Sunday, December 14, 2008

What Are Battery Desulfators?

By Allen Strong

Sulfation in batteries is the probably the major cause of cell drainage and failures in the industrial use of batteries. This also happens to the batteries of your car since they are classified to of industrial strength. If your battery is having a hard time starting the engine, your car batteries just might be victims of sulfation.

So what really is sulfation? Sulfation takes place when the cells of your car battery is not used for regularly for long periods of time. The lead plates suspended in an electrolyte solution inside a battery reacts with the sulfuric acid in the solution and combines to form a compound called lead sulfate. This compound covers up your lead cell plates and minimizes the area of contact it has with the solution and the batteries capacitance. And your battery, consequently shows weaker and weaker current and voltage generation.

If you haven't used your car for a while or you just bought batteries that were stored for a long time in the store without being used, it's very likely that the cells in these batteries have become desulfated. It's pretty easy to tell whether this has happened. If your car is struggling to start up with a brand new or rarely used battery, nine times out of ten, it's sulfated already.

In order to keep your batteries from getting sulfated, it's important that you keep the cells active. You're going to want discharge them regularly, even just once a month, to make sure that the cells doesn't stagnate. This is probably the simplest and most practical way to keep your batteries in shape.

You can also keep lead acid cells topped with distilled water to dampen the reaction it has with the sulfuric acid. This greatly reduces the risk of sulfation from permanently damaging your batteries. There are also battery desulfators available in the market today that are probably the cheapest and most efficient way to remove the lead sulfate precipitate.

That's the deal with battery desulfation, folks. It's pretty much a simple concept in car maintenance. Just keep your car cells active and you won't have to worry about lead sulfate. - 16928

About the Author:

No comments: