Opening raylitte 1660amp battery cases

[russ_drinkwater]

[move][/move]I have a number of old raylitte batteries and I want to drain and open one to check out the plate design and see what
sludge is in the collection tub in the bottom of the battery cases.
Has anyone ever had a look at the internals of a raylitte?
If so what did you use to cut the top off the battery cases?
If they are completely toast I will melt and recycle to contents.
Have been toying with casting plante plates with the end to rebuilding the old raylittes.
Anyone else had any experience in this regard?
I have access to 2 tonnes of battery scrap lead and I will melt some up and test hardness to estimate if there is much
in the way of alloys present in it.
I have reading a bit about making batteries (The Battery Builders Guide by Phillip Hurley) and the biggest hurdle for me seems to be the
battery casing itself. Therefore, I thought of the old raylittes.
Purchased some high quality fibre matting and am going to test that in acid for the plate separators.
Any constructive input is welcome!

[zoneblue]

Im sure you know the plates arent just lead. The plates have additives, like antimony , calcium etc.
Then once you have that right, and they are cast to exactly the right thickness and surface area, you need the active paste material that gets applied to them.

[russ_drinkwater]

Hi,
The plante plate batteries do not have paste in them as according to the makers book this process is reserved for
higher discharge short life batteries used in car etc.
Better quality long life lead acid batteries do not have alloys in their blend.
The plates are cast as flat sheets and have no holes or the usual grid network in them that everyone is so familar with today.
The trojan L16 I have here have plates 3-4 mm thick and I can not comment on their structure.
We will be aiming for 10 mm thick plates to replace what is in the raylitte battery cases.
Finished product will not be 1660 amp hours, but even if I can get 800 plus amp hour cells from the project that last 15-20 I would be super happy.
I may have to send the scrap lead we have to the local refinery and get some pure lead from them in a swap/pay event.
I am only stating what I have read in regard to the battery plates.
Any older battery construction (not car batteries) experts out there please comment.
Plates sizes etc are covered in the book.

[zoneblue]

Ok cool. Send us some pics of the project.

[russ_drinkwater]

Did a bit more reading on the plante plate batteries. The positive plate is solid pure lead as I said before, but there is an advantage to having the negative plate with perforations and paste to increase the batteries overall performance.
Paste can be recycled from old grid mesh style car batteries, crushed up and then sieved to get any small pieces of lead alloy grid
out of the powder. I have been looking at some of my old leatherwork lacing hole punches and the offset rectangular slit type
would be suitable for cutting into the negative plate for impregnation with the paste. It would be a slow process and I am sure I could make a lot larger punch to cover the area a lot faster or a spiked roller to do much the same job.
Having the negative plate only pasted apparently extends the battery life of a large amp hour cell to 15-25 years depending on
the care and abuse given to the battery.
You do not need to paste the negative plates to make the battery functional. But after construction the battery must be charged positive to positive and negative to negative to develop and hold a charge. Then must be discharged and then the process starts again but this time the positive charge goes into the negative terminal of the battery to develop a coating on the negative plates. This process goes on
in excess of 30 times.
Once you are satisfied you discharge the battery and charge it in the normal fashion, positive to + and negative to -.
The capacity of the plante type battery will continue to develop with further use.
I have misplaced my manual at the moment so sorry for not exact terms used.
When the rain stops enough I will retrieve one battery from the other property and drain an cut it open to inspect the raylitte construction.

[Vic]

Hi russ..,

Have been reading this with some interest ...

BUT,  is any part of this process really anything that you would want to do ??

The moment you begin handling and processing Lead, seems to me that you are at some risk.

AND,  if you were in the USA,  your property could become harmed by any Lead debris,   dust,  shavings,  etc.

Life IS short ...   it this worth the very real risks ?

FWIW,  with attitude.   Be careful,   Good Luck,      Vic

[clockmanFrance]

Purchased some high quality fibre matting and am going to test that in acid for the plate separators.
Any constructive input is welcome!

I would be very interested in how you get on with the glass matt, or is it woven glass fibre.

I have made a multi cell, 8 positive 8 negative, and I only got 50% output compared to an equivalent commercial of the same size.
My main difficulty was making and attaching 3 combs to ensure the plates were evenly spaced, 1 at the base to ensure the plates do not sink under there own weight and the other 2 at each end half way up the plates.
I used 2mm lead sheet for the positive and 1mm for the negative. For the combs I used the top of an old broken car battery and slotted the pieces.

In the end i found that i had spent far to long on the project.

So your experiments with glass matt has re-sparked my interest, as it would mean more plates in the space, so more ah, keep the plates compact and tight, and also lessen the use of so much acid mix.

Not difficult getting lead and acid here.

Containers? polypropylene?

[russ_drinkwater]

The poly is available and fibre glass will do the job.
There is an area (a reserve, lol) next to one one my properties which has a massive pile of lead batteries that were stored there and subsequently burnt in a bushfire.
There is over 3 tonnes of scrap there to be had and we will do our heating and casting there.
Plenty of wood for the fire and just need corrugated tin for the melt plate and some guttering and a collection drum.
Build the fire and shovel the scrap onto the hot tin and the lead alloy runs off when hot enough.
I have been casting lead bullets on and off for 30 years plus, so I imagine I already some lead build up.
The reason i want to use the surrette tubs is that they have a large sediment pit in the bottom and I am hoping that it will have a honeycomb of poly walls to help support the plates as well. Each raylitte battery weighs in at 65kg (15 liters of electrolyte) and so I would imagine there must be internal support for the grids.
It may nor be worthwhile, but WTH I just want to see if I can do if need be! I am a prepper (and have been for most of my life but never called that) as I live in an isolated rural area. We need to be able to repair and make do with whatever we can as income from cattle and the like is a small return in this country (australia).
If I can make cells and the time comes and I need to then I will make more.
I have been married 3 times now and I am well aware of risks
Lead work such as this is all cover up, down wind. I would imagine anyone who has been using lead acid batteries for decades has a measurable amount of lead buildup as well as from the old leaded fuel we had years ago, you know wash the parts in the petrol cuz it gets the crud off real nice and quick (no gloves of course in those days).
To honest I would much prefer to make edison batteries out of the tubs. But there is a lot less info on the construction out there.
I suppose I could just adjust some of the LA advice to suit nickle iron.

[clockmanFrance]

Thanks russ.

Please post your endeavours I would love to see how you get on.

Over the years I have found that some Forums are more responsive to Hard Core stuff. Others wheel out the don't do this or that and Health & Safety issues.

Here in Normandy , France, I ended up making my Own 6kw OzInverter, and now a 10kW OzInverter, as the so called commercial boys Inverters muddy the waters, with peculiar software, and end up just very expensive toys. ( I do trust that the Midnite Inverters will be better?)

Batteries are my last hurdle, I have 1300ah C10  but would like some new proper jobs with a long life without forking out silly $ money, and where at present you seem to be at the mercy of the manufacturers vagaries.

Do let me know where you post.

Cheers!

[russ_drinkwater]

The rain stopped long enough for us to get one of the raylittes home and open it up after draining.
I used a chisel chipped small electric soldering iron to melt the poly tub and lift the lid as I went around it.
We used a block and tackle to lift the cell and tapped the tub down from the top and plates.
What a shock to see the inside of a raylitte batteries considering the cost of them.
The negative plates were in relatively excellent condition with some stratification damage to the paste in the bottom of the grids.
Negative grids were intact and solid.
The positive grids/plates (and I use this term lightly) were just a crumbling mess of crap.
tubular bars of alloyed lead within fiberous sleaves with a light poly seperator to stop contact with the negative plates on either side.
4 out of the 12 positive plates were not even attached to the buss bar and had decomposed.
Considering that the attaching "lead" tag was over 10mm thick shocked me.
After seeing this I would never buy raylitte batteries at any cost.
The negative grid plates in all fairness are fantastic and I will using them and adding plante plates to the positive side of the battery.
Whatever alloyed lead material was used in the positive plates is really inferior and rubbbish.
My thoughts on this are 1. The design and structure of the positive plates is such so as to squeeze the last amps out of the battery. 2.
The inferior lead alloy used is to reduce the life expectancy of the cells and just adds to the costs of manufacturing the battery.
If the positive plates were a solid pure lead design at the 10mm thick as they are then the batteries would with proper care last 20 years plus IMOFWIW.
Why make a battery which will last 20-30 years as this will stuff up your future sales!
All other features on the batteries are quite good and well designed.
The only other thing I could mention is the tubs are rather thin, but as they are in a further 2 cell tub this is a minor thing.
I will attempt to procure some 10 mm pure lead sheeting to save time in making the new positive plates.
These batteries are well under 10 years old.
My photo files are too large to attach, sorry I can not load them.

[Westbranch]

Russ, do you use Windows - Office Picture Manager? If so it had a compression utility built in..

[Resthome]

Yeah it sure would be nice to see some photos of this battery...

[Westbranch]

I think Russ was burning the midnight oil, It is about 14 hrs difference between us here     so probably tonight...

[russ_drinkwater]

Hi, It is 11am here atm.
I am not familiar with that program.
If I can at least send some image to someone and they cam mod them for the forum.
The disappointment I felt when I saw the construction of that battery is, lol, extreme.
I had visions of bad sulfation and maybe being able to manually remove it. But absolute destruction and collapse was
unexpected!
If anyone has an email I can send the photos to please let me know.

[zoneblue]

>The positive grids/plates (and I use this term lightly) were just a crumbling mess of crap.

This is one of the two main primary failure modes of lead acid cells. Positive grid corosion. Its actually a feature of lead acid chemistry, however it is generally thought to be more of an issue with AGM than with flooded cells, which have the room to use thicker grids, and tend to vent the oxygen away which is one of the causes of the corosion. Sounds like this bank spent a lot of time in float.