Sulfation and How to Prevent it

Sulfation and How to Prevent it

Sulfation occurs when a lead acid battery is deprived of a full charge. This is common with starter batteries in cars driven in the city with load-hungry accessories. A motor in idle or at low speed cannot charge the battery sufficiently.

Electric wheelchairs have a similar problem in that the users might not charge the battery long enough. An eight-hour charge during the night when the chair is free is not enough. Lead acid must periodically be charged 14–16 hours to attain full saturation. This may be the reason why wheelchair batteries last only two years, whereas golf car batteries deliver twice the service life. Longer leisure time allows golf car batteries to get the fully saturated charge.

Solar cells and wind turbines do not always provide sufficient charge, and lead acid banks succumb to sulfation. This happens in remote parts of the world where villagers draw generous amounts of electricity with insufficient renewable resources to charge the batteries. The result is a short battery life. Only a periodic fully saturated charge could solve the problem, but without an electrical grid at their disposal, this is almost impossible. An alternative is using lithium-ion, a battery that is forgiving to a partial charge, but this would cost about six-times as much as lead acid.

What is sulfation? During use, small sulfate crystals form, but these are normal and are not harmful. During prolonged charge deprivation, however, the amorphous lead sulfate converts to a stable crystalline that deposits on the negative plates. This leads to the development of large crystals, which reduce the battery’s active material that is responsible for high capacity and low resistance. Sulfation also lowers charge acceptance. Sulfation charging will take longer because of elevated internal resistance.

There are two types of sulfation: reversible (or soft sulfation), and permanent (or hard sulfation). If a battery is serviced early, reversible sulfation can often be corrected by applying an overcharge to a fully charged battery in the form of a regulated current of about 200mA. The battery terminal voltage is allowed to rise to between 2.50 and 2.66V/cell (15 and 16V on a 12V mono block) for about 24 hours. Increasing the battery temperature to 50–60°C (122–140°F) further helps in dissolving the crystals. Permanent sulfation sets in when the battery has been in a low state-of-charge for weeks or months. At this stage, no form of restoration is possible.

There is a fine line between reversible and non-reversible sulfation, and most batteries have a little bit of both. Good results are achievable if the sulfation is only a few weeks old; restoration becomes more difficult the longer the battery is allowed to stay in a low SoC. A sulfated battery may improve marginally when applying a de-sulfation service. A subtle indication of whether a lead acid can be recovered is visible on the voltage discharge curve. If a fully charged battery retains a stable voltage profile on discharge, chances of reactivation are better than if the voltage drops rapidly with load.

Several companies offer anti-sulfation devices that apply pulses to the battery terminals to prevent and reverse sulfation. Such technologies tend to lower sulfation on a healthy battery but they cannot effectively reverse the condition once present. Manufacturers offering these devices take the “one size fits all” approach and the method is unscientific. A random service of pulsing or blindly applying an overcharge can harm the battery in promoting grid corrosion. Technologies are being developed that measure the level of sulfation and apply a calculated overcharge to dissolve the crystals. Chargers featuring this technique only apply de-sulfation if sulfation is present and only for the time needed.