EQing the battery

[Hotrod]

I'm wondering if I'm doing this EQ thing correctly. I EQed the battery couple days ago. Starting with a battery the inverter says in full and in float, I hit it with the EQ cycle. Checked all the cells and then hit it again. None of the cells changed noticably after the second EQ so I stopped. Am I doing this correctly?

[Mike90250]

What is the SG you measure, and what is it supposed to be ?
Did the batteries consume much water in the EQ ?
How long was the EQ ?
Had the batteries completed ABSORB before you started the EQ ?
What were the starting and ending amps in EQ ?

[Tecnodave]

Hot Rod,

the key to EQ'ing that battery is the hydrometer, get a good one and use it. After a charge let the battery rest a bit and read every cell, read several times and throw out the readings that don't line up. Do flush your hydrometer and get it to the same temperature as the acid in the cells. I prefer the glass float models with fine graduations, I store my hydrometers in a gallon jug full of Distilled water and flush it frequently. I keep the hydrometers in the battery box in a little spare space so that they are at battery temp to start off with, yes I do have more than one.....The floating plastic balls are junk, don't bother using one of those. I did 6-10 equilation in a row in recovering those 18-85-27 batteries and my Surette S-530's to completely recover them. As they are older and well broken in on the recommendation of Steve Higging at Rolls, older batteries that are well broken in do not need as high an s.g. as does a new battery, your target eq should be 1.265 with no more than .010 variation between cells. I get mine within .010 and I'm happy, a cell down .020 and you are headed for trouble, at .050 variation you are in trouble, new 24-85-27's eq value is 1.277 but your batteries and mine have been around the barn a few times

tecno...

[Hotrod]

Here is what it looked like on the 19th after a full charge. I did the EQ on the 20th. I checked the cells and they matched closely to the sheet before i started. I then hit it with an EQ and got A2 and B3 up to 1.29. I hit it for another hour and they didn't come up any.
thumbnail_IMG_20190623_142001.jpg

[Hotrod]

Checked It on the 21st and got these readings before adding water and having a disaster as one of the caps in the flow-rite system is cracked. I don't know how i broke it, but that doesn't matter now. I have a cell, A1, that I literally overflowed. Cleaned it all up. Bought new caps. Moving on.

thumbnail_IMG_20190623_141943.jpg

[Hotrod]

Here is what it looked like today after about 4.5-5hrs @ 58.2v absorption.

thumbnail_IMG_20190623_141927.jpg

[Hotrod]

I am assuming this GNB battery came with 1.32SG new.

[Mike90250]

Once the last cell stop going higher in SG, you are done. Then you make some seat of the pants adjustments to your absorb voltage and time, so the EQ's are not so arduous of a task.

[Hotrod]

Screenshot 2019-06-23 at 3.56.23 PM.png Each EQ was an hour long.

[Hotrod]

Technodave, You said " I get mine within .010 and I'm happy, a cell down .020 and you are headed for trouble, at .050 variation you are in trouble", and I have a .04 spread from highest to lowest. How much trouble am I in? How do I lower my SG to the 1.265 SG you referenced? Or should I?

[Tecnodave]

Hot Rod,

I am preparing an email as to this situation, 1.320 seems a bit high, what is your absorb voltage and how long. I set my eg. at 2.5 VPC and 120-180 minutes. I want you to change things a bit. But I want to think on this a bit.......1.320 seems a bit too high but that is the s.g. That we used at Alaska Husky Battery but those were artic batteries not to be used in summer....with that high an s.g. they maintain charge at 70 below, but the trade off , they are less tolerant of heat....so when you take s.g. Readings I want the temperatures as well and temperature at very early before charging, at maximum charging and end of charging.
Are you cooling your battery box, and what kind of ventilation are you using? This battery should be giving off copious amounts of hydrogen and oxygen at that s.g. Are all the cells bubbling equally?

Im sure that with your background you are well aware of the rapid burning of oxy/hydrogen gas, it does need to be vented off........oxy/Hydroden burns at 6250 feet per second! At three mile island they said "We had a rapid hydrogen burn" The hydrogen explosion totally jellied the concrete containment dome! Peek at the photo's of Fukishima....That was a "Rapid hydrogen Burn! Deatroyed the whole reactor building and all the safety controls. Rapid Hydrogen Burn ,my butt!
The zirconium cladding of the fuel rods flashes into hydrogen at meltdown......
Hydrogen is the lightest of the gasses and rises rapidly, a vent hood with non sparking ventilation is needed here. Just saying, but I'm sure that you are aware.

I assume that you do have a BTS sensor on your XW and charge controllers, maybe only one sensor sharing the data through the Xanbus. What is your temperature correction factor? Only one sensor to be shared, Schneider has had issues with more than one sensor on Xanbus networks.

More later, had a tough medical issue yesterday and am recovering.

I will get my thinking cap on and think about this a bit and get back to you

Im more concerned by the .04 variation than the 1.320 s.g.

Do you by chance have access to a low voltage power supply, maybe 2.7-2.9 volts and 100 amps or so....read my mind on that, you know what I am suggesting. That is what we did at Alaska Husky Battery , We used an theatre arc lamp power supply to charge on the cell level....

The Employment Prevention Agency ran Alaska Husky out of business, they are now in Moscow making batteries for the Russian Military in the Artic.,,

TD

[Hotrod]

I can assure you that the ventilation is more than adequate. thumbnail_IMG_20190624_073515.jpg

Pay no attention to the dent in the roof. I bumped it with the telehandler.

The cells temps this morning ranged from 78.8 to 79.2 before charging started.

No temp sensor yet. Got down in my back. I'll get that and several other things installed as soon as I can get back in the saddle.

[Tecnodave]

Hot Rod,

You are not in too deep with the battery, I'm down right now due to bike crash. I've reached out to battery maker, is that GNB, sent email for exact specs, but fron calcs. you are at 2.45 volts per cell @ eq. might do a bit af adjustment but minor. How long have you had that battery. I remember that you said refribished, was that sold to you by GNB, maybe part of Exide, or someone else. I'm looking for a bit of history there. I've recovered ones far worse than that
my Surette set was at 0.05 volts and s.g. so low that I could not read with hydrometers or spectrometer, now 1.265 across all cells.

Did you understand about boosting cell by cell to bring up weak ones ? I use theater carbon arc light power supply to charge one cell only, to recover the weakest ones.
The cell that got overfilled doesn't appear to be affected by the flooding.

One other thing I do is to use a turkey baster to remove several ounces of electrolyte and replace with 1.320 to bring up the weak ones.

In in making high s.g. battery there is a ratio of lead to electrolyte to s.g. to achieve hi density battery. The artic batteries we built at Alaska Husky had that high ratio, lead content far higher in proportion to electrolyte which is balanced by the 1.320 s.g., which is on the high end but ok as long as the battery is not affected by the engine temp, or other heat source. I like your battery shed, shade and lots of free air for cooling.

I was thinking that you had them in garage but that is probably DickyDoc on solar-electric. He is fiddling with every setting in his XW and has set frequency range on grid input to 52-67 hz. Have you ever heard of using that wide of frequency range on grid sycronization generation. I'm thinking that should be more like 59-61, what do you think on that? He is trying to set AC1 (L-1 to neutral) to 240 volts....LOL, Does not understand that split phase is single phase.....LOL

TD

[Hotrod]

I bought the battery from Xtrapower in Canada. Super nice folks. Been very helpful. They told me to use these settings for the battery:
Float-54v
Absorb-58.2v
Bulk-59.4v
EQ-63v

Which hygrometer are you using? There's a literal plethora on Amazon. I have a temp compensated refractometer that I use. I also have Hydrofloat, but it only goes to 1.30.

Ya, I got you on the cell by cell boosting. I've got a lot of spare parts and what not laying around that will probably provide the pieces I need to build something simple.

If I were to start messing with baseline SG by removing and replacing acid, my kneejerk thoughts, based on my limited understanding, would be to lower the SG to extend life.

The only time I've ever had to use frequencies outside of +/- .1Hz was in third world countries where I had to maintain peak shaving ops. The host country would drop it back at night to save fuel. I haven't even looked at those settings on my equipment.

[Hotrod]

Good solar day. Battery is in absorption. Temp was ~93F across all cells and ambient temp is 81F.