Alum conversion for lead acid batteries

[blackchisel97]

When I do my first test conversion on a new battery. I will work out a chart for Alum hydrometer readings.

Daryl

Good idea,Thanks Daryl
I just ordered 5lb. Will take couple days from US. They have free shipping within US and free 1oz of any spice from their inventory + free sample
I don't have any "virgin" battery atm but few formatted LAB to choose from.

Thanks
Vtech

[John_Bedini]

Lead Acid Conversion Alum Battery Virgin Never Formed Since 1951

In this video I show how we have taken a 1951 Willard Battery and formed it to work on Alum
electrolyte and some of the tricks to do this, I show that it does not suffer the same problem of deep discharge as I take this battery down to .5 volts. Happy to share this information with
everybody.
John B

Lead Acid Conversion Alum Battery Virgin Never Formed Since 1951

Lead Acid Conversion Alum Battery Virgin Part 1.wmv - YouTube

Lead Acid Conversion Alum Battery Virgin Never Formed Part 2.wmv - YouTube

Lead Acid Conversion Alum Battery Virgin Never Formed Part3.wmv - YouTube


Please give it time to process as they are big uploads.

[blackchisel97]

This is very valuable information. I just finished watching all parts. It's looking good. I never had a chance to try alum conversion on dry battery before. Those I did were desulfated/ rejuvenated scrap batteries with acid removed and rinsed well with rain water (I was too cheap to use distilled for purpose of cleaning ) and re filled with alum solution. After watching your videos I came to the conclusion (which was brewing in my head before) that such process has great potential to use reclaimed batteries in solar applications, since they can be safely discharged to 10.5V. Something which cannot be done with regular LAB's without hurting them. I'll see if I can get my hands on some forklift or golf cart batteries and convert them to alum. One think which always bothered me when dealing with acid was corrosion at both posts (either green/blue or non conductive, glass like) as well as wet spots around the vent caps. They often appear few days after charging and I have to clean them with soapy water. It would be nice for change not to have to deal with this. Same nuisance with rusted battery tray in every few years old vehicle. My first car was 1964 VW and 6V battery was under the rear seat. Pain in the b*** to clean it.
Just got datasheet from supplier. I already ordered this morning but they confirmed the right stuff.

Thank you John and Chuck I really enjoyed this video material.

Vtech

[blackchisel97]

John, I have a question. What would you suggest when dealing with older battery? (I mean decent one, not crap with short or bent cells etc.)

- restore with rejuvenator/ dump acid/ rinse/ fill with alum solution or
- dump acid/ rinse/ fill with alum solution/ run few cycles of charge/load.

What I did before was the first one. My logic behind was to clean plates and format with radiant charger first. In other words get the battery impedance down and bring it's capacity as high as possible. Then, dump acid with all impurities, rinse thoroughly and fill with 10% alum solution.
Is this the right way of doing it?

Thank you
Vtech

[Slider2732]

Those were very informative videos John, well worth watching by all interested in how to prepare and load test.

After watching the first one, it fired me up to try out the alum idea. Possibly unfortunately, I didn't see the pre-forming with acid section before beginning though. The cell sizes in the other thread would mean a sort of crossover...this was to be a pills bottle sized cell. Mainly that's through lack of resources to go ahead and convert my 2 car batteries. Experience is always useful though.

Using burnt copper and galvanized steel, a 1:10 solution with rainwater was used.
Normally, such a cell, without alum, will produce around 0.8V and 1mA
I charged it with a 12V battery for a few minutes and ended up with just over 1V, but a good constant 12mA.
It would run a Joule Thief without issue. Exactly the same thing, but with no alum, will run a 'Penny' type ultra low power flashing LED oscillator, yet no way would they touch this JT that needs 10mA.
Then, the copper was swapped to a piece of graphite and, surprised the heck out of me, 2.7V initial charge before settling to about 1.8V after half an hour.
A bigger surface area of graphite (or other positive electrode) needs to be used for better amperage, but i'm very satisfied with todays tests.
No idea about magnesium or anything else yet.

The steel has a charcoal colour to it now and charge retention improves with each discharge and charge. No idea if the steel change even relates to what happens to lead though.
Future charging will be with an SSG, as I doubt the conventional 12V is very healthy on these 'plates'.

Here's a video of the cell and what I did, including the Joule Thief test:
Alum rainwater cell - good 2.7V initial charge - YouTube

[mauiflipper]

OK John, so I am trying to understand what you said about forming the plates on a new, unformed battery. I heard you say to form the plates with a weak Sulphuric Acid solution and then to add the Alum after forming. Here's what I would love to know:

1.) When you said to "add the Alum after forming", did you mean to dump the Acid first that you used to do the forming?

2.) When you purchase a new deep cycle battery (like an L16) from a place like Interstate, are the plates already formed/crystalized?
a.) If not, forming the plates using your method with a Rejuvenator, will make how much of a difference as far as the Amp Hour capacity of the new battery?
b.) If so, is it best to just dump out the stock sulphuric acid, switch to the Alum mixture and be done or cycle it a few times with a Rejuvenator first and then change to the Alum mixture?

3.) If I can acquire batteries that are not formed and never had Acid in them, would it be that much better?

Thanks,

Daryl

[John_Bedini]

You must cause a differential between the two lead plates

Mauifipper,
You must cause a differential between the two lead plates. Normal Lead Acid batteries are formed at the factory in a big tank. Then the plates are assembled. Then they are filled with Acid or used as a dry charge battery that you add acid to. With the battery I show in the video, was never formed, the military did that when they were activated. So to make the battery with alum work you must cause the two plates to be different from each other. So the trick to forming this is to add to the alum solution 1/4 mix of alum and acid until you form it. after that you use the battery normal adding just alum water in place of distilled water. You will never see a hydrometer reading on this battery. If it is a regular car battery you do not need to do this.
John B

[John_Bedini]

building a lead Acid battery

Mauifipper,
Go read this book on building a lead Acid battery it will help you understand what forming is.

http://rawfire.torche.com/~opcom/tbe/the_boy_electrician.pdf

John B

[Neight]

Those were very informative videos John, well worth watching by all interested in how to prepare and load test.

After watching the first one, it fired me up to try out the alum idea. Possibly unfortunately, I didn't see the pre-forming with acid section before beginning though. The cell sizes in the other thread would mean a sort of crossover...this was to be a pills bottle sized cell. Mainly that's through lack of resources to go ahead and convert my 2 car batteries. Experience is always useful though.

Using burnt copper and galvanized steel, a 1:10 solution with rainwater was used.
Normally, such a cell, without alum, will produce around 0.8V and 1mA
I charged it with a 12V battery for a few minutes and ended up with just over 1V, but a good constant 12mA.
It would run a Joule Thief without issue. Exactly the same thing, but with no alum, will run a 'Penny' type ultra low power flashing LED oscillator, yet no way would they touch this JT that needs 10mA.
Then, the copper was swapped to a piece of graphite and, surprised the heck out of me, 2.7V initial charge before settling to about 1.8V after half an hour.
A bigger surface area of graphite (or other positive electrode) needs to be used for better amperage, but i'm very satisfied with todays tests.
No idea about magnesium or anything else yet.

The steel has a charcoal colour to it now and charge retention improves with each discharge and charge. No idea if the steel change even relates to what happens to lead though.
Future charging will be with an SSG, as I doubt the conventional 12V is very healthy on these 'plates'.

Here's a video of the cell and what I did, including the Joule Thief test:
Alum rainwater cell - good 2.7V initial charge - YouTube

Hey Slider, nice work!
After getting a look at your video, I went ahead and did a very similar test, and have gotten great results so far.
I mixed a 10:1 sterile water/alum solution, and just used copper and what appears to be aluminum (found it in a cabinet of random scrap, so it could be something else, but it is light weight, and looks like aluminum anyway )
I also have a large piece of what looks like some kind of charcoal pencil, though it doesn't mark very well (also found it in my house when we moved in, so not really sure exactly what it's made of, but it's clearly some kind of carbon). Right now, I have the single strip of aluminum as my negative, and a half round piece of copper tubing I cut, with the carbon rod (as far as I know...) touching the copper plate, and right now, without charging this cell at all, I am getting 1V and 6.5mA loaded on the same oscillator I use to test the cell I made in the Bedini Earth light thread.
The LED appears to be full brightness, or at least you can't look directly at it, cause it's too bright!
I am interested to see what happens when I apply a charge to this cell, but to be making that kind of output for this very quick and dirty test, is pretty cool.
great little experiment, and lots of fun to see working. I will try and charge this cell a bit later, but for now, I want to see how long it takes to start seeing a voltage or current drop. So far, this thing is steady as a rock, and when it starts to drop, I will then charge it a bit on my SSG, and see if I can't get it to hold a better charge.

without having to use lead in a battery like this, you could very easily and very cheaply make cells that will run useful loads, right at home, and if it doesn't corrode like a normal battery does, I can't see a downside here!


N8

Funny thing, in the time it took me to type out this post, the current draw went up on the meter, and it is now sitting at the same voltage, but drawing 7mA, up from 6.5mA...
isn't it supposed to be going the other way? just too much fun!

[mauiflipper]

Thank you John. This morning I realized that I missed the first two videos about differentiating the plates. They answered all my questions and you clarified it even further with your personal response. Also, thanks for the link, I will read the section on battery forming. The entire book looks pretty darn interesting.

So basically, it's best to just get the batteries pre-formed from the factory. Fully charge the batteries with the rejuvenator, dump the acid, rinse, repeat, repeat, repeat and put in the alum mixture.

The Xantrex Inverters we use will allow me to set the cut out voltage as low as 42 volts in a 48 volt bank. That would be the equivalent in 10.5 volts on a 12 volt bank. I think this just might work!

The Xantrex charge controllers will allow to to use a 2 stage or 3 stage charging method and also allow me to customize all voltage points, including the equalizing voltage. Do you think a 3 stage is really necessary with slum, since alum will allow the batteries to charge faster?

Daryl

[Aaron]

Battery Secrets

Peter's Battery Secrets lecture is the companion to the videos that John has posted here: Battery Secrets

[Slider2732]

@Neight...good to hear of your results. Surprising results there for non charging and it would be useful to see a vid of your setup. Someone may then be able to identify your mystery metal too.

This is all an offshoot to what, I believe, the thread is intended to be about and I don't want to sidetrack.

Kyle Carrington appears to have hit the nail on the head, in a reply on the above video, regarding rain water - acid rain !
The acid/alum may be forming the cell here and I can say that was by accident if it is. Next would be to tip that mixture and use purified water and alum. Will read the .pdf link above and research more.
I'll make some more cells when my wife gets paid and replicate. But also use control cells of straight purified water and of purified with alum. Rebuilding an SSG at the moment, for charge tests.

Acid rain is obviously cheaper than actual battery acid and it would be good to use a 'natural' source, so maybe it has relevance here.

[Neight]

@Neight...good to hear of your results. Surprising results there for non charging and it would be useful to see a vid of your setup. Someone may then be able to identify your mystery metal too.

This is all an offshoot to what, I believe, the thread is intended to be about and I don't want to sidetrack.

Kyle Carrington appears to have hit the nail on the head, in a reply on the above video, regarding rain water - acid rain !
The acid/alum may be forming the cell here and I can say that was by accident if it is. Next would be to tip that mixture and use purified water and alum. Will read the .pdf link above and research more.
I'll make some more cells when my wife gets paid and replicate. But also use control cells of straight purified water and of purified with alum. Rebuilding an SSG at the moment, for charge tests.

Acid rain is obviously cheaper than actual battery acid and it would be good to use a 'natural' source, so maybe it has relevance here.

I agree, this is sort of in between threads, so I wont drag this out much further. I would like to say I am getting some color change on the cathode I used here, it turned very dark, and that is with purified water, so there is a reaction taking place.
I did put my cell on an SSG charger for about 4 hours (accidentally fell asleep, really didn't want to leave it like that for long...) and got some surprising results. The anode has started breaking chunks off, and they are attaching themselves on the cathode, much like when you make a simple HHO gen with metals. I am also getting lots of bubbles off the cathode, both while running and charging. The chunks of anode also nearly made a bridge between it and the cathode. The alum solution has gotten dark enough that I can't really see through the glass anymore, without some light source behind the glass.
The cell was putting out 2V even, though it has quickly settled down to just under 1.5V. It will run a three LED joule thief I built, that none of my other cells so far would light. It also runs my 7 color LED joule ringer, though it wont light the green LED on the secondary windings I put on the toroid.
It runs the super bright 10mm LED on my test oscillator at full blinding brightness. This could easily drive an LED flashlight made with a joule thief or joule ringer circuit.
I have to clear up my workbench again, but I will try and make a video and post it up as an edit to this post when it's uploaded.

N8

[Slider2732]

Looking forward to the vid

Well, this thread doesn't seem to be getting much traffic, so i'll post an update here.
The graphite sliver was great for voltage, as shown in the video below. But there's no sustainable amperage as such and it seemed to be being eaten slowly ! So, it's been swapped for burnt copper. 1V instead of 1.8 - 2, but much stronger milliamps.
The results from the video below are that alum/water/copper/galv steel will produce 1V @ 50mA when charged with an SSG. How long the charge needs to be and how long the cell will last with such a load is unknown yet.

It has meant that i've been able to power up a selfmade levitator motor - first time any homemade cell has been strong enough to do so

Alum Cell running levitator motor + SSG charging - YouTube


(Bigger version: http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a1...7/100_0025.jpg )

[Neight]

OK, here is the link to the video I uploaded
Alum Water Cell - YouTube

There is a part two uploading right now, but it wont be done before I have to leave for work. It should be ready to watch in a couple of hours.

I am getting a lot of electroplating happening in my cell, which I didn't expect. I figured I would get some during charging, but it's still happening even during discharging...

I have some ideas for cells I will build this weekend, though I may post those to the Bedini Earth Light thread, since they will be more along the lines of crystal cells.

good stuff, and lots of learning going on here!

N8

Here is the link to the second video, for anyone who is interested to see the cell output and what happened after it was charged
alum water cell (part 2) - YouTube
enjoy