Watering of lead acid batteries?

[fastline]

I have a couple expensive start batteries for a piece of industrial equipment. They are 8D batteries. They do not indicate "maintenance free" but do not have vents and have flush slotted plugs for the cells. I am curious about watering these cells? If these batteries are considered SLA, I might have concerns of causing damage if watering but I realize if fluid is not covering the entire cell surface, that is an issue as well.

Thoughts?

 

[gophert]

I think you should read the top and front plate of the battery. A seal lead acid battery should say sealed lead acid battery. Move additional, like "spill proof". If it doesn't say, I would assume maintenance is required (DI water).

 

[Ylli]

Can you still get batteries that are not "Low Maintenance" and do not use Pb-Ca plates? The gassing potential of a Pb-Ca plated battery is much higher than that of the older Pb-Sb plates. Unless you aggressively overcharge a low maintenance battery, the water usage should be minimal.

 

[dr pepper]

Yes you can still get fillable lead acids, Fork lifts & mobile plant use them.
De ionised water is all you need to top up.

 

[nsaspook]

Yes, I use flooded cells (golf-cart batteries) for my solar energy bank. You can blast charge them to gassing without ill-effects. Just top off with ultra-pure water when done.

 

[fastline]

My personal take is Lead acid is about to take serious nose dive in both cost and use. Totally off subject (that I started), but I am hating lead acid more and more each day. Soooooo tempermental with charge amps, discharge amps, capacity vs discharge amps, etc ,etc, etc. You can do SO much with LiFePO4. Temperature is at issue right now but I suspect batteries may be offered with serious insulation and small internal heaters. They are just so many times better and price is dropping every day.

 

[crutschow]

My personal take is Lead acid is about to take serious nose dive in both cost and use.

Perhaps.
Still, I suspect it will be a long time before the lead-acid battery is replaced in it's century-old role of starting the IC engine, as it has a hard-to-beat combination of low cost, readily generating the high current required by the starter even at sub-zero temperatures, while being relatively easy to charge with a constant-voltage from a generator.
And it doesn't blow up or cause a fire if it's overcharged.

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

Perhaps.
Still, I suspect it will be a long time before the lead-acid battery is replaced in it's century-old role of starting the IC engine, as it has a hard-to-beat combination of low cost, readily generating the high current required by the starter even at sub-zero temperatures, while being relatively easy to charge with a constant-voltage from a generator.
And it doesn't blow up or cause a fire if it's overcharged.

Yes, efficient, cheap, and powerful - plus it's easily recycled.

What WILL result in it's demise is the end of IC engines, and the advent of electric vehicles - hopefully with a vast improvement in battery technology.

 

[dr pepper]

I was using a new cherry picker a couple of weeks back, it has lead acids, pretty sure fork trucks still use them too.

Electric vehicles I have nothing against, but how will we charge them with the national grid already near its max?

 

[nsaspook]

I was using a new cherry picker a couple of weeks back, it has lead acids, pretty sure fork trucks still use them too.

Electric vehicles I have nothing against, but how will we charge them with the national grid already near its max?

The big advantage of the ICE power grid (gas/diesel production and stations) is the redundancy, dense energy transport ability and local storage of energy usable in a emergency that will take at least a generation and a trillion dollars to replicate on the national grid electrical scale. To bridge this gap we will need a lot of local electrical energy storage depots mainly in the form of battery banks. I suspect that advanced lead-acid will be in a large fraction of these local stationary 'energy' stations.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352152X17304437