Eye On Electronics - MOTOR Information Systems
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1. Mike Dale mdale motor com The recycling of just about anything that can be is widely accepted to be a good thing But a large number of batteries may be getting recycled much sooner than is necessary he local parts store here has the usual display of new car batteries Two things are remarkable One is that most of the new batteries are pushing well past the 100 mark up sharply from just a few years ago The other is the small sign that says the parts house also offers refurbished batteries for about 40 Refurbished What does that mean What really has been done to those batteries What will the customers who buy them be getting for their money A great website for information on batteries is www BatteryUniversity com which offers a broad range of technical information on bat teries and how they work It covers car batter ies of course but also batteries for electric ve TF i IF ail fe l 7 ss 18 MOTOR May 2014 This container of batteries a rather large load of toxic waste actually is ready for recycling The question is are there good ones in that pile that could be made useful again hicles shop tools and even cell phones With some help from that website and a few others we can dig into this refurbished thing to see what it really means The trade group Battery Council Interna tional estimates that 98 million vehicle batter ies are replaced in the U S each year world wide th2. The good ones can be cleaned up and prepared for re sale This testing is not simple it takes equipment and training and can still leave gray areas of uncertainty The second challenge is finding those batteries whose performance is truly not up to snuff There are some techniques that can be used to bring them back to a reasonable level of performance These batteries will need even more investment in terms of time effort and technology than those that were never truly bad in the first place In fact you could make the point that there are more than enough still good batteries out there to satisfy the market for lower cost refurbished batteries so why bother trying to fix the others at all The third challenge to refurbish ment will be those batteries that are genuinely bad and unrepairable This includes batteries with mechanical problems such as cracked cases broken terminals and internal opens or shorts This group includes the end of life bat teries that are simply used up These batteries are recycled For recycling batteries are disas sembled and the metals salvaged D o ing this correctly is not without risk Lead is toxic and battery acid is corro sive A number of former locations for battery recycling plants H aina in the Dominican Republic is one example are well known environmental hot spots Problems include lead contami nation in the soil air and water In H aina they found that one third of the soi
3. atification cannot always be continued on page 62 Open Circuit FaultFinder m Scan the circuit wire with the tracer s flexible probe to find the trouble spot m 42 V Ready works on circuits with 6 to 42 VDC Auto polarity probes For use with em Automobiles m Buses and RVs em Trucks and trailers me Boats m Any 6 to 42 VDC powered circuit To watch demo video online and learn more scan the QR Code a GTC V Ready and FaultFinder are trademarks of General Technologies Corp 2013 General Technologies Corp Included in the set we Transmitter and tracer Mini ATO and Maxi fuse socket connectors Professional cordless circuit tester pm Hard carrying storage case User s manual Circle 14 FF Ll l General visit us at WWwWwW gtc ca or call toll free 1 800 440 5582 oy ay Technologies 7 Corp May 2014 MOTOR 21 Eye On Electronics continued from page 21 avoided The BU website cautions that during winter months the starter motor batteries of most passenger cars dwell at 75 of a full charge level f the driving routine for the vehicle cannot be altered it may be necessary to do some external recharging Stratification can also be broken up through a con trolled overcharging process up to 16V for one or two hours not more Tipping or shaking the battery is another way to re distribute the electrolyte N ote that the solution for acid stratification again involves a car
4. damage the battery There are a number of chemicals pills and even electronic equipment on the market devoted to removing sulfation BU offers a method for us ing Epsom salts to accomplish it There are a number of battery charg ers that use AC currents to try to break up the sulfation If a battery is left in an uncharged or partially charged condition for weeks or months the sulfation can harden to the point where no form of restoration is possible Acid stratification affects the elec trolyte in the battery F or the typical car battery the electrolyte is a mix of Short and distilled water and sulfuric acid In an undercharged battery the heavier sulfuric acid concentrates at the bot tom of the battery This happens when the battery stays below 80 charge never receives a full charge and has shallow discharges With acid stratification the elec trolyte at the top of the battery limits plate activation because it doesn t have enough acid This promotes internal corrosion and reduces performance The concentration of acid at the bot tom makes the battery test as being more charged than it is It also raises the open circuit voltage of the cells Be cause there s an uneven charge across the surface of the plate the effective cold cranking amps CCA perfor mance of the battery is reduced The concentration of acid at the bottom of the battery also leads to sulfation on the lower half of the plates Acid str
5. e number is more than 225 million The primary function for most of these batter ies was to run the starter motor and to act as reserve storage to supplement the alternator for short term peak loads But not all of the batteries replaced were actually defective Battery University BU says that a leading German battery maker re cently checked 400 starter motor batteries that had been returned and found that noth ing was wrong with 200 of them Another E u ropean battery manufac turer says that genuine fail ures for warranty returns is in the range of 5 to 7 What this must mean is that there are a lot of dis carded batteries that could be returned to useful ser vice Even some of the de fective batteries could pos sibly be revived back to some level of performance This is a business oppor tunity that some companies have been taking advantage of This refers not only to starter motor batteries but to cell phone batteries nickel cadmium N i cad batteries and both lithium ion Li ion and nickel metal hydride NiMH electric car batteries F ran chises are springing up all over to rework these dis carded batteries There are at least three continued on page 20 i h Photo courtesy Mack s Recycling Aan Eye On Electronics challenges in the refurbishment busi ness The first is testing Somehow those enormous piles of so called bad batteries have to be combed through tested and evaluated
6. eful controlled plan for charging the battery Refurbish ment really means restoring a battery s storage capacity to an acceptable level It does not mean taking the battery apart and replacing bits and pieces of it Other problems can shorten the life of a battery nternal mechanical problems include shedding corrosion and internal shorts Inside the cells of a battery are positive and negative grids that have been pasted with active materials Over a bat tery s life there s a natural shedding of these materials which then fall into the spaces at the bottom of the battery As this lost material builds up it eventually can form a bridge that shorts out the plates Shedding can be limited by reducing the depth of discharge of the battery and the number of starter motor cy cles The new start stop systems can be hard on batteries Internal corrosion of a battery can be reduced by control ling its temperature and by choosing the right alloys of lead for Learn from your peers Transport your career to the next level at iatn net 62 MOTOR May 2014 the grids and straps Batteries used in hot climates generally have a much shorter life than those used in moderate climates Overcharging a battery can cause the water to split into hy drogen and oxygen electrolysis that can then escape the bat tery This uses up water and can shorten the life of the insula tors inside the battery if the water is not replenished Probably the mos
7. l in the area of the former bat tery plant was actually lead So how did all these good batteries get condemned in the first place The BU website says that low charge and acid stratification are the most common causes of apparent battery failure The low charge circumstance is well illus trated by the typical use pattern for cars in Japan M otorists there drive an average of 8 miles a day in congested cities At typical low speeds the batter les just never really get fully recharged Poorly charged batteries are also a problem in large luxury vehicles Electric power steering electrically controlled suspension systems H VAC systems and so on add loads to the battery If the alternator does not spin fast enough and long enough to gen erate the needed power then the bat tery has to supply that power D e pending on how a motorist uses his vehicle the battery may be in a con stant state of undercharge The direct result of leaving a bat tery in a chronic undercharge state is sulfation Sulfation is a phenomenon If all you wanted to do is turn this 1 off then any ole code reader would do But if real diagnostics and fixing the TPMS is your goal Then BARTEC is the TPMS tool Industry s First Wireless TEH IL ILI TPMS Service Tool 20 MOTOR May 2014 partner youve been looking for Innovation where it counts means better features KS NK N Advanced diagnostics to fix it right the first
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9. s that the load resistor gets really hot and the test further drains the battery As an alternative approach various AC conductance testers are now on the market These devices inject a sine wave or square wave pulse into the battery Different makers use dif ferent frequencies and pulse rates The idea is to measure the impedance of the battery as a way to gauge how well current can move in and out This still doesn t measure battery capaci ty but it s better than the load resistor method Cadex a company associated with Battery University says there s a method called electrochemical impedance spec troscopy EIS that would work to measure battery capacity The problem with EIS is that it s a complicated method that s more appropriate to a research lab than a refurbishment oper ation The equipment is expensive and it takes skilled opera tors to decipher the data Cadex says it has built a hand held field usable version of this they call M ulti M odel electro chemical impedance spectroscopy or Spectro tester for short t s capable of measuring CCA to 5 accuracy and ca pacity to 20 accuracy For starter motor applications the evidence shows that there are literally tens of millions of batteries every year that are being recycled before their time There s money to be made from that pile How good any refurbished batteries might be depends on technical quality of the charging and testing methods used to refu
10. t difficult and technical aspect of the re furbishment business is battery testing The Battery U niversity website says that the leading health indicator for a battery is its Capacity M easured in amp hours capacity is the number of minutes a battery can supply a 25A load Put another way ca pacity is the amount of energy the battery can store Cold cranking amps is a different measurement that refers to the power delivery rate the battery is capable of BU says that the large number of warranty returns of still good batteries is partly to blame on the lack of reliable testers M ost testers read only CCA the capacity is not measured and therefore not known This means that resistive measurements are unreliable as a state of health indicator or end of life indi cator This leads to wrong diagnostics in which a good battery is replaced in error while one with low capacity is passed only to fail on the road The health of a battery cannot be exactly measured only es timated says BU They say that there s no one single tester to day that s fully capable of assessing the state of health of a bat tery in asingle measurement The most common battery test method uses a large resistor to put a load on the battery The voltage output of the battery is monitored during this test The problem with this method is that it cannot spot a poorly charged battery or one with high internal resistance sulfation or lost capacity Another prob lem i
11. time Better OBDII coverage for easier and faster relearns Real technical support means help when you need it Circle 13 Light Off that occurs when small sulfate crys tals form By themselves they re harmless H owever during prolonged low charge circumstances the amor phous lead sulphate converts to a sta ble crystalline form that then accu mulates on a battery s negative plates This leads to the development of large crystals that can block the active area of the plates Sulfation lowers the rate at which a battery will accept a charge by effectively increasing the battery s internal resistance The website goes on to say that there are two kinds of sulfation re versible and nonreversible Soft sulfa tion can be reversed by applying an overcharge to a fully charged battery The overcharge is on the order of 15 to 16V controlled to a current of 200mA It can take up to 24 hours to accomplish the desulfation but it can restore capacity to the battery This is one meaning of the term refurbished Zoe Electrical Circuit FaultFinder A faster and easier way to find short and open circuits Connect the transmitter to the faulty circuit or wire The BU website shows a lot of re spect for long slow careful charging of the battery F ast charging can gen erate heat and through electrolysis cause gas to form in the battery It can also cause water loss plate warpage and other evils that may ac tually
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