"So a hundred bucks or so for a bit of extra life out of your $5000 set of batteries is a pretty good deal."
maybe! maybe not!
do they sell these desulfators? or sell the plans for them?
if so i am very suspicious of their report.
first of all i have no doubt a desulfator will work better than poorly managed batteries in any group.
can you link directly to their article?
i really don't want to spend half the night trying to find it only to find what i usually find in these desulfator reports, that is poor science.
before anyone starts a war with me on this subject again i would like to make an observation or rather a statement of fact.
most of these folks that claim they work say they work on the pulse frequency or some such stuff that breaks down the sulfation, what they don't go on to state is the fact that sulfation is the nomal product of discharging a battery, you cannot eliminate sulfation.
what they should allude to is the truth and that is they are not trying to break down sulfation but rather sulfation that has been allowed to harden into crystals.
these crystals form from allowing a battery to sit either discharged, or partiallly charged for a rather lengthy amount of time.
now when one gets to hard crystal sulfation, yes it is hard to reconvert, but i take exception to most desulfator folks statement that they break down these crystals by means of the frequency of the pulse which they claim "shakes" the crystals and makes them break down. this statement is flawed to no end
sulfation that has crystalized and hardened will form crystalls of differing sizes and mass, each of which would have to have a different frequency to get them to vibrate, that is if they could vibrate at all in a liquid bath, which would dampen them.
where a desulfator might have validity is in its ability to pulse higher voltages than normally used for equalization for very short durations, thus avoiding heat buildup.. maybe,, theoretical at best.
so far i have seen no report, (and i have read many dozens over the years) that illustrate the mechanism of a desulfator working any better than careful charge regiimes and routine equalization, as far as good batteries go.
as far as badly managed batteries being resurrected with a desulfator, i have seen no report that shows a clear advantage of the desulfator over the controlled higher voltage low amperage method or that of draining the battery refilling with plain water and applying a current and monitoring the rise in specific gravity.
the reason is obvious why desulfator folks don't publish this sort of test, it would clearly show no advantage or very limited success of their method over the tried a true method, and thus kill their sales and their arguement.
the onus is on the desulfators folks to run the tests to prove their position, not the battery manufactures to prove they don't work.
the only outside tests that i have read are from the sandia lab folks, and they come up with unconclusive results.
bottom line is,,, (if using flooded cells)
buy quality cells, follow the manufactures recommendations on charge and discharge cycles, keep them well maintained, watered and clean, and keep and eye on the specific gravity and equalize when needed. then when they get old and tired, and you feel like trying a desulfator then go for it.
until the case has been made and backed up with good science, i would not subject a good battery to a desulfator, we just don't know enough about the process to establish whether or not there is any side effects.
you would not take a medication for a problem with your health that you currently didnt have would you? especially if the side effects of the
medications weren't known yet.
a good test by an outside source such as sandia with a double blind setup where one group of batteries were properly maintained and equalized etc vs a set that had the desulfator ran on them for 10 years (on a 10 year set) would be of great value. especially if they plotted out the results quarterly over 10 years.
if at the end the researcher was to retest the capacity of the two groups and found the desulfator group clearly of more capacity then maybe i would get on board,, until then no way.
this to me so far has all the validity of the old motor oil additives that were claimed to restore a worn out engine, or keep it running for many miles more than engine running the manufactures recommended oils. they come and go with the seasons, i worry that the desulfators are just that sort of thing. nothing more than hyped up magnets on your fuel line to increase mileage.
bob g