Battery rejuvenation chemicals

there is a rocky thread some-where about this -some clever person will find it

jrhartley said:

there is a rocky thread some-where about this -some clever person will find it

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If that was a challenge, jr, I took it!!

Try here http://www.dr1.com/forums/living/34436-edta-inverter-batteries.html

Sorry it wasn't helpful to you at all but I tried

We had 12 Excell + X-25 Batteries US Manufacture, used on a 5.5 kW 120/220 Volt Inverter. This runs much of the house including 10000 Bthu Split Air Conditioners, which loads up the inverter on start up.

We have tried EDTA in the batteries and found that with no changes to the invertor charging voltages at 27.3 Volts the batteries continued to charge quite heavily using much more power than before. It was noticeable on the weekly figure I keep. About 20% increase. This was also made worse by the fact we have had 24 hr power.
One battery failed and this may have been caused by sludge dropping to the bottom of the battery after EDTA was added or it just could have been an early failure as it only occurred in one battery. The batteries were 23 months old from the date of manufacture and 21 months since installation when EDTA was put in. It was not battery Viagra but a similar solution using EDTA. Overall electricity consumption dropped by 20 kWh per week.


There is no doubt that the capacity available was improved with EDTA even thought we are only charging to a lower maximum voltage (26.6 volts). On load volts when changing over to invertor indicate that the batteries were still getting fully charged .

One battery did fail in early May 2007 and was replaced with a renovated battery that would match the characteristics of the remaining batteries rather than a new one which would be very different.
Another failure occurred in March 2008 in the same bank as the one in May 2007 and it was obvious that at least one bank of Batteries out of our twelve where not going to make 36 months which had been our goal. A used battery that was “good” was put inplace of the failed battery and we were back to 12 batteries again. The batteries started to fail in the same bank and eventually it was disconnencted leaving us with 8. These would last about 7 hours on normal usage so with the shorter power outages it was sufficient. But it was obvious that the whole set needed replacing soon.
The Batteries were replaced by Trace T-225 on August 7th 2008
The old ones where Excel E-225 manufactured in June 2005, installed in September 2005 and about 10 of them lasted 35 months in operation , one failed after 23 months and another after 32 months. They all had EDTA – Battery Viagra added in February 2007 after 21 months in operation. About 50 ml per cell. It is rather hard to say whether this extended the life or not but it did bring the capacity of the batteries back to near new levels. Ten of the old batteries ae still in use elsewhere some 6 moths after replacement so some have lasted longer.
We also checked the voltage across each battery and mostly they would be about 6.1 when fully charged on load. Bad batteries show up in two ways - high volts - 6.7 - 7 volts in a bank indicate a high resistance battery, less than 4 volts indicates a bad cell or some shorting inside a cell.
Removing these batteries may be an alternative to buying new and may even bring the capacity back by removing a "Bad" one. You will have to replace it with one of your existing batteries so sacrifice one bank out of the 16. It would leave you 12 which should last about 18-19 hours.
I am sure you have access to a reasonable voltmeter and you should make this measurement with the invertor on load - ie drawing normal current from the batteries.

There was a thread recently on DR1 about buying EDTA in bulk from Santo Domingo but not sure what transpired.

Sorry this is so long Beeza but I thought it useful to give you the full history knowing you have an engineering background.

Hope that it helps.

Olly

beeza said:

I've read and searched on these fora about the wonders of a chemical called EDTA, which is supposed to chemically clean the plates in your inverter batteries, giving them a new lease of life.

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Is this EDTA product available here, especially on the North Coast? Does it really work? If it does work, then why don't all the ferreterias sell it?

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I used Battery Biagra for my Trace batteries with good result.
I think the charge improved 20% at least.
You can get it in Puerto Plata on Beller street on one of the business that sell stuff for cars.

Regards,
Ben

In early 1992 I bought 16 "United States" brand, DEEP-CYCLE, 6-volt, 220 amp-hour, MARINE batteries and installed them on my boat in 4 banks of 4 batteries each. I seperated them with each set of 4 being controlled by a seperate selector switch (1,2,BOTH), whereby I could "gangload", or use them as seperate banks. These batteries were about 1.5 inches taller than the standard 6-volt batteries on the market, having a resevoir at the bottom for the collection of the "sluffed-off" plate material, thereby preventing them from shorting out over a period of usage.
When I lost my boat in 2003 to a galley fire, these batteries were still in use at full capacity. The only preventive measures I ever took was to make sure the plates were always covered with "PURE" water and kept charged up to their capacity. I used both Wind-generator and Solar panels through a controller to keep them charged.
A lot of experimental methods of rejuvenation were tried by compadres to prolong the life of their batteries at Boca Chica NAS Marina, but none were very successful. The conclusion was that batteries will only last so long (about 3-years) and careful maintenance is required to get even that from them.
The best bet is to replace the entire supply when one or two begin to fail, since the remainder will surely follow soon. The Marine environment is very hard on lead-acid batteries, moreso than any other.

Texas Bill

sorry I mentioned it now lol

Edta

Breeza,
I have used EDTA many times in my bank of batteries with great success. There are many ways to install the chemical EDTA but I use my own receipe. I use an empty quart bottle the battery water comes in and I put in 12 tablespoons (1 for each cell in a 24 volt bank of 4 batteries using a small funnel) I then fill the bottle half full with Distilled Battery water put on lid and shake bottle until EDTA is disolved. I then remove lid and finish filling the bottle with Distilled Battery water. I remove some of the battery liquid from each cell using my hydrometer (Battery tester) and then instill equal amounts of the DB Water and EDTA mix in each cell and then top off cells with the remaining battery liquid I removed to fill each cell to the proper level.

I then run the equalizer setting to equalize the bank or banks that have been EDTA treated. The newer the batteries the better the results. So I recommend starting using the EDTA prior to the severe synptoms you are reporting for anyone else reading this. With your severe symptoms You should get at least 50% if not much more of your batteries potential back by treating them this way. IMF Brooklyn II