Alum Pb batteries

waynefromnscanada

Re: Alum Pb batteries

Cariboocoot wrote: »

What's so suspicious about a web site being from Calgary, Alberta, Canada? It's a real place; trust me on this.

It's not China?

Cariboocoot

Re: Alum Pb batteries

waynefromnscanada wrote: »

It's not China?

Aren't we East China now?

robint

Re: Alum Pb batteries

FWIW

an erudite site on battery technology

http://www.mpoweruk.com/index.htm

A particular page caught my attention

http://www.mpoweruk.com/cell_design.htm

10 year development cycle for an improved LAB.

I contacted the guy and he had never heard of Alum batteries in his 150 years of LAB experience

It is sobering to read his discourse on Lithium chemistry. In adverse discharge conditions, these batteries can generate HF - a very nasty gas (used in the alkylation process of some refineries). I had to go on a special course on gas safety. The gas is so lethal that if you can smell it (reputedly almond flavour) then you are already dying.

Another point that cropped up, also sobering, is that mechanical energy storage (pump systems) you need to raise 1000 tonnes 10 hrs to store 27kWh (if my sums are right?). thats a whole freight train up 30ft in the air, can that be right?

Robin

Cariboocoot

Re: Alum Pb batteries

Raise 1,000 tons how high for 10 hours?
Got to have all the numbers.

But yes, it's not very efficient. You're looking at a 'reverse waterfall". So you have to recover all the energy the system would generate from falling, plus losses. People do not realize just how bad losses are. Every system of any type has them, including the utility power grid which loses up to 50% of its generated power in transmission.

And yet some people still believe in perpetual motion! Here; let's connect this solar panel to this light bulb, then the light will power the panel that powers the light. Surely if you use a battery 'to get it started' and LED lights it will work?

Surely it will not.

Over-all the prospects for improved energy storage are pretty dismal. It isn't any conspiracy keeping us on fossil fuels, it's just physics. Nothing like having millions of years of millions of tons of pressure forcing all that energy into a compact space to make a really efficient energy storage medium. Pity it's so deadly to use.

Cariboocoot

Re: Alum Pb batteries

While we're at it, have you seen this one?

http://www.offgridquest.com/energy/167-gravity-battery-energy-storage-concept

robint

Re: Alum Pb batteries

Hi Guys

I just came across this explanation of why a "SMPS" intended for passive load only might get problems with charging a battery (active load that can be sink or source)

http://www.ti.com/lit/ml/slyp089/slyp089.pdf

its complicated on several fronts, but as has been said can be done if the SMPS is designed for battery charging - point taken, I didnt think of that.

Trouble with using just a crude CV charger and charging some dead flat battery bank up from 6v is that as more current is pushed in, more heat is gerenrated, lowering the ESR and you start to get thermal runaway - been there done that but caught it in time.


OBTW

lbs ft ftlbs kWh
2240000 30 67200000 25.3
3.77E-007ft-lbs=1kW

1000 ton train up 30ft = 25kW so 2.5kW over 10hrs (less losses 50%?)

A lot more than that silly cowboy in the link below - I just hate that shit

but if you happen to have an old vertical mine shaft going down 300ft with a 100 ton loaded winch, gears and motor generator



Robin

EarthboundEagle

I hope some of you are still watching this thread. I have been working on the chemistry of Alum and Epson Salt with lead for quite awhile now. Unfortunately I am NOT a chemist. It is rare that the entire internet doesnt have a SINGLE SENTENCE on this subject!! I have read a couple places where a chemist states that "another sulfate should work as well as H2SO4. Now as far as actual physical results, I do have some information in this regard. I have built 5 different sorts of ALUM/LEAD batteries both from my own cast lead plates and from factory plates I have scavenged from various near new batteries. I am on an island in Alaska and H2SO4 is hard to find for building "normal" LABs to use as a control or at least for a comparison. I have several batteries charging right now. I am posting here because this is the ONLY place I have read a word of logic on this subject and I want help with this chemistry right now.... both because I have an interest in lead technology fvor years now, and because I am entered in a science fair only 10 days from now LOL. I will post back here with resluts from my currently charging cells, pls if anyone is interested pls contact me. My email is earthboundeagle10@gmail.com.  Or call me at 907 617 0733 or 907 225 0733. Thankyou all for your time.

Froodiebaby

The chemistry of the salt (Aluminium Sulphate / Lead) battery is sound. And they will last practically forever unless they are abused (charged or discharged at too higher a current). There are two main problems with the way salt batteries store the power:

1) The first is the voltage range over which the power is stored. If I may explain by first illustrating the power in a lead acid battery. A normal 12v lead acid battery can be charged up to 13.8v and will be around 10.8v fully discharged. Therefore your inverter has to cope with only a limited voltage range to get out all the power, and hence a limited current range also. But the current change would be enormously significant if the voltage range were greater. For example if you are drawing a 1000w from a 48v bank fully charged (which will actually be 55.2v) you will be drawing around 18.1A. When the bank is nearly discharged (around 43.2v) you will be drawing 23.1A for the same power. So this is the first problem with salt batteries. The power is stored all the way from 0 volts up to 12 volts for a six cell system. So in the same scenario above for a 48v battery bank (fully charged would be 48v) the current draw for 1000w is around 20.8A. When the voltage drops to 24v the current would then be around 41.6A. When at just 2v (yes there is still power in the batteries even at those low voltages!) You would be drawing 500A... crazy amounts of current which will potentially damage your batteries and require seriously thick wiring to your inverter. So one major problem is in itself two problems... creating an inverter that can cope with huge voltage and current changes and protecting your batteries from over current discharge. (Actually this is not such a difficult problem... the likely solution is to set up a limiting circuit similar to a lead acid battery inverter that cuts off at a specific voltage... but this will reduce the useable power stored by the batteries)

2) The second problem is the CCA (cold cranking amps) that can be delivered by salt batteries. As I understand it the power storage is actually a little greater in a salt battery for the same plate / electrolyte setup over their lead acid counterparts. The difference is that the CCA of a lead acid battery is 10 to 15 times as great as a salt battery. So, if you have a 100 A lead acid battery in your car, it is likely to be able to produce anywhere between 500 and 1000 CCA. A salt battery of the same power will only produce between 7 and 10% of the CCA. This is not a problem if you have a large enough battery bank, but some electric motors use between 10 to 15 times their power on startup. In a normal house the motors that are most significant are air conditioning compressors or those in large fridge freezers, vacuum cleaners etc. Lead acid batteries excel at heavy current drain applications. Salt batteries would have to be of significantly greater size to cope with the same current requirements. Size equals cost. So this may well mean that salt batteries doing the same job as lead acid could cost ten times as much. Which is why I think the salt battery has not taken off.... so far

Bumblebob

There seems to be an awful lot of negativity around this, the sheer effort that must go into some of these comments is incredible, without actually having anything to add to the subject, anyone who has actually tried this has seen results, why can't we simply find out why? Instead of putting so much effort into stating in ignorance why it can't possibly work. Nobody seems actually able to explain the results, but there Are results which need to be looked into, that is for sure, if there was a simple explanation, surely it would be easy enough to come across.
I'm  personally trying this out at the moment, and having some incredible results (yes I myself am incredulous, despite seeing it before my very eyes). I'm working on a dirty shed floor with a range of nasty old dead batteries, this method will not fix a shorted or disintegrated cell, but with a battery that will take a charge and shows 12v it does seem to work.
With a four year old heavily sulphated 110AH from my solar battery bank, which will show a full charge in a matter of minutes, and when connected to load meter shows 12.5V, but immediately bottoms out to 0 when put under load. I have dumped out the acid, used distilled water to rinse out some of the lead particles ( plenty left in there, but who cares? this won't work anyway ). Refilled immediately with 1:15 solution of potassium aluminium sulphate. Voltage reads 12.4V. Put on charge until 14.4v, resting voltage 12.6V, load tested not great 100cca. Discharged down to 0V using DC filament type bulb. Recharged again to 14.4V, load tested at 400cca, placed into a Ford Capri with no fuel, and turned over strongly for over 2 minutes until no more crank. Recharged again to 14.4V, resting at 12.6 load tested at 700cca. Measured while under load with clamp meter 100Amps. Element glowing orange on the back for a few minutes, got bored, hooked up 500watt inverter with plug in energy meter and 350watt halogen bulb, came back a few hours later and inverter had low voltage shut down, energy meter had not saved any result, tested again with load tested, 500cca, glowing orange element. Recharged to 14.4V, resting 12.6V, load tested 900cca.  I'm going to try hooking up a DC energy meter this week with the DC filament type bulbs and observe.  If anyone has any testable explanation for this, let me know, I'm driven by curiosity and maybe a little want for a cheap battery bank.

Bumblebob

Well I've done two capacity tests to the best of my ability at the moment. I used a cheapo DC power meter and a couple of 12V spotlights which run at around 80watts when they have 12V available (this gradually went down as the battery power curve is very long, still giving good amps even at 6V.) 
As you can see, the voltage drops when a load is applied, more than a lead acid would. I came back to the have a look whenever I got the chance, and when the voltage dropped to around 6V, I disconnected one of the spotlights

So I should really have disconnected at this point , but didn't, and when I came back an hour later it was dead as a door nail (scientifically speaking 0V). And being an idiot, in my hurry to get a final from the blank display, I connected the charger backwards for 10 minutes !! Oops, so I thought I'd killed the power meter for good, as it wouldn't respond to anything. Anyway somehow started working again, and saved the result. So I reversed the meter and put the battery back on charge (yes, With the correct polarity this time) came back the next morning.

A full recovery, phew! Not a bad efficiency either. Ran the same test again, and the battery still seems to be improving 

I missed the final count on this one, and the meter didn't save the result, but I think we can all assume it was Amazing! 
But seriously, this is just me bumbling around in a dirty shed, trying this out, with a battery that had No life left in it at all, and now it does, and it'll start a 3.0L diesel no problem (by the way this is a leisure battery).
My point is, if I can get these reasonable results with no equipment, in dirty condition s, with a fecked battery, and a fairly arbitrary mix of electrolyte, what could a lab achieve? If you could study the chemistry and cell conditions, and optimise the process. Surely you could do better than me (and to be honest, I'm pretty happy already, as my toxic scrap is now usable)

donnybowers

I don't think you can take an old battery with damaged plates and restore it to it's former glory using alum. But I've been converting older lead acid batteries to alum for several years now, and the ones I have are very useful for low draw led lights. I can run a 5 watt camping LED bulb 24/7/365 with a 30w solar panel hooked to an old converted car or lawn tractor battery. 

The biggest issue is most of the batteries I've converted to alum electrolyte weren't in great shape to begin with. I'm planning to eventually use a newer battery or possibly a brand new one just to see what it will do and how long it will last. The alum conversions I've done that had all good cells after conversion have lasted for some time. In fact I have a few that I've been running lights off of for several years with nothing but normal maintenance (just keeping the water topped up).

I've also used alum batteries with dead cells. The problem with this is that the dead cells will heat up if you draw too much from them or charge them too fast. But I have still been able to employ them with very low watt LED lights, some that I just made from Light Emitting Diodes and resistors. Of course I only use 5 or 10 watt (or less) solar panels to charge them, but they are useful for having a night light for navigating my camper at night. I've also used them in my house and find them very useful. They actually have a lot of storage capacity, but unfortunately you can't utilize all of that because of the bad cells. You have to make sure you only use an alum battery with bad cells with very low current. I never use more than maybe a watt or less. Usually about a quarter watt LED bulb and I never charge one like this with more that 10 watts.

But if you don't have any bad cells, you can actually draw quite a bit of power and recharge it on a consistent basis. The voltage is always slightly lower than lead acid. Where a lead acid cell is typically about 2.1v, a good lead alum cell is typically about 1.9v and after being used for awhile sometimes gets a little lower yet. So they're not really very good for use with an inverter. The discharge curve of an alum battery looks more like that of a NiCad or similar battery. My good ones usually tend to run around 9 to 11 volts when drawing 2 or 3 amps. I haven't drawn much more than that except under closely observed test conditions and during forming sometimes I will quickly charge and discharge a few times. 

One solution I'm considering for the inverter issue is to create an alum battery that has an extra cell. For example I'm thinking of possibly using 13 forklift battery cells, instead of 12, for a 24 volt system. I believe I could probably run a refrigerator and much more with a system like that. 1.9v times 13 cells is 24.7v which should run a 24v inverter for quite some time. With the right solar input I believe I could my refrigerator and my freezer on a permanent basis and it would function well. But it would be nice if I could get an inverter designed to drain down more than usual. Say to maybe 16 volts. But not being an electronics whiz, I'm not sure how low you could go with inverter input before it would cause too much heat and perhaps even damage the inverter. But my guess is that 13 electric forklift cells would work to run at least a fridge and freezer. Another thing I may try is using a couple of 8v golf cart batteries with alum as a 12v battery. The bank would never be charged to it's full capacity, but with the alum electrolyte I don't think that would cause any damage to the batteries. This is the experiment I'm currently looking forward to trying most right now. As soon as I find a good deal on some 8v golf cart batteries.