On Fri, 29 Jul 2005 23:14:06 -0400, Larry wrote:

"Rusty" wrote in
news
I've already done that. The 750 amp-hour 24 volt main system of Trojan
industrial cells is charged by a Trace SW4024 inverter/charger. Went
two years without HydroCaps and added at least some water every month.
Changed to HydroCaps and now I only add a little bit after every six
to eight months. Right now the last time I added water was almost nine
months ago and they're still full. Batteries are showing no signs of
losing capacity and the tops are always clean.

Rusty


While I'm sure the caps do exactly what they are supposed to, that's fine.
But, the reason the batteries are using water in the first place, i.e.
being overcharged, isn't resolved when you keep gassing off the water with
the overcharging, to recover it in these magicaps.

At your "full charge" voltage setting you should rarely see a bubble coming
out of the electrolyte. 14.2 seems too high on some cells. When the
specific gravity gets to 1.260-1.270, the charger should be OFF, not
pulsing away momentarily unless there is some load on them.

Larry, I've always enjoyed your posts and the knowledge you
clearly have. However, I think you need to study up on batteries
a little more.

Batteries will always loose some water, even without
overcharging. Rather, I should say batteries are always slightly
overcharged as a practical matter. If you charged below the
gassing voltage- say 13.8 volts, the amount of extra charging
time required to top-off the batteries is extreme. Charging at
say 14.5 volts (standard for solar charging) and letting them gas
a little shaves a heck of allot of time off the charging time-
thus the costs as well.

Controlled slight gassing is also good for the batteries as it
prevents the electrolyte for stratifying in the cells. Battery
manufactures recommend that the batteries are charged at voltages
that will do just this, when in cycled service. The only time
you don't want to charge above gassing voltage is batteries used
in float/standby service.

Hydrocaps also solve the problems of loosing water to evaporation
and the problem of losing the acid, thus weakening the
electrolyte. They also virtually eliminate dirty acid covered
and dirty battery tops.

Hydrocaps are expensive, but well worth the costs. Shop around,
as there can be a significant discount at some shops.

--
BRENT - The Usenet typo king.