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lead acid battery reconditioning / desulphating


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I've got some 12v lead acid batteries that were neglected (not by me!) and I'm wondering about reconditioning / desulphating. Not marine, but deep cycle (mobility scooter). Does anyone know of a place on the shore that does this?

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16 minutes ago, waikiore said:

Best result I have had with old Deep cycles was using a Ctek charger on recon function worked with half of them -which was a bonus as I had been given them.

Yeah those look good. I need to beg/borrow/rent one though as buying the charger is almost as expensive as battery replacement... !

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Pulse charging doesn't work. Nor does adding additves. You may if you are lucky, get a short term gain.
The best method is as follows. But firstly a warning. You are working with Acid that will eat clothing. So careful. Wear decent rubber gloves. Wear googles. Have a water hose on standby that you can douse yourself under should you splash any on bare skin.
Place down a decent plastic ground sheet. Get a large plastic container that allows you enough room to safely tip the battery upside down. Tip out all the contents. Lots of black muck will come out. Then pour the Acid into a safe container you can screw a lid onto and leave to settle. Pour the black muck into another container and you can take that to the Transfer station and dispose it as toxic waste.
Now get the hose and flush the battery cells out with fresh water. Leave to drain. After it has drained, pour the clean Acid back in. Try not to let the dregs that settled get back in the battery. Also add equal amounts to each cell. Top up each cell with distilled water. You shouldn't need any acid. but if you do, you can get clean fresh Acid from a Battery guy. Then charge with a good hard charge and see what happens.
Once Sulphate has gone hard, it cannot be turned back to Lead oxide within the plate. Only soft Lead Sulphate can be turned back to Lead Oxide. Usually you can't leave a battery in a low or dry state for long before it is unreversable.
The Pulse charging was about knocking the hard Sulphate off the plate. But as the depth of lead Oxide on the plate determines the capacity of the battery, having anything removed only decreases capacity. So the battery will never return to anything like original. You have to weight up if the above exercise is worth doing in regards to the amount of capacity the battery is going to give you.

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On 19/02/2021 at 9:22 AM, khayyam said:

I've got some 12v lead acid batteries that were neglected (not by me!) and I'm wondering about reconditioning / desulphating. Not marine, but deep cycle (mobility scooter). Does anyone know of a place on the shore that does this?

Did you ever find someone to do these?  I am on the shore and have a 18a CC/CV PSU and an electronic load generator to put them through there paces - assuming it isn't hard sulphation...

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