My Battery Conversion Experiment

[why_me]

Hello forum, I have converted a 12 volt battery using a virgin never activated unit. No sulphuric acid. I used a combination of Plengo's and John Bedini's chemical mix. I posted the mix on the Battery Conversion thread. The battery took its first charge and lasted 4 days down to 2 volts lighting 46 LEDs, because it is all I have. I am noticing that it uses a lot of water when charging and discharging. I am hoping it will stabilize itself and use a minimal amount of water as it gets used more. The battery is now on the charger at a 2 amp charge. The first use was to power 2 ham radios with continuos volume until it showed 4.5 volts. I then powered the 46 LEDs until they were slightly dim down to 2 volts. And then I just wanted to recharge it. NOTE: It does get warm when charging.

I also used the same formula to make 1.5 volt batteries and the dry mix puts out 2 volts. I am now looking for the correct fitting parts to make D cells, 1.5 volt batteries.

[why_me]

I discovered the why of the battery getting warm, too much amperage when charging. I solved this by parallel charging my alum/sodium carbonate battery with my new mix battery. Each battery gets a 1 amp charge rate. The booklet that came with the batteries indicated a little over 14 hours at 1 amp. This will be the wait to see project. No more warm batteries from charging.

[why_me]

I discovered that the battery charger I am using produces heat in batteries because the current has AC voltage as well as DC. I think it is a clipped wave form of AC using cheap parts to make a battery die quicker than it should instead of using direct current or pure DC voltage. The heat is the byproduct of oscillation from the clipped AC. I discovered this when I noticed a looped wire I used as a jumper was vibrating. I placed a magnet near the coiled wire jumper and the magnet vibrated. This only happens to magnets near an AC transformer, like a wall wart,i.e., an electrical outlet mounted transformer. Question: would a diode make any difference in smoothing out the electromotive force?

[John_Koorn]

why_me, your charger probably has a full wave bridge rectifier (FWBR) to convert the AC to "DC with AC ripple". The full wave bridge rectifier is 4 diodes, so adding another diode won't help. What will help however, is a capacitor after the FWBR that smooths out the AC ripple.

John K.

[why_me]

Where is this Capacitor supposed to be hooked up? What type and what values are to be used for this to work? Sure would help the thread progress to know. Thanks guys.

[rheisinger]

My Lead Alum Battery experiment (lead plates casted)

Hi everyone, I just want to thank John and Chuck because their inspire me to start my own battery experiments. A week ago I casted in my kitchen 4, 17cm round lead plates and put them on alum. Anyway the results are on this video.

Just wanted to add my 2 cents to this great community.
Right now I'm starting to experiment with other battery in which I put one aluminum bar and one lead bar, off course with Alum as electrolyte. I will post the results soon.

Greetings Ricardo Heisinger.

[why_me]

I have given this thread over to being closed and not going forward. CLOSED.