Everyone knows that baking soda is a necessity when operating a battery powered inverter..right?for when you get an acid spill.
I had a couple of old batteries that were sulphated in one cell,so I figured I would try an experiment. I drained all the electrolyte out of the battery.then I took a gallon hot tap water and mixed in baking soda. I first poured the mixture in the dead cell and of course it started bubbling like I expected.I then poured the remaining mixture in the remaining cells,they did not bubble as much as the dead cell...hmm,however they did bubble.after about a half hour I emptied the battery out then rinsed it out while it was upside down,all the sediment came out and any other crud that was in there.
I then let it drain upside down for a while to let the plates get all the water out.then I took new electrolyte and put it first in the dead cell lots of bubbling ,the filled the other cells,hardly any bubbling
when I started all this the battery was at 10 volts and a load test would pull it down to zero at a flick of the switch. after charging for 2 hours 40amps 14 volts the load test revealed a 12.8 charge the load test went down to 10 volts after 10 seconds twice.So I charged it some more 30 minutes on the 200 amp setting then an hour on the 40 amp setting. After letting it set for an hour the load test then showed a battery at 13 volts and loaded for 10 seconds four times each gave me a 12 volt reading each time.
my thinking on this was since the cell had sulphation crystals on the plates ...the baking soda would neutralize the sulphation thereby removing the short in the cell
Im doing a 2 amp charge for 6 hours right now...when i check after sitting all day I will give you the load test and specific gravity readings

Good luck with that. Those crystals needed to be sent back into the electrolyte to maintain the correct specific gravity. I'm guessing you just added clean water to the cells and not acid. Best now to get your $1 from the junkyard for the lead.

Is that a tracking array? Nice baby tracker if it is.

i won't address the subject matter here more than i had on another forum. http://www.wind-sun.com/ForumVB/showthread.php?t=4697

i do wish to address your signature wizbandit and please forgive me as i can't resist this. the sun does keep getting lost here every evening so can your tracker help me find it before dawn?

new electrolyte, so the crystals were actually disposed . If you read my post again I stated that the battery was rinsed out to get the sediment out
I checked it this morning and the load test read 12.5 I will give the SG readings later. Its been off charge for 24 hours

well...after sitting all day again no charge the SG readings are all 1275 and the cell that was dead is at 1250
the load test was done repeatedly every minute for 5 minutes @ 10 seconds the battery reads 12.50 while the load switch is depressed
I've already started tryin this on another battery,this one has 2 dead cells...
I will post more results this weekend

i'm not so sure you know what is involved in a real load test. this is not for 5 minutes i can reassure you of that. put a load on it rated at say 10% of the battery's ah rating and see how long it takes at this rate of discharge to reach 10.5v.

Where did you get the new electrolyte from? I haven't checked but I assume you can't just buy sulfuric acid on any store shelf

why not? i did. i got, i believe, 5 gallons at my local auto parts store. no, i didn't need that much, but that's what they made me buy even if i only wanted a pint. i think it was in the $15-$20 range about 4-5 years ago.

Wow, I didn't expect that being that it is such a dangerous substance. What if someone were to buy it for malicous purposes. That just doesn't seem safe to me. Why would anyone wont to buy electrolyte anyway unless you were a Chemist. Unless people try to repair bad batteries all the time? I mean what else would you use sulfuric acid for aside from batteries, highly corrosive metal cleaners & just flat out melting sh*t? I would have thought that you would need an industrial license to obtain it in anything other than a battery. Just to be clear so there is no confusion, we are talking about ACID right, not just Distilled Water which would harmless untill you add sulfur-dioxide.

hmm, i bet you, or your other half if applicable, buy bleach and that's dangerous. even some fertilizers can be dangerous. everything harmful to people are not all regulated or ruled upon as even they can't extend that much control on everything to prevent a mishandling of it be it deliberate or not. for most you can expect a small warning label on the product or mentions in instructions if provided, but it is expected that the consumer reads it and acts responsibly with it. ever read a warning label on a throwaway butane lighter? "keep away from fire or flame." to me there's a certain amount of common sense associated with some things, but for those that aren't as bright or are brilliant and just absent minded, these warnings are the best we can expect for some things.
i'm not sure if some of those nonstick cooking sprays have a warning on them yet or not, but don't breath the spray as it could kill you. common sense would ask who would do that as it belongs on the pots and pans? people do it though and i see no pulling of the product availability to the general consumer because of its hazard potentiality. we can't be fully protected from ourselves as they make reasonable expectations of us to do the right things with it. i can't tell you how many times i've seen an idiot smoking at a gasoline pump.
for acid i would imagine proper storage, proper handling(safety), and proper environmental precautions would come to mind. warning labels and even instructions may remind us or point out aspects we did not think of, but the responsibility is predominantly ours.