how can someone refurbish or regenerate a weak automotive battery?

Answer 1

Hello,

What do you mean about weak? :) Drained, heavily worn?

You can't do anything with the inside of your battery. Lead-acid batteries are very sensitive to fluid levels, so when the fluid levels are low, you can attempt to refill it with distilled water, afterward you should recharge it. Batteries must be always fully charged (voltage is around 12.7-12.8 Volts in quiescent state). Another important thingis that a battery must not be drained below 10.5 Volts, or the life expectancy will drastically decrease. For charging, a voltage between 13.6-14.5 Volts is the acceptable band, going lower will result an incomplete charging process, above the fluid in the cells start to generate gases.
Using a starter battery in cyclic mode (draining and recharging it often) kills the battery relatively quickly (say, after 50 cycles). When the battery is dry or lost more than 1 litres of fluid, that will be hard or impossible to recondition, because the area of the lead plates which was exposed to air (normally the plates sink fully into the fluid) will be oxidized and disabled. The area of the plate gives the path to the current which the battery can provide, reducing this area will reduce starting ability and capacity. When you slowly discharge a battery with a very small current, or just leave the battery on its own for excessive periods (weeks or months), a slow and irreversible process, the sulphatataing starts, which creates sulphatic crystals on the surface of the plates, which are insulators, preventing current flow by increasing the internal resistance of the battery. There are some small devices, which can partly reverse this process, when the reason of the sulphatation is not the ageing. They load themselves up and then with a high-voltage spike, they try to disassemble these crystals. There are charger-like devices that use AC spikes at certain frequencies to remed such problems, but the outcome of the treatment is always doubtful (because you can only restore an unknown amount of what's lost).
If you can't restore your battery with a thorough recharging with an appropiate characteristic-driven charger, then you can kiss the battery goodbye :(. You can try de-sulphatating with such a device, but if you know that it hasn't been standing for a while (but more than a month), then it's certian that the battery is old or has an irreversible defect (collapsed cell voltage balance, a weld has given away, or a bad cell). Not mentioning how much a gadget like that costs... Repairing it is unnecessary risk (lead, sulphuric acid and explosive gases) and impossible with hobby cicrumstances.

Just recharge it, then you can measure the capacity (e.g. reserve capactity method, from fully charger state load the battery with 25 Amps and measure the minutes it last till the battery volateg drops to 10.5 Volts, the number of minutes can be convertes into Ah-s, see the net) and loadibility. If the battery has lost more than 50% of the nominal capacity or voltage under cranking drops below 9.5 Volts, forget it...

I hope this helps a bit.

Regards

Answer 2

There is no way to regenerate or refurbish a battery. The plates become sulfated and electricity will not pass through them. Even adding more sulfuric acid will not help this problem. Now I say there is no way to refurbish a battery. That's wrong. Many battery places refurbish batteries and sell them to the public but it's not something that's readily available to the layman. Besides, batteries are so inexpensive why would a person want to do this anyway?

Answer 3

You cannot effectively refurbish a battery. There are people who turn them upside down and flush the plates. While that may extend the life of a shorted battery, it will not compensate for the normal consumption of the lead/antimony plates. Under normal operating conditions, a battery slowly declines over about 4 years. Some longer, some shorter, but they wear down like a shoe as you use it.

Answer 4

ensure the alt belt is tight, run it for 10 minutes to warmth the battery, verify the battery voltage for 13+ volts and about 10 to 12 amps relying on the alt score, even as operating, them have someone turn on the lights preset on extreme beam and the heater fan on the very similar time to work out how a lot it drops on the volt meter. in case you word a drop below 9 volts take it to autozone or the likes and performance them do a computing gadget managed attempt which will teach no matter if that is the battery or the alt.

Answer 5

There are lots of additives on the market that claim to help,but if your battery plates are warped and or corroded get a new one. There is no such a thing as a fix for a bad battery.

Answer 6

buy a new battery- they ususally last 4-5 years. refurbishing is not worth it for safety concerns and probably will not last long anyway. you can buy a reasonable quality battery for 40-60.00 depending on your area-- try walmart or autozone but do not buy the cheapest battery you find

Answer 7

Warning lead is poision! Buy a New one they last about four years

Answer 8

if you drop an asprin in each of the cells and top of the water with distilled water sometimes that will bring it back for a while.

Answer 9

Get it charged.