"Wilbur Hubbard" wrote in news:ew%
:

Jay Leno has a couple of old electric cars in his garage. There was an
article in Popular Mechanics a month or so ago about his Baker electric
that had batteries that were re-buildable. (alkaline batteries???) Said
they have lead plates and use acid??There was a picture of him holding
one and it looked about the same size and shape as a 12volt starting
battery size 27. It said they could be rebuilt indefinitely which is
good since they were about a hundred years old already.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/auto...e/4215940.html

Wilbur Hubbard



Those batteries are Nickel-Iron "Edison" cells, like those used in older
fork lift trucks. They don't need rebuilding, almost ever. I have a set
of them that makes 14VDC for emergency power on my ham station. They
only require distilled water, which they do consume naturally with
charging. My cells came out of the Holiday Inn in Orangeburg, SC, in
1973. The date on them is 1958 when the Holiday Inn bought them for
backup power supply for their operator plugged internal telephone system.
When I got them, that system was scrapped for an automatic Bell$outh
exchange. The innkeeper was a ham radio friend of mine.

The cells are like NiCd or Ni-Mh...only 1.2V/cell. I have 12 cells in
series. They are not very efficient batteries, as you can read:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel-iron_battery
Waldemar Jungner, a Swede, invented them, but didn't produce them. As
with lots of other devices, Thomas Edison stole the design and called it
his, producing them in 1903. His interest, of course, was to put them in
every home to power the house with Edison's biggest mistake, DC power.
Tesla put an end to that nonsense at Niagara Falls, powering Rochester
and Buffalo with multiphase AC that's in your house today with his
flourescent and vapor arc lamps.

Reliability in constant use, which just kills lead-acid batteries as you
all know, is the reason for NiFe's use in high use forklifts until the
government bureaucrats forced Exide, who bought Edison's company and
patents, out of the nickel battery business in 1972. They made them in
Sumter, SC, where I lived, but made the stupid mistake of polluting the
ground with Nickel, ruining the ground water to peoples' wells for miles
and miles around the plant. Exide paid dearly in court, to the lawyers,
of course, not the well owners who had to fend for themselves with a
pittance. Only China produces Nickel batteries now, unconcerned with
pollution, of course.

You don't want them on your boat. Only problem with that use is you MUST
be able to water them, frequently. The electrolyte is potassium
hydroxide, a base not an acid. Unlike lead sulphate, which precipitates
and consumes lead batteries, the ions in a NiFe battery are fully
recoverable, even years after being left for dead. My cells were all
dead when I got them. Two required more potassium hydroxide to bring
them back to life and balance their odd specific gravity. You also
cannot confine them. The caps are explosion proof filtered vents on
mine. They gas something awful all the time the charger is on them...not
good in a boat. I leave them on a wooden pallet under my house, outside.
They are so heavy, I doubt anyone will just haul them away. They'd make
great ballast...(c; My cells weigh about 300# EACH and are 850AH. I run
a float charger I built for them in the 1970's on them, constantly,
because they leak a lot, self discharging in a month or two.

They are super rugged. You cannot overcharge them! If you charge too
hard or too long or overvoltage, they simply gas off your water and turn
your cells into a hydrogen generator. WHATEVER you do DO NOT SHORT THEM!
They will simply vaporize #0 welding cable in a flash! They have an
amazing current producing capability and very low internal
resistance...as long as they are not cold, not an issue in SC.

Noone makes them, any more, because of the pollution problem of
manufacturing and EXPENSE. AGM batteries would look really cheap next to
a new NiFe bank. Nickel is amazingly expensive in microdollarettes. You
need LOTS of Nickel in them. The other thing is our throw-away
mentality. We can't see beyond the end of our noses to any long-term
investments like having a set of batteries you'd move from place to
place, not needing to replace them....maybe ever. Long term, their price
point is cheaper than lead, but it wouldn't sell.

Larry
--
Many hams here are already waiting for me to kick the bucket so they can
take my set home.....(c;