11 years out of them in an offgrid home! most folks are lucky to get 2-4 years
and some murder them in under a year!
anyway i don't remember him using  any desulfator products, but have to go reread for sure.
i guess in all fairness if he has used a desulfator all along then he has made a strong case for their use?

the OP took a used set that were in questionable shape and did an equalization charge overnight and got the specific gravity
up to 1300 (which is quite high) but likely he has got those batteries up to a good condition i would say.

Stan:
 the sulfation should be broken down electrically when charging and the acid returned to the electrolyte, if it simply
falls off and settles to the bottom it cannot be broken down and returned to the electolyte. in which case the specific gravity will never
return to its original levels from the factory. This is precisely the issue i have with desulfators, i certainly do not want to see crystallized sulfation
comeing lose and falling to the bottom of the cell myself. i would rather see in broken down electrically as designed and returned to the electrolyte.

bob g

[Stan]

That's why I talked about replacing the acid and cleaning the whole thing out if the plates are still in good shape.  You are absolutely right about murdering batteries.  I see so many examples of people doing just that.  In the ham radio game, most of the batteries are rechargeable nicads, nickle metal hydrides or litium ions.  I have seen too many very expensive products with Lion batteries ruined because they included a $2 dumb charger that isn't anything more than a simple wall wart transformer that cooks the batteries the first time joe shmoe forgets and leaves them hooked up for a couple of days. 

I blame the manufacturer because for a few bucks more a simple charger that shuts off and just sends a trickle to the batteries when they are charged would have saved the day.  They know what happens and either don't care or want the extra business of selling more batteries or another product.  Lion drills are a perfect example.  $350 for a good 18V lion driver these days with a $2 charger.  Stupid.
Stan

[SCOTT]

While I am no expert on batteries, I do know the Mobile bob’s ascertain that a double blind test is required to prove usefulness of this particular type of desulfators is flawed.  This type of experiment or lack of has nothing to do with the effectiveness of  the process.  To say so that validation using this testing procedure is required is just wrong, and shows a misunderstanding of the reasons to conduct a double blind experiment

Scott

[Doug]

I have some old batteries here on my UPS.
The built in float charge seems to be doing its job, but I also rotatre an rest on bank every now and then. In the cool of the basement I don;t loose much by letting them sit for a month and it reduces the burden on the UPS ( was never designed to float so many batteries ).

I have managed nearly 10 years on my gell cells, but thats all standby use in a cool place....

[Stan]

I don't know Scott...Bob's got a very valid point, not that he can't argue it for himself, but like he said, what if a plain old charger set to your batteries wouldn't have done just as good a job as your "desulfinator"?

Which reminds me, does anybody remember the cartoons with the martian, he always had some sort of a weapon called something like a desulfinator didn't he?
Stan

[Tom]

I concur with Steve about the desulfators. I was turned on to them by a battery guru who worked for Home Power Mag. The best success story I have is that my friend Don was given some nice sealed agm telco batteries. 2 months on the charger and NOTHING, they would not even move the amp meter on the charger. Don got a good desulfator and after a month on the the batteries they not only took a charge, but test at 90% capacity. I used one of those batteries on my RV with a solar panel for 3 years and it was still going strong.

Yes a charge should break down the sulfur crystals on the plates, however they can get pretty stubborn. The pulses from the desulfators tend to shatter them. Continuous use actually can make the batteries more efficient as the crystals that form on a discharge cycle are smaller and are driven back in to solution easier when charging.
 
EDTA is a common chemical method of restoring batteries. It can work to get some additional life out of a battery, but it causes quite a bit of material to sluff off plates and when it builds up on the bottom of the battery it will short the plates.

[mobile_bob]

Scott:

you find issue with the use of a double blind test?

perhaps you could relate another testing protocol?

first of all for the record
i have no doubt that a desulfator can recover some batteries that are heavily sulfated, but
i also know that the careful use of a proper charger can also do the same with some batteries that are heavily sulfated.

the problem becomes
a. how does one determine whether one is better than the other?
b. how does one determine if indeed the crystal sulfation is actually broken down electrically or simply dislodged from the plates?

my basic point is one should never allow his batteries to get into this sort of condition to start with and if faced with a cell that cannot be
recovered by conventional charging means then do what you have to.

until it is proven that the desulfator actually breaks down the crystal and returns the acid to the electrolyte i would not recommend
a desulfator to anyone as part of a normal routine charging tool.

until someone does some independant testing (double blind or your pick) you are at the mercy of claims of manufactures.
we all know that manufactures will take (how should i say) "artistic" license when it comes to what they claim their products will do.

for instance the wind generator industry, there are many who claim as an example there model x turbine at 1kwatt
when the reality is you have to have it running in a 28mph (or more) windspeed, that detail is in the fine print.
a good windsight might have less than half that (which does not equate to 1/2 power or 500 watts) but rather something on the order
of 125watts.
point being the wind generator industry has been raising hell about proper testing for 50 years and they are no closer than they were back then.

the desulfator industry (electronic) is basically in its infancy by comparison and there is so much hype and down right fraud in that group that one
needs to be very careful what he is about to buy into.

again, i have little doubt that an electronic desulfator will work on some batteries, but it is by no means a foregone conclusion that they have any higher success
rate than other more conventional methods which do not damage batteries and which technology is well grounded and understood.
we know that a charger does to a batteries plates what it is designed to do, what we don't know is what exactly is happening with a desulfator.

bottom line if i had a tired and abused battery i wanted to experiment with i might try a desulfator, but
if i had a 5000 series rolls/surrette you better betcha i would exhaust all other conventional means of recovering it before i would
risk further damage of an unknown nature.

there is a significant difference between a freebie battery to experiment with and a thousand dollar rolls/surrette battery from a string.

that is the way i see it anyway

i am curious though, if not a double blind test by an independant lab, then what kind of test?

bob g

[SCOTT]

Mobil bob
There is nothing wrong with a double blind test, it is just not applicable in this situation.

A double blind test is when neither the subject nor the administrator of the test know who has the control and who had the compound that is tested.  This type of test is commonly used in the medical field where subjectivity and bias by both the subject and administrator needs to be removed.

Example, a study on a potential cancer drug.  The study is composed of 2 groups of patients, the control group and the placebo group.  In a double blind study the patients can all have the comfort of knowing they MAY have the new compound.  Think about it, if you were a cancer patient you enrolled into a study and at the beginning of the study you were told that you were part of the placebo group, would you continue the study, or would you look for another one?  There is much more that goes into one of these trials but the above makes the point.

In the scenario you describe with batteries, there is no need to run this type of test, in fact it can not be run.  The subject = batteries in this case and as such can not introduce the bias a double blind test is designed to mitigate.

So back to my statement, just because there is lack of a double blind testing methodology does not negate results from other testing procedures.  Double blind testing is not the standard in this application.

My point is limited to the testing methodology and specifically the appropriateness of a double blind test.  As I said in the first post, I don’t know much about batteries except they are expensive.

Simple before and after testing should show effectiveness or not.  If you distrust the tester, that is another issue all together.


Scott

[MacGyver]

Bob,

Yes, the desulfator does break the crystalline lead sulfate down and return it to a useful state, and the SG of the acid is returned to "normal" in the process.
It does NOT just bust it loose and dump it in the bottom of the battery. That would be useless.

When I built mine there was quite a few good pages of info on how they work (or at least how it's theorized that they work). I'm sure if you google around you can find some of it.

While I agree that blind testing would be the "scientific" way to do testing, I also accept that there are times in life when "simple observation" can tell a lot.
Here's a common scenario that has happened to me many times (the latest being 2 months ago on the battery for my neighbors horse trailer).

I take a dead battery and put it on my regular charger. Immediately, the battery terminal voltage goes to about 15 volts (open circuit voltage on my charger), and the current drawn by the battery is almost zero. A classic case of heavy sulfation...

After many days or even weeks on the charger the voltage is still high, the charge current is still negligible and the battery is still junk. So I put the desulfator on the battery and get the same thing... high voltage and zero current. BUT, after just a couple of hours on the desulfator the battery starts to suck a little power. After 24 hours, it's pulling 4 amps (my desulfators maximum current) and obviously taking a charge. After a few more days, it's charged and ready for service.

The desulfator clearly starts to get results in a few hours that a regular charger can't produce in *many* days. We're not just talking one battery either. This scenario has repeated itself for me many times. I don't need any blind testing to know that something good is happening.

Since I don't sell desulfators I don't much care if anyone else uses them or not. Nothin' in it for me.
But I am quite convinced that *mine* does good things that a regular simply charger can't do. I've SEEN it happen repeatedly.

Bob, I suggest you buy or borrow one and give it a good testing before you form an opinion. Tell us your results.

But *don't* tell us that you've never used one and admit that you know little or nothing about them, and then in the same breath proclaim them to be snake oil and a waste of money.
That's just spoutin noise, and I know you're better than that...