Battery refreshers can take care of your car’s starter battery, ensuring your car battery to last a long time and for more reliable performance. This guide will tell you how a Battery refresher works and what you should look out for when using it.
How does a lead-acid battery work and how can you regenerate it?
How does damage to lead-acid batteries occur?
It is very important to understand how lead-acid batteries work. Because inside there are plates of lead and lead oxide, surrounded by a mixture of sulfuric acid and water. Lead-acid batteries are one of the most important energy stores for industrial use, but also essential in private households. For example, the starter batteries in vehicles are traditionally lead-acid batteries. You can find out more about lead-acid batteries and the different designs in this guide.
Traces of use on lead batteries
Even if lead-acid batteries are characterized by a long service life and reliability, they are parts of other energy storage devices. Everytime the battery discharges, lead sulphate is formed inside.
If the battery is regularly fully recharged, the lead sulphate will also dissolve again. However, if this does not happen, it will solidify and form large crystals on the plates inside the battery. This sulphation is the reason why these batteries can no longer be charged properly and lose their functionality.
How can a tired lead-acid battery be revived?
The device is mounted on the lead-acid battery and connected to its pole. There it emits steady, high-frequency current pulses that help to dissolve the crystalline lead sulphate on the plates.The result is a regression of the crystals to their original amorphous, spongy structure and a battery plate that is almost indistinguishable from a new one. This means a significant improvement in the current absorption capacity by charging. Metrics such as charging voltage, acid density and cold cranking current increase significantly. So you do not have to dispose of the old battery and can save yourself a new purchase.
It is also important to know that refreshers can be used with all types of lead-acid batteries: conventional lead-acid batteries, lead-gel batteries and lead-fleece batteries.
How do you use a battery refresher?
It is better to take good care of the battery so that the weaknesses such as sulphation, do not occur in the first place. A battery refresher can help to keep the lead-acid battery in perfect condition and prevent signs of wear. This allows you to increase the service life and even increase the performance of the battery.
If a battery refresher is used regularly, there are clearly positive developments: for example, the charging heat is lower. At the same time, this leads to faster current consumption and a shorter charging time. The charging voltage and the acid density also increase. The battery also shows improved starting behavior.
With a battery refresher you make a contribution to the environment. Starter batteries in cars need to be replaced about every five years. Each replaced battery means about two to three kilograms of toxic waste that has to be disposed of. With the help of the battery refresher, you can keep your battery strong and efficient for significantly longer while conserving our resources.
Installation in the vehicle – you need to know that
Installation of a single refresher
If you want to mount a battery refresher on a single lead-acid battery, proceed as follows: Find a spot between the two battery poles and clean it. Then connect the red cable of the pulser to the positive pole and the black cable to the negative pole of the battery.
Installation in series connection of several batteries
Trucks or larger vehicles may have multiple batteries connected in series. Here you have to make a preliminary consideration. If you have two batteries of 12 volts and 65 Ah each, the total voltage increases to 24 volts, while the total nominal charge remains at 65 Ah.
The option is to connect each of the batteries individually with a 12 volt battery refresher.
Attention: Be careful not to lengthen the pulse generator cables, as the length is precisely set and changing it will affect the operation.
Installation in parallel connection of several batteries
The parallel connection has the opposite effect than a series connection: In this case, the total voltage remains the same for two 12-volt batteries with 65 Ah. Instead, the total nominal charge increases to 130 Ah. For this you need a 12 V pulse generator.
The exception is if the total nominal charge exceeds 1100Ah for 12-volt batteries (or 1200Ah for 24-volt batteries), it is no longer possible to use only one pulse generator. Instead of this you can use individual pulse generators per battery.
Conclusion
Battery refresher such as the Megapulse from Novitec make starter batteries work again. However, it is better to use the pulser regularly to prevent signs of wear. In this way, you can significantly extend the service life of your car battery and benefit from a powerful and reliable battery.
Header image: Adobe Stock, images: megapulser.de/Alexander Hauck
