Lead/Acid to Alcaline/Lead battery conversion - useful?

[baroutologos]

I have been stimulated by SL3 and searched a bit the Net about lead acid batteries conversion to alcaline electrolyte based ones.

Claims range from moderate to extraordinary results. Please post your experience here.

Furthermore, the pulse charging/ decharging behaviour of the converted batteries is to be discussed here.

An initial well known link to ponder Sepp Hasslberger: How to convert a Lead Acid Battery into an Alkaline Battery

Also see Bedini's vid here BatteryForming_2008_04_25_16_16_47.wmv

Any experience? Does it worth it?

Baroutologos

[blackchisel97]

IMO it would be worth trying. Alkaline electrolyte is much easier to make (with restricted supplies) than acid one. Not mentioning being safer to handle. I use to make my own at one time. I would much prefer few gallons of alum water spilled than sulfuric acid - if something goes wrong .


Vtech

[cody]

I bought some alum a few weeks back to do some experimenting with this but i havnt started yet. You should use distilled water to mix it with. Ive seen John Bs link but i hadnt seen that other one, thanks for posting it. Im thinking it will be important to get the proper ratio of alum to water, actually i think we should really study ph level. We are switching from an acid to a base. Battery acid has a ph of around 0. Distilled water is neutral at 7. So our base should be around 14 if my logic is correct, which it very well may be wrong Scroll down this link to find the ph scale
pH - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Looks like alum is not going to get near 14, but im not sure, i couldnt find the ph level of it. Sodium hydroxide gets up there though But i guess we are wanting to stick with the alum. I guess ill try and find time to fill one of my batterys with it and see what happens, i have many discarded batterys laying around to play with.

[Sephiroth]

good info in this thread...

http://www.energeticforum.com/renewable-energy/1739-making-batteries-safer.html

[theremart]

Thanks seph

Good thread to point people to.

I am part of a yahoo group that does this and other electrolites. Battery conversions.

I have one converted battery still working but only has a top voltage of 11.80 However it does give me about 15 amp hours of work. Others have been much more sucessful with this.

Cheers

[sucahyo]

Battery acid has a ph of around 0. Distilled water is neutral at 7. So our base should be around 14 if my logic is correct

I don't think that is the real pH, I buy sulfuric acid for battery once, and it don't melt steel. That is too high and too dangerous. I think go 10 (starts of skin irittating), then 12 if not enough. At 14, alkaline will burn skin on touch, can blind eyes too. I don't think Alum will ever go near that number.

Edit:
Just reading the the other thread and seeing that the Alum formula do not have Hydrogen. It is safer. And I think the pH may be deceiving. Just use concentration.

[baroutologos]

Thanks Seph for the thread in this forum. I was not aware of that.

By the way, as i see it, alcaline or alum/lead based batteries offer a possibility of a method reclaiming old lead/acid ones. (not damaged ones)

By the way, it is understood that those type of batteries, once created are almost useless. They have to undergo severe charging / discharging process in order to have comparable results (or some claim better) than standard lead/acid batteries.

This sound like improving or even conditioning. Maybe they give better COP with pulsers? who knows..


Baroutologos

[cody]

Ok, the first major thing it want to clear up:
Alum, at least the stuff everyone has been using(from the grocery store) is not a base, its an ACID. Mix a little with water and pour it on some baking soda and you will have your proof for that one. So this is not an alkaline battery that were making, its just another acid battery. So this makes me wonder, why alum, why not vinegar.

Anyways, i found some time to play around with this last night. I wanted to start with a really bad battery; it was an old 9 ah motorcycle battery, they are notorious for going bad over the winter. It was sitting at 2.11V. I dumped out all the acid and did several flushes of the cell chambers to get rid of all the acid and debris. There was a lot of crud that came out of that battery; it was dark gray powdery looking junk. I mixed my solution at 1 cup water to 1 tablespoon alum. It was sitting at 1 something volts at this point. I then hooked it up to the sg to charge and the voltage shot up to around 14v, but it was just a surface charge, but the battery did sit at a higher voltage after that, but it didnt appear to have any capacity. The scope shot didnt look good, it was just a big spike, no h bridge. Im thinking all the junk that came out might have been the paste. At that point i decided to try charging it off straight dc from a 24v battery. I ran some short charge/load tests with encouraging results. After every timed charge, the battery gained a slight amount of capacitance when loaded. Very similiar to what bedini was doing on that video. But i think it will take a lot of cycles to see any useable results from the battery. Ive got it back on the sg for now.

[cody]

More good news. At first the sg didnt appear to do anything to the battery, but then i did my dc charging, which did slightly charge it. After the dc, i put it back on the sg to see if it might work now. The answer is yes After 10 min on the sg, i did some more load tests with the dc again. Doing the same tests as before i was able to load the battery almost three times longer Granted its still such a small amount of power we are talking about here that its still of no real use, but still, it is improving. The wave form on the sg also got better.

So if you put alum in a junk battery and it wont take a charge from a bedini circuit, give it a charge with some regular dc for a while, then stick it on the bedini.

[baroutologos]

Thanks Cody for feedback.

Yes indeed the normal alum is acidic in solution. However there have been (claimed) successful recoveries with silicate alums or even NaOH or KOH solutions.

Regarding performances for best performance for pulse charging could be
1) type of electrolyte solution composion
2) % solution
3) Times cycled
4) go figure...

Typically, it is said that at 10 or max 20 cycles you must have come near or above at original new battery specs...

i am gonna try it myself also, should work allow

Baroutologos

[cody]

Yes i believe your right. I really dont think the alum has anything special to do with it. I think a lot of it was just cleaning out all the junk that had collected in the cells, putting in new solution(which may as well be new sulfuric acid) and then doing the charge/discharge conditioning. Ive left my battery on the sg all day so far and it is continuing to improve. Im positive i would be doing much better if i started with a better battery. My wave form continues to get better and i believe i should have a standard h wave before to long, which means its taking a charge better and better. Not sure how much better the pulse charging is, but it does appear to have significantly improved the battery. But i have no hard evidence on that. Its possible dc would have done just as well, i dont really have a good dc charging setup, the wall battery charger wont even charge it because of the circuitry and the voltage being to low on the battery. I know jetijs has some good graphs showing pulse charging increasing battery capacity, so i believe its true.

[Matthew Jones]

I think a lot of it was just cleaning out all the junk that had collected in the cells, putting in new solution(which may as well be new sulfuric acid) and then doing the charge/discharge conditioning.

That is the case most of time. The salivation build on the bottom of the battery like MUCK then shorts the plates out. Continuing to charge a battery that is shorted will heat and warp the plates. The hot acid also promotes the warping.
This was one of the reasons the old timers used glass for casing. They could monitor the state of the battery better and clean them out when needed. The railroad used them alot.

Matt

[sucahyo]

Ok, the first major thing it want to clear up:
Alum, at least the stuff everyone has been using(from the grocery store) is not a base, its an ACID.

I think it should be called salt. Acid is molecule which has H+, alkaline is molecule which has OH-. Without both, it is salt.

Anyone with chemical experience please explain what happen if we react alum with electrolysis. What will occur in positive terminal and what will occur in negative terminal. My take:

2 Al(s) + 2 KOH(aq) + 4 H2SO4 +10 H2O(l) <-> 2 KAl(SO4)2•12H2O(s) + 3 H2(g)

I think charging (electrolysis) process move the balance to the left, while discharging will move the balance to the right. We will have alkaline on one terminal and acid on other terminal.

[cody]

suchayo,

You are right, i hadnt looked at the formula. It does indeed appear to be a salt However its a salt with a low ph like an acid. Just starting my chem classes and have a long way to go, wish i knew more on it. I wonder if these batteries will have the same problem as regular sulphuric acid batteries, if theres no sulfuric acid, then the plates cant sulfate right? Maybe we will get a whole new problem of some sort of alum collecting on the plates Or maybe not, dont really know.

[sucahyo]

I am not sure if it has low pH.

I wonder if we add KOH or NaOH and some aluminum into the battery acid, it will convert to alum too. Notice the KOH and H2SO4 in the left of the equation. KOH is alkaline, H2SO4 is sulphuric acid used in lead acid battery.

Don't use baking soda though, it produce dangerous gas.