Trying to build a desulfator circuit for lead acid battery. How to design the inductor and get the toroic cores locally is my challenge. Can I build a battery desulfator without an inductor? Pls help. Thanks.

 

Don't bother, it's a waste of Time and Money, and
extremely inconvenient when You are stranded miles from Home by a previously ruined Battery.

Get a new Battery,
then keep it on a "Battery-Maintainer" or "Solar-Charger",
it will never develop Sulfation problems,
and, it will probably last ~5 to ~6 years, possibly much longer,
without any noticeable loss of Capacity.

Lead-Acid-Batteries can easily be completely destroyed by
being left in a state of partial, or complete, discharge for extended periods of Time.
There is nothing that will bring back their original Capacity.
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Trying to build a desulfator circuit for lead acid battery.

Please post the circuit, plus a link to the site where you got it.

ak

 

One of the original lead acid battery desulfator was published in Home Power magazine June/July 2000
by Alison Couper. Article pdf below.

A study found that the internal resistance was related to charge capacity. It is best not to exceed the temperature rating and voltage.
Later some had found that desulfated batteries that had a pitted surface reducing the number of charges. It is unknown if a
practical self healing battery plate has been produced but some of the molten types are promising for large commercial type batteries.
(PDF) Desulfation of lead-acid battery by high frequency pulse

https://mybios.me/homemade-battery-desulfator-circuit/

 

This is an interesting concept indeed. De-sulphating has been around for decades as a theory, and certainly lead-acid battery loss of capacity has been around as long as the batteries. The actual validity of the process is a separate question. The writing style of some articles has put them immediately in the realm of questionable.
What I have not come across are research articles from recognized research organizations. So it will be interesting to discover what the TS learns from the project.

 

If there was a reliable way to recover a ruined Lead-Acid-Battery there certainly
would be at least one commercial-product on the Market.

But there are ZERO commercial-products available to the Public for this purpose.

That's because there is no method that will work reliably to
completely recover a ruined Lead-Acid-Battery.

The solution is to keep your Battery fully charged at all times,
or,
physically disconnect it from any Loads.

Even when the Battery is completely disconnected,
it's a good idea to put a charger on it at least once a month,
but a "Battery-Maintainer" is still the best insurance You can get for Maximum-Battery-Life.
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But there are ZERO commercial-products available to the Public for this purpose.

Then you never did a Google search.
There are a number of advertised products.
Whether they really work, is a different question.

 

It's been a decade or 3 since I last looked .........
There are a lot more gimmicks available now.
They still don't work.
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I think the best advice will be to try that de-sulphator on an already damaged battery where there is not much too lose.

 

I'm with the club that says they don't work (from decades of experience with lead-acid battery banks being recharged daily) any better that a standard charge cycle with a a slightly higher voltage called an equalization charge. If you have hard sulfation crystals, kHz current pulses from a cheap device won't dissolve or break them up. The best you can do electronically is to overcharge any voids or cracks (making them deeper and likely to cause plate failure) to the lead plate to gain a slight improvement.

Simply giving the battery a good charge, on a as needed by usage schedule and the occasional "equalisation charge" will give it max life.

 

It's been a decade or 3 since I last looked .........

Then it would seem your info may be a little out of date.

They still don't work.

And you have done testing or read about tests that verify that absolute statement?

 

Then it would seem your info may be a little out of date.
And you have done testing or read about tests that verify that absolute statement?

His device info is out of date (IMO most people were wise to this snake-oil years ago) but I totally concur with his absolute statement of them not working.

 

Hello,

SgtWookie had a thread years ago:
https://forum.allaboutcircuits.com/threads/battery-desulphation-for-lead-acid-types-anyone.14337/

Bertus

 

Like I suggested once already: If somebody has a badly sulphated battery, they could try the device treatment. Either it will provide a benefit or it will not. But, like all valid experiments, it will need adequate control of the conditions and an actual evaluation of the results. OR has that been done already??

 

It would be my estimation that nobody looks into "Desulfators" until after they
either get a free-dead-Battery to play with,
that would otherwise cost close to ~$100.oo bucks to obtain new,
or they have a ~10-year-old Car, and most shops they asked want ~$250.oo to install a new one.

These situations are what will get them looking for alternate solutions,
and where there's a common problem,
there's going to be somebody trying to sell You something,
even if it's Swamp-Root-Snake-Oil, or an Old-Wives-Tale,
and, of course, there are still people who think that setting a Battery on Concrete will run it dead.

But, people who must maintain several Batteries, ( or a whole stack of them ),
learn pretty quickly what the rules are,
and usually will have tried at least a handful of tricks
to improve the end-product that they are tasked with maintaining.
And it better not waste my stinking Time.
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Like I suggested once already: If somebody has a badly sulphated battery, they could try the device treatment. Either it will provide a benefit or it will not. But, like all valid experiments, it will need adequate control of the conditions and an actual evaluation of the results. OR has that been done already??

If it really worked IMO the circuits would be standard in most charging designs, made by people with actual EE degrees and decades of experience in the subject. I see tons of specialized PS switcher IC chips on the market but no specific IC chips for a sulphated battery that are very similar to PS switchers in basic design. There are plenty of tests with null results but that won't change the minds of believers.

 

OK, so the suggestion was a bit off. The "scientific method" to investigate what seems to not work.

 

When someone does something they believe will work they tend to find reason to believe it did. As to actually desulfating a battery - I can not speak with any knowledge. I have attempted to desulfate a few SLA's with no luck. I have Wet Cell LA's that have not yet gotten so bad that they can't start a car. I tend to believe (rightfully or wrongfully) that the battery rejuvenating charger I have has helped. Not being equipped with the necessary tools to fully investigate, nor having taken time over the years to document progress (or lack there-of), I can't say one way or the other. However, even though I tend to believe there has been some benefit to my older batteries - I have to think that such a beast of a desulfator is more along the lines of "Puff - the Magic Dragon" than anything grounded in absolute proof.

 

It "should" work in "theory",
but it's of very limited value in practical applications.

Battery-Maintainers, on the other hand,
especially the designs that are Temperature-Compensated,
are well proven to prevent the problem from occurring in the first place.
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The theory is a method of reversing a mainly irreversible chemical reaction IRT hard lead plate sulfation.

Thermal and vibrational energy from the kinetic energy of moving (an acceleration) sulfur ions is supposed to fracture (on the basis of some process similar to ultrasonic cleaning where transducers convert EM to motion KE) and eventually causing the removal of the crystals, layer by layer, and when the layers are free they fall down due to gravity exposing fresh metal for the normal battery redox.



The main problem with the therory is the very low conversion of the supplied electrical energy into a directed acceleration of ions into the plate crystals when the vast majority of supplied electrical energy is wasted as heat. The electolye is a fairly good conductor with a slow charged particle motion drift velocity much like a copper conductor. The motion in the direction of voltage field is slow and imparts little KE to the particle mass.

Drift Velocity: The average velocity with which the charged particles get drifted towards the end of the conductor under the influence of an external electric field.


IMO the faulty theory of "Desulfators" comes from the same root electrical misconception problem of people thinking that current is energy in an typical electrical circuit, and that current moves at some very fast speed inside wires to make things happen.