Help With Batteries

Batteries are designed to help you. They store energy for your use; they allow you to start and work machines, they help you get where you’re going. Yet batteries need help to continue to function properly.

What is a battery?

A battery is a device that stores and releases electricity through chemical changes of the materials inside of it.

How do you use a battery to produce an electric current?

Basically there are two plates, one plus and one minus, with a chemical solution between them. When you charge the battery, you put electrons into the battery through the negative terminal and take them out through the positive terminal. That causes a chemical reaction which stores the electricity.

When you use or discharge the battery, you draw the electrons from the battery through the negative terminal and put them into the battery through the positive terminal. That causes a chemical reaction which frees up the electrons that were stored earlier.

The positive pole has a shortage of electrons; the negative pole has a surplus of electrons. The electrons flow from negative to positive. That is what produces the current.

What makes a battery slow down, become weak and die?

The chemical reaction which stores electricity in the battery involves creating lead sulfate from lead or lead oxide, and sulfuric acid. Conversely, storage of the electricity (when the battery is charged) converts lead sulfate to lead oxide or lead. These reactions are reversible.

There is one tragic flaw!

Lead can combine with sulfate in two different ways. The first, discussed above, is beneficial.

The second way forms a crystal which does not conduct electricity and cannot be converted back to lead or lead oxide. It forms a layer on the plates which blocks the beneficial reaction from taking place. As more area is covered with this lead sulfate crystal, the battery loses power.

How does usual battery maintenance help batteries?

Usual battery maintenance consists of:

Keeping the battery clean. This removes electrical shorts on top of the battery.

Putting water in the battery to replace water that evaporates during charging and discharging.

Charging the battery after every use.

This prevents to some extent the second kind of sulfate from forming.

Even if the above is done, what does usual battery maintenance fail to do?

It fails to dissolve or prevent lead sulfate crystals.

They actually build up while the battery sits on the store shelf.

In fact, few have ever experienced a completely "new" battery. No amount of charging and no voltage, no matter how high, will remove the second type of lead sulfate.

What can be done to help this problem?

Use Battery Life Saver, an electronic device that employs a square wave (a powerful, variable wave) to excite the crystals and cause them to dissolve.

With Battery Life Saver, your battery will not slow down or die because of lead sulfate.

Chuck Van Breemen invented it with the user in mind.

Just attach Battery Life Saver to the battery or battery bank.

It will prevent lead sulfate from forming. It can also be used to renew dead, sulfate ridden batteries. Save the cost of buying new batteries!