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Warpspeed Guru Joined: 09/08/2007 Location: AustraliaPosts: 4406
Posted: 09:41pm 19 Jan 2022
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Its certainly the same as far as the cell is concerned.
It might be easier to visualise discharging a capacitor. You can allow the charge to just slowly drain away through a resistor.
Or you could connect the capacitor to a reverse polarity power supply and actively charge it in the reverse direction to pull the voltage (and stored charge) down to zero. The energy supplied by the reverse polarity supply is not free power, it must come from some source.
If you do it all with solar fine, that is free power, so it does not matter. In fact its an excellent idea.
But if you had a big factory repetitively discharging plante cells, hundreds or thousands at a time, and you used grid power to speed up the discharge, there will eventually be a power bill to pay.
In fact you pay twice, once for charging, and again for discharging. With resistive discharge, you only pay for charging.Cheers, Tony.
Bryan1 Guru Joined: 22/02/2006 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1344
Posted: 07:43am 30 Apr 2022
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G'Day Guy's, Last weekend I put that nichrome wire across this cell and setup my cheap DMM to 200Ma current, it did show 100Ma being drawn so just left it going. Today I went for a look and it's still drawing 60Ma and what got me the voltage is 2.12. so with just using 10 watts of solar I do think is performing pretty well.
Now with that leakage in the bucket I'm using decided to put a litmus paper in and see how acidic it was well PH7 was the reading so it's just water.
So the fun continues
Cheers Bryan
brucedownunder2 Guru Joined: 14/09/2005 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1548
Posted: 10:54pm 30 Apr 2022
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Hello Bryan,
Long time since we have chattered . (For those scratching their heads, Bryan and I go way back to the first days of "The back shed" )..
Anyhow Bryan , I see you are still playing in the shed, family must be grown up now and moved on ???. Ilda and I are happy tinkering around this place, don't know for how long, as they look like taking my driving licence from me - my Kidney problem is effecting my "stay-awake" time, so not too good for long distance driving ..
I'm still building inverter and other "all sorts" of solar and wind stuff. and like you , lots of stuff to control and grass to slash, but doing a bit each day as I feel like it. The wind genie needs some serious strengthening ,so thats another Jobbie for mañana(tomorrow)..
Ok, mate, you take care ,and keep those chooks out of your workshop....
BruceBushboy
Bryan1 Guru Joined: 22/02/2006 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1344
Posted: 05:11am 01 May 2022
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G'Day Bruce, Yea mate it has been a long between drinks mate and it good to see your still in there kicking.
My daughters are now teenages and Jessie the oldest one will be 18 in the new year and still hasn't bothered to learn driving and as my ol' 2005 Outback with a 6cyl 3 litre engine threw the timing chain and cooked the engine.
So walked into a car saying I will only spend 3K and walked away with a 1996 C200 Merc with only 161K on the clock, so this car will be there so she can learn to drive with the option of buying the car off me only if I will let it go. My younger daughter is 14 and working as a waitress in the old 5 star restaurant in Kanmantoo which is a 20 minute walk. My dragon flies and flowers are sold there and today made some red gum stands for them and this arvo will drop them off and sit down to listen to local music with free beer ontap.
Ok back to on topic
Measured up that lead sheet I have here and I can get 12 plates at 100x170mm so now the quest is on to find a clear plastic box with a decent lid to hold the cells. I had a bit of a play using one of my knurls and it was pretty easy to get a pattern going but I will make up a jig and power it so it won't be hard on my hands.
Not sure of the capacity of this new battery project will be but aim will be to put a 500 watt 12 volt inverter on it to run my old ammonia fridge which just draws 280 watts at 240 volts. I'll buy a couple of 190 watt panels for this project and the final goal is a shed fridge powered off what was made in this shed.
Now my quote these days is I only go to work to make things I can only dream of making at home
Cheers Bryan Edited 2022-05-01 15:16 by Bryan1
Bryan1 Guru Joined: 22/02/2006 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1344
Posted: 05:56am 08 May 2022
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G'Day Guy's, I cut up the lead plate today and made 12 plates for this 12 volt battery project and noticed I still had an old 6 volt battery sitting in the corner. Sure enough it is just the right size so with a hammer and chiesel got the top of the battery off then the fun of getting rid of the gunk inside. I made a 10mm perspex plate to seal the top and hold all the plates and gave the box a coat of paint.
So that was enough for today and next weekend more can get done and i'll take some pic's.
Cheers Bryan
rogerdw Guru Joined: 22/10/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 852
Posted: 11:39pm 12 May 2022
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Hi Bryan, I don't know how many Kanmantoo's there are in Australia, but we live about 10 mins away from the one in SA. We'll have to give the restaurant a try sometime.Cheers, Roger
Bryan1 Guru Joined: 22/02/2006 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1344
Posted: 09:54am 13 May 2022
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G'Day Guy's, Eh Rodger I'm about 2K as the crow flies away from Kanmantoo SA and from the back of my place it's a straight road into town.
Anyway what better way to end the working week with a few beers to work how this battery is going together, worked just need to mill in some 5x10mm slots in the perspex lid. I do think with a 5X10mm lead bussbar will support each cell as I will solder in the top joint of each cell.
Still need to get some acid and once it's mocked up time to think about making a stamping jig to pattern the cells to get more surface area which will be a fun project to fabricate up then put in a corner until another battery needs to be made.
I will get a 190 watt panel cheap enough to charge this battery and setup a discharging setup to form that oxide we need to get the amp hours.
Cheers Bryan
rogerdw Guru Joined: 22/10/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 852
Posted: 12:44am 14 May 2022
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Wow, I had no idea there were others on the forum around here ... other than Mike (wiseguy) who I've had the pleasure of meeting up with and enjoying chatting about this backshed type stuff and common interests. He's down in Adelaide and I'm in Murray Bridge.
Glad to hear you're getting a chance to wind down and have a few beers. I'll have to pay a bit more attention to this thread and see how you get on. If I wasn't overcommitted to the projects I've already taken on, it's something I could see myself trying too. I hope your weekend experimenting goes well.Cheers, Roger
Bryan1 Guru Joined: 22/02/2006 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1344
Posted: 03:13am 15 May 2022
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G'Day Guy's, Well got a bit of time this morning and got the mockup of the battery done
now to get more surface area I used a small acorn tool from my leather kit and went hammering way rough up the lead and in the end also used a perforated plate with 3mm holes and used that as die with a lump of steel ontop and I used my big rubber hammer.
The photo doesn't totally show the stamping as the other side was done last and it has the bigger impressions. Now I only had to use 6 insulators as the old battery box does have 3 compartments and rather than seal each cell the battery fluid will be shared so only one fill point will be needed.
Cheers Bryan
Bryan1 Guru Joined: 22/02/2006 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1344
Posted: 05:49am 15 May 2022
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G'Day Guy's, Well got the battery all ready to give it the first charge to bring it life but trying to get battery acid in the hills seems like pulling a tooth may be easier
Now I have 600 grams of that pool floculant which is basically aluminum sulphate with a PH of around 2 and I have used it for converting 2 old N70 batteries using it where one of them is hooked up to my old nife battery to assist in the powering the radio where a 80 watt solar panel is the power source. when I've used it for powering the fn on my listeroid it just kept going and going.
So for now I'm going to use it just to get this underway as it will be a long haul forming the battery.
I put in a 3/8" BSP hole for filling and no need for a breather as the rising lead rod is a loose fit so plenty of air will get in.
With the series bussbars I wrapped them in lead sheet and gave em a good hammering, with the terminal post I did soft solder them and formed them using a set of pliers.
So now to make the solution and I'll put on the 10 watt solar setup until i get the new panel which will let me see everything is in order.
Cheers Bryan
Edit: I dissolved that pool floculant into 1.5 litres of warm water and found it ended up taking 4.2 litres to the fill point. The PH is just under 3 and with the solar connected the terminates are showing the full PV voltage so everything is in order
So next weekend I'll take the PV input off and see if there is any voltage in the battery.
So let the fun begin Edited 2022-05-15 16:57 by Bryan1
Murphy's friend Guru Joined: 04/10/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 648
Posted: 04:08am 16 May 2022
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Good to see you are having fun Bryan. Also good to see that I'm not the only one with a messy workbench .
Bryan1 Guru Joined: 22/02/2006 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1344
Posted: 08:17am 19 May 2022
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G'Day Guy's, YAY the battery is alive scored some solid carbide 0.7mm drills today so they had to go straight to the shed when I got home and it was pretty close to dark so no input from the 10 watts of solar. Turned on the DMM and 2.53 volts across the terminals
So it's a slow process with only 10 watts and if I find time this weekend I'll drag out the other 3 5 watt panels I have and connect them all up so the battery see's a bit more current to help it along.
Notice. New forum software under development. It's going to miss a few functions and look a bit ugly for a while, but I'm working on it full time now as the old forum was too unstable. Couple days, all good. If you notice any issues, please contact me.
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