I found a four year old battery by the marina dumpster and took it to the shop to see if it was salvageable. I used this opportunity to see if the PowerUp Battery DeSulfator/conditioner ( http://powerupco.com/batteries/desulfator.php )made any difference in the capacity of the battery.
Battery: Group 31 Deep Cycle- off brand- Four years old. Batteries of this size usually have a 5 Ah 20 hour rate capacity of ~95 Ah Flat- but enough to float the hydrometer on all cells. About 10.5 volts I topped up the water levels - and put a charge on it for 18 hours with an average charge of 3 amps/hour. After that time the voltage rose to 15.4 volts. I continued to charge for another couple of hours monitoring the temperature and voltage. The hydrometer showed the cells to be pretty close to each (0.010) other reading about 1.175 on average. This reading indicates a charge of about 39% or about 37 aH (I know about the weakest cell, but this is ~) Then I did a load test. I used a modified sine wave inverter with a 100 watt bulb for a load. I calculated the load to be 12 A/h After 2 hours and 10 minutes the voltage had dropped to 11.66 volts with a load on it and 12.01 when the load was removed. 25.9 Ah I re-charged the battery. I connected the DeSulfator to the battery and let it sit for 22 days. On the 23rd day I put the charger back on it for an hour. The voltage was up to 15.4v again. Then I began the same load test. The load brought the battery down to 11.64 volts in 2 hours and 24 minutes. 28.8 aH About a 9% increase in capacity. I subsequently fully discharged the battery in three and a quarter hours drawing a total of 39 aH from it. While this is certainly not the most accurate or conclusive test, it did demonstrate a slight benefit from the use of the DeSulfator. Of course the increase could also have been the result of the discharging and recharging of the battery. If any one else has none any testing I sure would like to hear about it. The charger packed it in, so I will not be doing any more testing. Philip -- Philip Lange AE4OV USSV ORYOKI Edenton, NC There is no sense in having a plan if you're not going to pretend to follow it. _______________________________________________ Liveaboard mailing list [email protected] To adjust your membership settings over the web http://www.liveaboardnow.org/mailman/listinfo/liveaboard To subscribe send an email to [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] The archives are at http://www.liveaboardnow.org/pipermail/liveaboard/ To search the archives http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] The Mailman Users Guide can be found here http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/mailman-member/index.html
