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Skip Gundlach wrote:
"Larry W4CSC" wrote in message ... Yeah, but rec.boats.cruising posters are NOT your average boater who don't know the difference..... Hell, most of them have no idea you put WATER in the batteries!....not to mention DISTILLED water! So, you've run out of distilled water, and don't have immediately to hand the means to build a solar still, and shore is still quite far off... Is the stuff out of the watermaker acceptable? That is, Reverse Osmosis, not distilled, water? L8R Skip, without a watermaker but interested in battery science Skip, My watermaker instructions say that if you can run the water through the watermaker twice it is suitable for batteries. JR |
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Although it does not really apply, I love a quote from a motorcycle
maintenance book I read (paraphrased, because I don't have it here to get the exact quote) "If you use distilled water you can expect the battery to last for 12 months, but if you use tap water it will only last one year" I know motorcycle batteries are a completly different world, but I still like the quote. Eric "Larry W4CSC" wrote in message ... Red Cloud® wrote in : R.O. water has even lower mineral content than distilled water. It's actually better for the battery, since it's the minerals that cause the harm. rusty Which RO dealer told you that? No RO system can produce the TOTAL dissolved solids of my commercial distiller at 3.8ppm. Hell, it's easy to try. Take a glass of RO water....Drop a power cord into the water and plug it into the wall. Distilled water is an INSULATOR. WRJA-TV's television transmitter puts 18,500VDC on the distilled water that cools their two RCA Klystrons on UHF. Body current is in microamps.... Nope...doesn't wash. The only contaminants in distilled water are distillable liquids like benzene and the other ...enes. This is why we pass them through activated carbon which removes them by attaching their ions.... Then there's the problem of bacterial toxins passing through the membrane when the trapped bacteria break down in the water stream....a serious problem RO would rather you didn't know about. Biologicals don't survive 100C for hours.... |
"fred" wrote in
: it will only last one year Having had motorcycles since I was 17, I'd say that was a fair statement. One year might be stretching it a bit...(c; But, here, we're talking about deep cycle, truly rechargeable wetcells that one can make last for 5 to 10 years, even under heavy use. The problem is the ions in the electrolyte combining with the impurities, say iron or some other metal in solution, in the tap water....eating away at the available acid supply while not producing usable electrons and not being recoverable....leading to boat batteries that last a year like cheap motorcycle batteries...(c; |
On Thu, 31 Mar 2005 19:40:56 -0500,
Larry W4CSC wrote: "Skip Gundlach" skipgundlach sez use my name at earthlink dot fishcatcher (net) - with apologies for the spamtrap wrote in news:APKdnY-Wred0-tHfRVn- : Is the stuff out of the watermaker acceptable? That is, Reverse Osmosis, not distilled, water? Hmm...As RO water takes out salt and other chemicals, I suppose it would be acceptable. I'm, personally, afraid of drinking RO water. I've read some disturbing reports of drinkers getting very sick when the bacteria filtered out by the membrane broke down and released toxins into the stream that were small enough to penetrate the membrane into the outlet side.... I've often wondered if this is why these passenger ships, who I'm sure are running on RO water, have massive sickness epidemics. You can see why they never seem to find out what the cause was as the lawyers are lined up on the dock. I have two distillers, here. One is a laboratory grade, ceramic and stainless, that provides about 20 gallons per day and will run continuously if you flush it out every couple of days on tap water. The other is a nice Sears countertop model a friend gave me when it crapped out the second time, bad thermostat $30. I replaced the crappy boiler steam seal with an O-ring the company was very interested in talking to me about....$1.28 instead of giving Sears $13 for a little doorseal. I keep about 30 gallons of distilled, activated carbon filtered (to get the benzene and other volatiles that also distill with the water out) on hand. I pack a big Brita fridge dispenser with activated carbon over a coffee filter. The whole top of the Brita's intake tank is full of activated carbon. Makes the water coming out of it taste wonderful! How well does your distiller work on distilling from salt water? -- Jim Richardson http://www.eskimo.com/~warlock We have only two things to worry about--either that things will never get back to normal, or that they already have. |
Brian Whatcott wrote in
: Some biologicals DO survive - actually flourish at 100 degC - the submarine sulphur spring flora/fauna for instance But, alas, they are not distillable so don't make it up the outlet with the steam. I took a sanitized glass jug, poured my distilled water into it and left it sitting in the sunshine a whole summer. It was as clear in the fall as it was in the spring, indicating to me not much was in there, even feeding it sunlight for power. I used to have stomach ailments drinking tap water. Distilled solved it. Eating out, I never drink anything that hasn't been boiled to death first. Iced tea isn't boiled.... |
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Im not sure the MPPT controller allows for higher voltage/smaller wires. PV arrays are to some
extent constant current and a "12 volt" array will put out its maximum power at a voltage typically higher than the battery. So if you hook the array up to a battery with a "cheap" controller, it is basically a direct connection and the PV current stays about the same but the PV array voltage drops to the battery voltage so you can lose a fair amount of delivered power. The MPPT controller allows the array voltage to operate for maxiimun power while supplying current to the battery at the batteries charge current. I have a 160 watt pannel (2x80w Kyocera) and typically I might have 8 amps comming out of the panel and maybe 10.5 going into the battery (the currents will of course vary all over depending on how much sunlight, angle, ect). Also, the MPPT charger I have (Blue Sky - company used to be called RV) is intelegent about properly charging the batteries which can make them last longer. Ive only had this product for several months but think it was a good investment. wh Skip Gundlach wrote: Well, back from the boat for a bit, and trying to keep up... "Larry W4CSC" wrote in message ... "Skip Gundlach" skipgundlach sez use my name at earthlink dot fishcatcher (net) - with apologies for the spamtrap wrote in : Hm. Help me with the math. As a lapsed math, physics and chem major, I don't remember my stuff all that well. However, I'll have right in the neighborhood of 500W solar How big are these solar panels? A Kyocera KC120 panel at 120 watts is: Max power: 120 Watts Max voltage: 16.9 Volts Max current: 7.10 Amps Dimensions (LxWxD): 56.1" x 25.7" x 2.2" Weight: 26.3 lbs 4 of those kinda hinders going on deck, I suppose. Or, do you mean 500 watt-hours per day?? 500 watts x 8 hours = 4 KWh/day...pretty nice! Well, that's sorta what I thought. First, these (whatever they turn out to be, based solely on first, space, and second, availability) will be run through an MPPT which will allow me higher voltage/smaller wires - for example, ones designed for 24V systems.. Second, it appears I'll not be able to get the 500W I wanted - but quite possibly more than 450, e.g 3x http://www.partsonsale.com/bp4170.pdf 170w 63x31, 34v or 4x http://www.affordable-solar.com/kc125g125watt.html 125w 56x26 24v but Third, these are going on our arch http://www.justpickone.org/skip/gall...rch&star t=42 which, on construction, appears not to have the space above I'd expected. So, back to the drawing boards for what will fit up there. You can muck around in the rest of that gallery to see what else we'd looked at in coming up with the specs and drawings. In any event, moving about on deck won't be an issue.. None the less, 400W isn't out of the realm of possibility. Real world experience suggests "normal" accumulation of something above 125AH/day... The arch is in the rough welded stage, without any of the custom hang-ons, at the moment. I assume it will be finished by my next time down there, which I expect to be 10 days or so, when I'll take up the regimen of staying on the boat for 3 weeks and coming home for one, in hopes of finishing in May, as I have another surgery scheduled for June 6th, this time to relocate muscle from my back to replace the dead ones in the rotator cuff... L8R Skip and Lydia, refitting as fast as we can -- Morgan 461 #2 SV Flying Pig http://tinyurl.com/384p2 "There is nothing-absolutely nothing-half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats. In or out of 'em, it doesn't matter. Nothing seems really to matter, that's the charm of it. Whether you get away, or whether you don't; whether you arrive at your destination or whether you reach somewhere else, or whether you never get anywhere at all, you're always busy, and you never do anything in particular; and when you've done it there's always something else to do, and you can do it if you like, but you'd much better not." |
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