[AT] Manual battery chargers for very dead batteries.

[Spencer Yost]

First off, I want to say I was running this experiment because I  heard from a friend that graphite makes a great anode for an electrolysis bath. Supposedly leaves the bath very clean without any of the scum and other nasty stuff we are typically used to seeing in the bath. I wanted to let you all know that the success described below indicates this does work and graphite is a great anode.   I suspect my cultivator shoe will be de-rusted soon.

Anyways I ran the experiment Charlie suggested to confirm that putting a battery in parallel would trigger the charger and get it to work in the electrolysis bath. That worked nicely.  I didn't think I wanted to leave the battery on it unsupervised (and it was getting late) so I shut down the experiment.  As soon as I disconnected the battery it eventually "figured "it out and slowly shut off.   It did take 2-3 minutes for the bubbling to stop though.

Someone else I know  suggested putting it in series but that does not work. 

Someone else suggested simply putting a load on it, such as a 12V lamp would get this to work.  I have not tried that.  If it will  that would be the safest alternative.

This all seems to be a bit of a pain in the butt so I may go with an old used unit or a simple dedicated DC power supply like some of the others had suggested.

Thanks for all the help!


Spencer Yost

> On Nov 16, 2016, at 7:02 PM, John Wilson <john.kathy.wilson at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Generally you will find manual chargers with wind up timers on them. The
> coast guard requires chargers for boats to be ignition protected, and the
> marine charger business seems to drive the rest so you get the chargers
> that shut off if they don't detect a voltage.
> 
> Old PC power supplies are an excellent cheap source of power for
> electrolysis. Even if you need several to get enough current for a big item
> like I did with a trailer frame, free is still free if you have a source.
> You need to figure out what wires need shorted to turn it on and where to
> get the 12V, but that is available on the web.
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