carilchasens
New Member
- Joined
- Sep 17, 2020
- Messages
- 3
Have any of you folks tried using epsom salts to extend the life of flooded lead acid batteries? Results?
P;ease do not use caustic soda. It is a strong base. Sulfuric acid, battery acid, is a strong acid. A strong base into a strong acid will lead to disaster.
Snoobler, how long have you had the T-1275s?To summarize thus far: All additive measures are a temporary improvement at best.
Fresh acid MUST follow a thorough cleaning, and you still have sulfation on the plates, so even if you restore usable function, it's substantially inferior to a new battery.
If you're desperate to get SOME function before replacement - use additives.
If you don't care about significantly reduced capacity but need something that will work cheap - dump the acid, clean it out an add fresh acid.
If you want a fully functional battery at or near rated capacity - replace.
For solar energy storage systems, the only meaningful solution is 1) maintain your FLA batteries in accordance with the manufacturer's instructions to include fluid level, SG monitoring and periodic equalization charges. 2) when #1 stops working, buy a new battery.
My system is currently running on 8 T-1275 FLA, 4S2P, 48V. I bought these used cheap from a golf cart refurbisher. They were 2-3 years old at the time. All of them had 62-69% rated capacity and SG deviations well in excess of allowable upon acquisition. I conducted long duration equalization charges to 16.2V while monitoring cell temperature until all cell SG were within 0.05 or better (some just wouldn't respond more than this, but only two exceeded the 0.03 limit).
After equalization treatments, I repeated the test of reserve capacity of each battery at 25A to 10.5V cut off. There was a 13-28% improvement (in percentage points). The 4 batteries from one cart measure 75-89% rated and the 4 batteries from the other cart measured 91-96%. Thus I have the entire bank de-rated to the one 75% battery, so 8 * 12V * 150Ah = 14.4kWh * 0.75 = 10.8kWh, or 225Ah @ 48V vs. 300Ah rated.
Pretty happy with the results and for $500, it really paid off.
Snoobler, how long have you had the T-1275s?