Rejuvinator Lead Acid (Gel -Cell?) on Kick starter.

[SemiMan]

But you did not address my one original post:

"Show me just ONE fully independent review" .. performed by someone who truly knows batteries and has the ability to properly test the results. That is all I ask .... just one.

For all these devices, there are no independent lab verified results.

I do believe with proper charging one can certainly extend the life, but recover a long dead battery or one abused by frequent sulphating ... nope.

Feel free to prove me wrong and get independent lab results for your battery. Any number of universities would take it up for free just out of interest.

 

[SemiMan]

Hmm, I'm not seeing my replies to your post appear. I hope this one shows. Second time I've tried answer now so I've got to be brief. 1. There's safety warnings all over the device and throughout the manual (download if you like from the website - I'm not hiding anything). 2. I was originally quite concerned about certs - as you noted in my KS campaign. But think about that then ask yourself how in the world a Chain saw could ever be sold in the USA? Answer: It's a tool. So is the ReVolt, a tool for battery repair. It's not an appliance meant for the housewife or children to casually operate daily. It takes knowledge and understanding to apply - for which I went through nearly 800 Lead batteries to obtain to create best practices for the ReVolt. So, like when using a screwdriver to repair something, your success and outcome can not always be determined. But does that mean you'd prefer to do the job without the screwdriver? 3. Like you I'm hoping some unsolicited independent reviews appear. They are so hard to get. Particularly if people are simply satisfied but not overjoyed. My first customer had an aircraft repair business and got one to use on $400 private plane batteries. I gave him 6 months to return it for a full refund and for any or no reason. He never contacted me. So, I contacted him after some difficulty. No problems, he's happy, wants to keep it, but is not interested in talking to people about it, he's busy. That's the way it usually goes. I had similar problems with Eternalight as well. People liked it but reviews were very far and few between. People love to complain but don't say much if they're satisfied.

The fact it is a tool does not absolve you of safety testing, it just changes the tests that are required. While you may be able to get away with >Class-2 voltages going to the battery, simple thing like proper isolation of the case, leakage current, etc. are still expected. Take a look at a table saw, mitre saw, etc. and you will see a safety certification on it. I have lots of lab power supplies that can generate "lethal" voltages ... all certified.

 

[MrEternaLight]

The fact it is a tool does not absolve you of safety testing, it just changes the tests that are required. While you may be able to get away with >Class-2 voltages going to the battery, simple thing like proper isolation of the case, leakage current, etc. are still expected. Take a look at a table saw, mitre saw, etc. and you will see a safety certification on it. I have lots of lab power supplies that can generate "lethal" voltages ... all certified.

I recognize the legal strategy of what you're saying, I did so when I created the Kickstarter campaign. But if you're trying to appeal to my sense of civic duty to apply a $17,000 label to a product with less than 200 units produced and still in an experimental stage as a means to save people's lives, I think you're overestimating the effectiveness of your suggestion. Have you verified your suspicions and assumptions about the design?

A knife is a tool, I tried finding a CSA mark or UL's precious authorized stickers on them - didn't see anything. Am I to assume then that if stickers were there then knives would be safer and people could be less hurt by them? I'm sorry sir, your point about my legal risk I'm not disputing, but I would challenge your safety concerns based on your suppositions as they seem to be mostly bureaucratic at this stage. The bulk of the danger with these things lies in the battery, not the ReVolt unit. But despite all this, did I fail to leave warnings out or off the unit somewhere? Please be more specific.

 

[SemiMan]

A knife does not plug into the wall. The issue is not "expected" danger but unexpected danger and warnings don't absolve you of that.

UL/CSA/TUV-SUD can all provide field inspection services for well under 17000 and would be most appropriate for a short mfg run as you are doing.

Neither here nor there .... What about the independent review and test?

 

[MrEternaLight]

A knife does not plug into the wall. The issue is not "expected" danger but unexpected danger and warnings don't absolve you of that.

UL/CSA/TUV-SUD can all provide field inspection services for well under 17000 and would be most appropriate for a short mfg run as you are doing.

Neither here nor there .... What about the independent review and test?

I've seen knives plugged into walls, I've seen "knife switches" literally made out of knives. Unexpected use or mishap causes unexpected dangers. Documenting and testing every situations produces more documentation than people are willing to read. The top and most likely dangers are documented well in the manual. Can we not have trampolines in our backyards anymore? When is it safe to take the training wheels off a bicycle? This mentality that all of life's risks should be labeled and quantified is what's standing in the way of enjoying life, and frankly, slowing innovation and advancement. There is an optimal spot between between safety and liberty. We've swung way past that and for most things in the USA right now, safety is smothering liberty. And BTW, I've seen stickers on others devices "UL listed", etc, that I wouldn't have approved myself. OK, off my soapbox now. I've already acknowledged the legal risk for myself. I will look into the rates of the field inspection services, thanks for the tip.

As for an independent review, I'm searching for that, but possibly you are thinking something different than I am, what do you suggest here?

 

[SemiMan]

Look up John Fetter on Battery University. Knowledgeable and a skeptic. Convince him and you have my vote.

He will tell you, likely accurately that pulsing does nothing for sulfation buy removes a surface film that develops on certain types of lead acid batteries. Worst case he may save you some unhappy returns and let you figure out why some appear to be recovered and some are not.

Semiman

 

[MrEternaLight]

I will thanks for the tip. I will check him out. BTW, desulfation is not the only thing the ReVolt does when revitalizing a battery.

 

[Phaserburn]

Tom, just wanted to say hi. I have an Eternalite Elitemax that you modded to have sockets for easy led swaps as technology improved. Well, it still works like a champ, and I have super smooth, floody warm LEDs in it now. It's been hanging on my fridge beeping blue light for many years.

Do you still sell Eternalights? Anything new you've tinkered in this area? It's one of my prized early CPF lights.

 

[Illum]

desulfation does work.... but it takes a LONG time.

I'm bringing back to life a pair of 35AH batteries that died in storage and I'm gaining a little capacity back (least by what my load tester seems to indicate), but its been sitting on the Batteryminder desulfator for over five years! From an investment perspective the utility cost alone over the time span would have bought me several new ones.

Not entirely sure whats going on inside it, but if desulfation is a busted myth then something else must be going on in those batteries... being floated at 13.6V Its been a long science experiment, while results seem positive, it leaves me skeptical.

 

[SemiMan]

There are quick results that can be seen on the plates of certain chemistries and it happens quickly, but it is not sulfation that is being removed. There have been no proven studies, independent reviews, etc. that show any sort of reliably with truly sulphated batteries.

 

[MrEternaLight]

Tom, just wanted to say hi. I have an Eternalite Elitemax that you modded to have sockets for easy led swaps as technology improved. Well, it still works like a champ, and I have super smooth, floody warm LEDs in it now. It's been hanging on my fridge beeping blue light for many years.

Do you still sell Eternalights? Anything new you've tinkered in this area? It's one of my prized early CPF lights.

Hi PhaserBurn - nice to hear from you again. We sold the company back in 2007 to some farmers in Iowa. I'm pretty sure they're still making the lights and selling them - contact [email protected]. The website (techass.com) is still up and you can still place orders. I signed an non-compete when I sold it (which has mostly expired). There were numerous things that were partially developed which they haven't done anything with. Out of respect for the buyer, I will not disclose those as a few I think are still viable. But if you contact them and get permission to speak to me about those I'll be happy to discuss them. I probably would get into some more of those designs again if I weren't so busy with other stuff - like the ReVolt. Take care!

 

[MrEternaLight]

Ooops, sorry didn't see second page - thought my reply got lost! LOL

 

[Phaserburn]

Really good to hear from you, Tom. Mostly expired? Sounds like you might be able to come back to us if some time allows. Hope so. The farmers don't seem to have done much in the way of furthering the company.

 

[MrEternalight2]

It's been awhile, you still around Semi Man? Since we last discussed this, a few things have happened to help substantiate the ReVolt3000.

1. A retail store was opened in August of 2016 that buys dead batteries from the public and uses the ReVolt 3000s to make them usable again. It then sells those batteries along with an unconditional, full money-back guarantee. It has been in business successfully now and grown well for a small test-tube operation. See www.RevoltBatteryExchange.com See 4.7 star google rating. If the batteries didn't come back reliably, it would have been out of business in a heart beat. But in fact, most of its first 2.5 years were spent woefully behind the production curve because of lack of Revolt3000s after the first production run. I sent an email to all the Kickstarter purchasers asking if anyone wanted to sell their units back for what they paid to me. I only got two responses, 1 gentleman who said he had never used it and would be happy to sell it back, and another he teased me by saying I can have it back when I pry his cold hands from it.

2. The store has processed over 10,000 batteries now. The average success recovery rate over the whole 3 year period has been 65%. However, the units were substantially advanced since then and if you look at the success rate for the last 6 months it's been around 70%. It was about 55% when started with the original ReVolt3000. Each of those 10,000 batteries had tracking travelers created that showed the treatment, successes and failures for each battery through the whole process and were hand written. Those records are still available for inspection today.

3. The latest units have finally been released to the public as of last month.

Well, if you're still around, if this thread is still viewable and if you have any further questions, I'd be happy to address them. Best to you in life and liberty - Tom.

 

[IonicBond]

Bzzt - the problem is that when sulfation, the natural process of discharge, turns into HARD sulfation, which expands in the process.

This expansion physically damages the battery (warps plates, shorts plates, breaks grids), so even IF your desulfation device did remove it, it cannot repair the physical damage. This is usually accompanied by long periods of neglect, where the internal resistance also rises rapidly. This cannot be repaired.

In addition, batteries left to hard sulfate with low levels of discharge also means that the electrolyte has turned mostly from acid to water. Lead sitting in water leads to dendrite growth from the impure materials that most recycled-lead batteries have, which can also create "micro shorts". These dendritic micro-shorts can either be zapped, or dissolved by normal recharge. The problem is that these dendrites when zapped or removed by recharging release back into the electrolyte, contaminating it, and not back to the plates. It also leaves a permanent marker for them to grow back right in the spot they came from. This you can not repair either. Pure-lead types (cyclon, Optima, Hawker, Odyssey and so forth) don't suffer from this so much.

Thus any battery "brought back" is merely a zombie of poor performance that can never even get close to what the original performance specs are. Many consumers can be fooled by these zombies, since they never expect anything close to what the original performance was. Turning the vehicle over a few more times, or placing them under very light loads to them means "revived". Hardly.

The real solution of course is to cut your losses trying to revive TRASH, and charge and maintain properly in the first place.

 

[IonicBond]

I will believe it when I see just one fully independent review and test performed by someone who knows something about batteries not by the usual glowing comments from Joe six pack.

Replying from 2014? ONLY because we are battery geeks are we not?

As far as desulfators go, the *original* one still in existence, Pulsetech, had this test done and published the report. Back in 1998-2000 when the study was done. By a VERY prominent physicist - which today is one of the leaders of cancer research -and not some marketing stooge. I read the paper. Very heavy, but understandable. Cool 1995 graphics from the IBM pc's of the day!

Essentially - instead of high voltage to attack hard sulfates directly, a pulse frequency was applied that did not go over-voltage. It had / has a few "frequency" type competitors with their own wonder waveforms.

The trick with the frequency pulse that I was skeptical of, ironically made more sense once I got involved with lithium and it's associated electrolyte interphase. Does the SEI layer sound familiar?

But how do you explain this to average Joe without it sounding like something totally made up? Especially back in '98 ?

So the basic problem is that the hardened sulfate has an EI layer that charging current simply can't get to. If you mess with the EI layer, current CAN get through, and start not to dissolve, but convert the hardened sulfate back to lead.

For the average non propeller-head consumer, look for the keywords like "stirring". This "stirring" of the EI layer is the trick. One can still see it in their faqs:

https://www.pulsetech.net/our-technology/test-data.html

I can't find the original paper on the site any more - but I did have it and found it more valuable to re-read with lithium ion knowledge to back me up about the SEI.

Not to be outdone, this is also the way the BatteryMinder chargers work. But they use a different waveform than Pulsetech. I've used both company's chargers as *maintenance* chargers, and not bulk chargers and found them both to be extremely reliable. BM especially so for aircraft batteries, which yes, need special algos to charge properly.

There are other magic frequency boxes out there, but I have not tested their effectiveness. I also use the passive pulsetech devices - since "stirring" the electrolyte-interphase is just as important upon discharge - but not many know that.

The thing about Pulsetech is that they go out of their way to educate the buyer that not all batteries can be revived due to physical damage caused by hard sulfation and neglect in the first place.

Following the patent trail is even more interesting - you can quickly find out who the real players are (like pulsetech and battery minder) and who are just throwing data at the wall and crossing their fingers...

Thing is, even if one doesn't believe in the tech, the actual charging algos of Pulsetech is especially useful for agm. At least in my testing over the decades.