Lead acid Batteries

[NSM]

Make sure you have adequate water in each cell, and use steam
distilled water. It's for sale at the supermarket in gallon bottles.

The old battery guy I used to go to actually had his own home made water
distiller - quite a big one.

N

 

[none]

I'm afraid I'm not old enough to have ever seen one of those. When
were they used?

They quit selling them somewhere around the late 40's, early 50's.
Many were still using them for some time after.
My father was an electrical engineer and we had them well into the
60's.
They kinda looked like an aquarium with a bolt on top, Which was made
out of something like bakelite.
You'd buy new plates and electrolyte unbolt the case and swap them
out.
The reason they discontinued their use in autos was for safety reasons
of course. One good smash up and you had acid soaked glass shards
flying around.
Still they'd have their uses in other applications. I'll be moving out
to the middle of nowhere soon and will have to generate my own power
so instead of buying dozens of sealed batteries for my generator setup
rebuildable batterys would make better sense.(I'll pull out some old
Audel's and read up on wet cell theory and design and have a go at
doing it myself.)

 

[Ross Herbert]

I miss the days when you could buy a battery that was serviceable.
A heavy glass plate case with bolt on top and removable plates.
They would last forever as long as one was willing to do a bit of
service work.

And before the glass case came the lead-lined wooden box cells. Both
wood and glass boxes were still in use in telephone exchanges I worked
at during the late 1950's but they were all gone by the early 60's. I
even installed some of the wooden cased cells (made up from parts
which had been kept in storage for 20 years or more) because there was
a shortge in supply of the new polycarbonate cell types.

Changing plates in these old cells was not so simple and it was never
done where I was. You would simply re-build the complete cell with all
new plates. The interconnects between plates were lead-burned in place
- which was an art in itself - and it was next to impossible to
simply cut one plate out for replacement.

 

[Jim Yanik]

I'm afraid I'm not old enough to have ever seen one of those. When
were they used?

Gee,who wants to mess around with sulfuric acid and lead paste?

 

[Ron(UK)]

Gee,who wants to mess around with sulfuric acid and lead paste?

It`s only a few years ago when I worked in an entertainment venue where
all the emergency lighting was powered by huge glass lead acids, each
about 12" high and wide. there was probably 30 or so cells all connected
together by exposed lead bars bolted to the terminals, you had to watch
where you layed down anything conducting like a spanner!. The charger
was in a filing cabinet sized enclosure with a huge transformer,
selenium plate rectifiers and wobbly meters on the front ;o)

Ron

www.lunevalleyaudio.com

 

[Andy]

Andy writes:

I used the method that Jim suggests a number of times over the last
30
years and it always seemed to work well with me..... Leaving the charge
rate very low for a LONG LONG time can't hurt, and , for me, has always
helped. Unless the battery was mush on the inside, or shorted
......That's what
I use for a trade-in on my next battery.

In fact, leaving a trickle charge (50-100 ma) or so on forever has
never
caused me a problem, providing I check the water level every week or so
just
in case there is a leak or evaporation..... If you do it in your auto,
make sure
that there is no possibility of the battery becoming disconnected or
the
terminals being corroded or intermittent , since if the battery isn't
"there"
to stabilize the voltage, the charger could put a much higher voltage
on the
car electrical system, damaging components such as the alternator
voltage
regulator , radio, or computer....... Rarely happens, but is very
possible....

However, if you want to start your lawn tractor in an hour, this
doesn't
work well ( grin ).

Just my experience,

Andy

 

[NSM]

They quit selling them somewhere around the late 40's, early 50's.
Many were still using them for some time after.
My father was an electrical engineer and we had them well into the
60's.

I remember seeing something similar but they were the old Edison nickel-iron
batteries, used to start emergency generators. They had high self discharge
rates.

They kinda looked like an aquarium with a bolt on top, Which was made
out of something like bakelite.
You'd buy new plates and electrolyte unbolt the case and swap them
out.
The reason they discontinued their use in autos was for safety reasons
of course. One good smash up and you had acid soaked glass shards
flying around.

I never heard of them being used in autos although IIRC Edison wanted to use
them for an electric auto.

N

 

[Seafarer]

It`s only a few years ago when I worked in an entertainment venue where
all the emergency lighting was powered by huge glass lead acids, each
about 12" high and wide. there was probably 30 or so cells all connected
together by exposed lead bars bolted to the terminals, you had to watch
where you layed down anything conducting like a spanner!. The charger
was in a filing cabinet sized enclosure with a huge transformer,
selenium plate rectifiers and wobbly meters on the front ;o)

Ron

www.lunevalleyaudio.com

Know what you mean.A few years ago they sent me up to Blackpool to
take over a failing casino.Sorted it out and had it up running and
making a healthy profit.I went down to the basement on a tour and
noticed banks of batteries that looked like junk.The handyman said
they were the emergency lighting as the standby genny sometimes failed
to kick in.Had them tested and it took 3 grand to have them renewed!
Ate into my profits for the year end.
Luckily I had a big loser in December to make my budget.Regards


"To Soon we get Old,Too late we get Smart!"

 

[none]

I remember seeing something similar but they were the old Edison nickel-iron
batteries, used to start emergency generators. They had high self discharge
rates.


I never heard of them being used in autos although IIRC Edison wanted to use
them for an electric auto.

N

That was mostly in the day's of the model A's and T's.(I grew up on a
fam and we still had a working T in the shed, that's where I remember
seeing them first.
Later my father, and electrical engineer, who worked in industrial
power service had some of them that were indeed used for backup power.

 

[none]

It`s only a few years ago when I worked in an entertainment venue where
all the emergency lighting was powered by huge glass lead acids, each
about 12" high and wide. there was probably 30 or so cells all connected
together by exposed lead bars bolted to the terminals, you had to watch
where you layed down anything conducting like a spanner!. The charger
was in a filing cabinet sized enclosure with a huge transformer,
selenium plate rectifiers and wobbly meters on the front ;o)

Ron

www.lunevalleyaudio.com

Know what you mean. My father who was and electrical engineer started
his career out as an electrician's mate in the Navy on electric
boats.(submarines) where the entire bottom side of the boat was a long
in-series battery array.
He had some real stories to tell, what with all that hydrogen sulfide
floating around in the crawl space.

 

[none]

Gee,who wants to mess around with sulfuric acid and lead paste?

Well... there is the issue of the high cost of having to routinely
swap out dead batteries, not to mention the high cost.
( The actually cost to manufacture a battery is a small fraction of
what we have to pay retail for them.)
Replating a serviceable battery is much more cost effective and allows
for a greater degree of self-sufficiency.

 

[none]

And before the glass case came the lead-lined wooden box cells. Both
wood and glass boxes were still in use in telephone exchanges I worked
at during the late 1950's but they were all gone by the early 60's. I
even installed some of the wooden cased cells (made up from parts
which had been kept in storage for 20 years or more) because there was
a shortge in supply of the new polycarbonate cell types.

Changing plates in these old cells was not so simple and it was never
done where I was. You would simply re-build the complete cell with all
new plates. The interconnects between plates were lead-burned in place
- which was an art in itself - and it was next to impossible to
simply cut one plate out for replacement.

When I watched my old man rebuild them he always replaced all the
plates. Seemed pretty straight forward, unbolt the box cap then the
retaining bolts for the plates and pull them out.
Dump the electrolite, flush case with a neutralizer, put in new plates
and acid and bolt it all back together.(Of course these units were
designed for ease of service)
I did years back restore an old German motorcycle, prewar, called a
Fluka and it had a glass case battery which we had to have custom
plates made for.

 

[Ross Herbert]

When I watched my old man rebuild them he always replaced all the
plates. Seemed pretty straight forward, unbolt the box cap then the
retaining bolts for the plates and pull them out.
Dump the electrolite, flush case with a neutralizer, put in new plates
and acid and bolt it all back together.(Of course these units were
designed for ease of service)
I did years back restore an old German motorcycle, prewar, called a
Fluka and it had a glass case battery which we had to have custom
plates made for.

"Boltable" plates would be useless where very high current demands
were present, as in telephone exchanges. While each individual battery
was designed to connect to the adjacent cells in a series battery
using bolts, this practice was shown to cause major problems due to
the bolted joint developing high resistance. Consequently, both the
individual plates in each cell were lead-burned together as well as
the connections between cells in order to minimise any added
resistance. The end connections to the copper distribution bus-bars
were the only place bolts were found and these were constantly checked
for temperature rise or signs of oxidation.

I was once working in an exchange in the late 1950's where bolted
battery joints were still in existence and accidentally dropped a 12"
crescent spanner right across the bus-bars feeding several suites of
equipment. There was a mighty loud bang as the spanner was melted and
every switch dropped out in the affected suites. In the time taken for
the 500A feeder fuse to blow every bolted joint in the 48V duty
battery had molten lead blown out of it due to the heat generated in
the minute resistance in each joint. The battery room was filled with
smoke and I was not very popular with the maintenance staff. Needless
to say, after that episode, the battery interconnection joints were
lead-burned.

If we take an extreme case where each bolted joint has only 1
milli-ohm resistance (this is a "very high" resistance in this
environment) then a 48V battery of 24 x 2V cells would have roughly 48
milliohms total resistance in the bolted joints. In heavy traffic a
current draw of 500A would drop 24V across the joints alone which
would stop the exchange from working. Any resistance at all in the
battery would also lead to cross-talk between circuits since the
battery is common to all circuits.

Typically, the internal resistance of a 48V exchange battery including
all joints between cells would have a design volt drop of 100mV at
maximum current drain. For a design goal of 1000A maximum drain this
would equate to a total internal resistance in the battery and all
connections of 0.1 milli-ohms, and that is hard to achieve in
practice.