Battery – Making of a Restored Battery

The Process of Making a Restored Battery

Our process of making a restored battery have been improved and modified over the years. However the basic principles remain the same.

The basis of our restoration process is the desulfator. See section on battery desulfation for details on this process. In this section we will explain the process we use to make our restored batteries. See Battery reconditioning for our reconditioning service for large storage and traction batteries.

Battery restoration starts with collecting the spent batteries. Batteries are constructed by sandwiching positive and negative plates between wood or plastic separators. This allows the acid to flow through the plates without touching. Lead dioxide the active material on the plates have a smaller molecular structure than lead sulphate the interim chemical state after discharge. This accounts for the bulging of batteries when they are too far discharged. This destroys the battery. As the plates are tightly packed they buckle, the active material sheds and falls to the bottom of the battery. Tendrils can form across the plates shorting the battery. This is why you cannot recharge a battery if you left your car lights on overnight, even if it is not bulging. The charging current just heats the battery instead of being stored in the chemical reaction.

The first step is to put a preliminary charge through with our strongest desulfating chargers. This process clears and tendrils that may have formed and also gives it a charge for us to test and determine if the battery has enough active material to work like a new battery. It is not to hard to revive a battery but is very difficult to revive a battery up to a point when we can say that it is almost as good as new. Blind charging of batteries means that we will be wasting our time on batteries that cannot and will not be up to standard.

Selected batteries are put on our slow desulfating chargers as desulfation is a slow process. It is not possible to force desulphate a battery as the battery will not accept charge. Pulsing energy from the desulfator breaks the strong molecular bonds of hard sulfate crystals and allows the charging to take place. This process can take up to 3 days depending on the size of the battery. During this charging process the batteries have to be checked to ensure that the desulfation process is still continuing.

When the batteries are fully desulfated they are taken of the chargers and are left to stand for 2 to 3 days. This is to ensure that the charge will hold and the battery does not self discharge due to mechanical faults. Air pockets could have form between plates and separator preventing the acid from getting into contact with the plates leaving area of plates still sulfated. These batteries are filled and put back in the desulfation process.

The restored batteries are now subjected to our intensive testing. They are checked for capacity, cold cranking amps and integrity under load. Having passed all these they are washed and put up for sale. We can then truly claim that these batteries are as good as new.

Our failure rate is paradoxically, possibly less than new batteries as our batteries are fresh. New batteries could be sitting on the shelf sulfating for up to 6 months before your purchase. Because of this new batteries when they are manufactured are over spec, which helps us as there is more active material to work with and our batteries often test better than the rated specifications.