Have you ever experienced that weird happening one faithful morning when your car just won’t start? Initially, we might think that the battery is just dead. But then again, you just bought that battery a month ago. It couldn’t have been dead that soon. So what really happened? Well, you have just been a victim of a known phenomenon called battery sulfation.
Inside a battery, voltage and capacitance is generated between metallic plates and a liquid solution where the plates are suspended. In most common lead acid batteries, the lead reacts with the sulfuric acid found in the electrolyte solution and forms lead sulfate. This reaction is called sulfation.
If your battery has remained unused or was kept in storage for a long time, there are very large chances that sulfation will occur. It’s very easy to detect if our battery is showing signs of this.
Whenever you use the battery, it reaches a certain voltage and then suddenly dies. If you try to find out what’s wrong, you will find it wasn’t generating enough current and it has virtually no capacity. So how does this happen?
The product of the chemical reaction between the lead in the plates and the sulfuric acid, lead sulfate, actually has enveloped the plates in a crusty precipitate. This greatly reduces the plate’s area in contact with the electrolyte solution subsequently lowering capacitance and voltage. In short, the plates become rusted with a different kind of rust, and this rust is getting in the way for your battery to function properly.
Luckily, there are devices in the market that can reverse this chemical reaction. It “shakes” away the lead sulfate compound off of the plates and you’l find your batteries performing like before. You should ask your local mechanic about battery desulfators and don’t suffer anymore from dead batteries.
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Tags: sulphation, automechanics, car, desulfation
