AfdhalAtiffTan
- Joined Nov 20, 2010
- 120
That method might work best on new battery.Unless the battery is fully charged you don't want to add electrolyte since you don't know how much acid to add. Better to fully discharge the battery so the electrolyte is basically water and then flush the battery with water. Then fill it with distilled water and fully charge the battery.
On old battery, every single cell is getting harder to charge as the acid concentration rises. This is due to the sulfate crystal harden with time.
In other words, the more concentrated the acid is, the more harder it is for cell to get charged. But, higher concentration means better discharge performance, with better efficiency as the ohmic losses minimizes.
Charging cells with high acid concentration requires special procedure, such as by using pulse charger, etc. Not to mention the vulnerability of the active electrodes getting corroded.
For recovery purposes, I would suggest to drain all of the electrolyte, refill it with distilled water, charge it with constant current source (voltage might gets higher and so does temperature), this is to help the hardened sulfate crystal to return back to the electrolyte, repeat for 2-3 cycles.
Now, the electrode suppose to be free from the crystal.
Refill it with fresh acid electrolyte, reform the plates, it suppose to perform better now.
All of the text above is based on my experiments, with no scientific evident to backup the claim.
However, I stand to be corrected.