EC Sealed Battery Policy

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Tue 2 Dec 2008 19:42
EC Sealed Battery Policy - Hamsafar
The EU Directive - The Batteries and Accumulators Directive 2006/66/EC
and
The UK Statutory Instrument - 2008 No. 2164 ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION The Batteries and Accumulators (Placing on the Market) Regulations 2008

both mention Automotive batteries which are unsealed and on-sale and not in a way which prohibits them and as the latter Statutory Instrument only came into force two months ago, it sounds unlikely they are banned to me but I agree they seemed to have disappeared from the shops..

www.eef.org.uk/NR/rdonlyres/796445FF-72A7-4C49-AE4...f

www.eef.org.uk/NR/rdonlyres/796445FF-72A7-4C49-AE4...f

www.eef.org.uk/NR/rdonlyres/796445FF-72A7-4C49-AE4...f

Edited by Hamsafar on 02/12/2008 at 19:43

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Tue 2 Dec 2008 20:27
EC Sealed Battery Policy - martint123
Googling would appear to indicate that dropping a paracetamol into the battery would be much cheaper and just as (in)effective.

I smell snake oil.

Edited by martint123 on 02/12/2008 at 20:28

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Tue 2 Dec 2008 20:34
EC Sealed Battery Policy - nick
Not snake oil at all. It's EDTA and dissolves the deposits that accumulate on and between the plates. It's been used for years by those in the know. If you know anyone who works in a chemistry lab they'll have it, it costs pennies.

Edited by nick on 02/12/2008 at 20:35

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Tue 2 Dec 2008 21:00
EC Sealed Battery Policy - Hamsafar
The tablets did work, they were called BAT-AID. We used a scrap lorry battery as a leisure battery when I was a child and BAT-AID brought it very much back to life for a few years.
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Wed 3 Dec 2008 10:50
EC Sealed Battery Policy - oldgit
Not snake oil at all. It's EDTA and dissolves the deposits that accumulate on and
between the plates. It's been used for years by those in the know. If you
know anyone who works in a chemistry lab they'll have it it costs pennies.


Are you suggesting that there is EDTA in Paracetamol? I'm am/was a chemist and so your reply would be most interesting if you are suggesting this.
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Wed 3 Dec 2008 10:54
EC Sealed Battery Policy - nick
No, in Bat-Aid tablets.
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Mon 2 Mar 2015 16:46
EC Sealed Battery Policy - happyman29

Hi there,

I used ot use Bat Aid on my cars years ago, not always sucessfully!!

I have just bought a Accumate/Optimate Battery Charger/optimiser(£40 Ebay) as recommended by my mechanic. (who swears by them)

It checks the condition of the battery and charges/desulphates it too. So far I have used it on my motorbike (gel battery), and the bike appears to be running better...or is it me?

You can also use the supplied terminals so that you have a Waterproof connector to the battery,(when you want to charge the battery) so no more croc clips to mess around with

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Tue 2 Dec 2008 21:00
EC Sealed Battery Policy - Mr X
I have emailed a man who will know. He runs one of the largest automotive battery business's in the North West. Might be Weds before he replies though.
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Tue 2 Dec 2008 21:31
EC Sealed Battery Policy - Dynamic Dave
Put some Bat Aid tablets in an old motorbike battery once to try and wake it from the dead. Didn't work. I'm of the same opinion that it's snake oil.
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Tue 2 Dec 2008 22:08
EC Sealed Battery Policy - Screwloose

They actually do exactly what they say on the tube - I use them myself on the 12-year-old 656s on the tow truck - but they will save very few normal-use batteries.

Most batteries [95%?] die from dead cells - which a de-sulphation treatment won't help. Batteries that get little use, or are left flat, are the ones most likely to sulphate - leisure batteries being the best example.

It's nothing to do with dissolving plate debris in the casing; it's cleaning the plates which is BAT-AID's forte. They're also getting too expensive to be economic now.
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Tue 2 Dec 2008 23:23
EC Sealed Battery Policy - sunbeamer
It's probably not a bad thing that batteries are fully sealed. In my experience once a battery gets to the point when it needs a regular top up of water it indicates excessive gassing caused by a dead cell. All lead acid batteries give off a certain amount of water due to the chemical process, and in a modern sealed battery this is returned back to the cells. I endorse Screwloose' comments about the pills, they are a plate cleaner and only effective on a heavily sulphated battery i.e. one little used.
The old style batteries with the screw type caps tended to accumulate acid deposits on the outside of the battery and if not regularly cleaned off could corrode both the terminals and the battery holder tray.
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Wed 3 Dec 2008 07:31
EC Sealed Battery Policy - L'escargot
I'd completely forgotten that older batteries had screwed plugs to facilitate topping up, and that the terminals and the surrounding metalwork had a tendency to corrode. By comparison, car maintenace is a doddle these days.
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Wed 3 Dec 2008 08:44
EC Sealed Battery Policy - nick
>>They're also getting too expensive to be economic now.

Only if your're daft enough to buy them. They contain EDTA, a cheap chemical readily available in any lab.

It'll not revive a completely knackered battery but if you have a car you don't use much they can be helpful. But not the secret of everlasting life for batteries. I wouldn't bother with it, I keep little-used batteries permanently connected to a cheap battery conditioner (a few pounds from Lidl) which seems to work.
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Wed 3 Dec 2008 10:33
EC Sealed Battery Policy - Carse
There are intelligent battery chargers now that do this task, they cycle the charge in a manner that de-sulphates the plates and therefore solves the issue of sealed units

Carse
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Wed 3 Dec 2008 12:55
EC Sealed Battery Policy - Glaikit Wee Scunner {P}
I was given some EDTA powder many years ago and it did revive older bike batteries for a while. Mind you ,with electric start only on my BMW, I'd be happier with a new battery.
'Sealed' lead acid batteries are not actually sealed- you just can not top them up.Tests in our lab over many years disproved many manufacturers claims. I was usually required to do overcharging tests at 10% of the rated Ah (eg 1A for a 10Ah battery) and the sealed batteries electrolyte soon dissapeared.
Maybe they would not vent at much lower charging currents but that is not the same as sealed.
Must check my Hyundai's battery design out.
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Wed 3 Dec 2008 13:03
EC Sealed Battery Policy - FotheringtonThomas
There are lots of inaccuracies, see below:

For many years I purchased little pills called Bat Aid which dissolved the
sludge which accumulates in the bottom of battery cells.


The "sludge" is caused by material falling out of the battery's plates (caused by over-charging in some form, or (very often) by vibration). Bat Aid does not "dissolve" this. You can wash the stuff out, but it is difficult, and very unlpeasant.

This sludge shorts out the plates in the battery and reduces its ability to deliver
current and when sufficient sludge has accumulated the battery is effectively dead.


Yup.

These little pills appear to work by dissolving the sludge and thereby
reviving the battery.


Bat Aid is aupposed to remove sulphate (which increases the internal resistance of the battery and decreases storage/discharge capacity) from the plates themselves.

Now the EU has decreed that battery cells must be
sealed because there is very dilute acid in the cells.


It's not "very dilute", it's about 6M. I'd substitute "quite strong" in its effects. I wouldn't want it on me for any length of time, and it eats holes in clothes if it gets on them.

Never mind the
fact that battery cells have been accessible for topping up for 100 years
and nobody has ever died as a result nanny Brussels has decreed that we
must be protected from this non-existent threat.


I don't know whether anyone's died as a result of fiddling about with lead acid accumulators, but I'd bet lots of money that there have been severe injuries.

It is therefore not now possible to put the pills in the cells and so
the
battery cannot be revived and it goes as scrap a year earlier than is
necessary.


Unfortunately, Bat Aid is not 100% effective - although there certainly is an effect[1], whether it's worth the money (compared to putting the cost of the treatment towards a new battery) I doubt. If Bat Aid *was* 100% effective, people would hardly ever need new batteries!

So to summarise this piece of Brussels incompetence which we are all stuck
with: We are now protected from a non-existent threat but there will be
30% more batteries being dumped and the cost of motoring and transport
generally will go up.


I can't quarrel with the words "Brussels incompetence", and what is suggested does seem daft. However, 30% more batteries being "dumped"? They're recycled, for a start, and in any case "revitalising" is not a very good fix - a new battery is the best thing.


[1] I used it & it "revitalised" a battery pretty well for nearly a month.
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Wed 3 Dec 2008 23:05
EC Sealed Battery Policy - spikeyhead {p}
I believe that Porsche still sells unsealed batteries.

The acid is extra, I kid you not.
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Thu 4 Dec 2008 08:16
EC Sealed Battery Policy - nick
No doubt special Porsche-branded acid.
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Thu 4 Dec 2008 10:56
EC Sealed Battery Policy - martint123
The acid is extra, I kid you not.

The last time I bought a bike battery it was "dry" and had to be filled up before use. Not the easiest task in modern times.
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Thu 4 Dec 2008 14:33
EC Sealed Battery Policy - Hamsafar
As a poor 17 year old I had a battery that was becoming weak and as an experiment I tipped the acid out onto a pile of limestone (sorry) washed it out with a hose pipe (all grey sludge came out) and then rinsed with distilled water, took to a battery shop and they refilled it for 60p. It lasted fine for 3 years and went instantaneously completely dead while driving along as something metal inside snapped.
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Fri 5 Dec 2008 08:18
EC Sealed Battery Policy - Cliff Pope
That used to be standard practice long ago when batteries were dismantlable.
You dug out the soft bitumin from around the top of the casing, unbolted or unsoldered the connections between the individual cells, and lifted out each set of plates.
These could be cleaned, any buckling straightened out, the plates and casing flushed clean, then all reassembled and resealed with hot bitumin.
Finally refilled with new acid diluted to the same strength as the old.

A few years ago I talked to an enthusiast with an old milk float who was doing exactly that to recondition the big bank of batteries. Where a plate was damaged beyond repair he took a better one from a scrap battery.

Traditional rubber-cased batteries are still made for real vintage enthusiasts.
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Fri 5 Dec 2008 08:23
EC Sealed Battery Policy - jc2
I can remember firms that did this;also a firm that made batteries up from slot-together 2v. cells.
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