desulfater for batterys

[dacflyer]

i been looking at a desulfater modual sold by http://www.wizbangplus.com/

they have run ads in N&V before.. do these things really work or are they another one of them mirical devices that don;t really work ?

i was thinking of buying some.but i like to get more info on it 1st.
i have a few questions about them.

1- are they good for only lead type batterys?
2- can they be used in series as long as the voltage is not exceeded?
3- can they be used in parallel or must i have 1 for each battery?
4- are they easy to build? or cheaper to buy ?
5- does anyone here use them ?

thanks.

[jwax]

I'd sooner put the $30 towards a new battery, but I've never seen a scientific study done on the thing. I'd put those questions to them dacflyer!

[dacflyer]

well some batterys canbe really expencive, like deep cells and such.
especially in solar applications or other situations where large batterys aren't cheap,,and if a desulfater can extend the life many more years then it might be worth it.


i'm just looking for opnions and if anyone has had experience with them,

[richfloe]

A friend of mine has several commercially built units. Thinks they are probably good as he has had one on a huge battery bank in his basement forever and the batteries still work.

If you do some hunting around on the net you will find info and schematics to build your own much cheaper than you can buy. I dont have the right drive in my computer to give you the links but I found them by doing a search in yahoo and stumbling around for a while.

I built one and tried to use to ressurect a couple of batteries with no success but could be that the batteries were no longer serviceable.
Really intended as a continuous maintenance device to prevent sulfation of the battery rather than remove it after the battery is shot but there are reports of people successfully doing just that.

These units cannot be put in series for a higher voltage but it is not problem to build a unit for any voltage you like.
If you have several batteries in parallel, you only need one unit (but might want a larger unit with a higher output).
Primarily intended for lead-acid type batteries, would likely work for a gel-cell type battery.

The idea of the unit is to generate a spike of charging current, several amps at least, and it is usually done at a rate of a few hundred Hz to a few KHz. This spike causes a 'ringing' in the battery of about 8MHz (I was able to use my scope to see the ringing following the pulse, it was very short and getting the triggering just right was a bit tricky) which supposedly helps break up the sulfate crystals and return them to the acid solution. They refer to this as the resonant freq of the battery, supposedly something to do with the plate composition/electrolyte/magic/whatever, which is excited by the current spike, similar to thumping a bell or tuning fork briefly which then oscillates at its resonant freq.

I had one connected in my van on the deep cycle batteries for the ham radios but had a lot of hash on the HF bands and took it off.

Rich

[dacflyer]

thanks,,
will look forward to other comments

[Joseph]

If your batteries get ruined too fast, you might want to consider paralleling another set along side the other when you replace all of them. If you take some of the stress off of them it could more than double the life.

I wonder if a 6yr car battery with twice the amp/hr rating that probably costs the same as the deep cycle one will last longer. I bought a deep-cycle battery for my electric bike which I was not happy with. The next battery I bought was just a cheap lawn and garden battery because I decided it was easier to just go down the street to Autozone instead of to the shopping center.

[Rodney]

The following site give a bit of information on what you can and can not accomplish with various battery tests:
www.batteryuniversity.com/partone.htm