Replace Hybrid Battery -- Where to buy dead battery to repair?

I do always appreciate warnings. Thank you.

I'm aware that they can overheat and burn. The Turnigy Reactor does have both a battery and an internal temperate monitor (according to the manual) but I don't know how to use the battery temperature monitor yet. Still, the manual strongly warns to never leave it charging or discharging unattended and not to have the battery or charger near anything flammable.

I'm not willing to watch it for hours--so this seems the most likely danger. I'm considering how else to protect against fire in my garage. Keeping away from flamables is good advice. But I'd like some kind of thermal cutoff in addition to chargers own protections that will disable the charger if the temperate of the batteries climbs.

As far as electrocution, with single modules at only 6 to 8 volts they seem harmless until hooked in series in the battery. I did order Class 0 gloves for handling when bolting or unbolting the bus between the module terminals. Once those buses are off, it will be harmless.

Any suggestions about avoiding fire?

or any other advice?



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Very cool Brad! Thanks for sharing. I love the Daq.

Brad did you ever try to refurb via zapping, deep discharging, or other technique to revive "dead" cells?
And are cells considered dead by others already really totally beyond repair?

 

Brad,

Brad, that's cute about selling me zapper cheap. I like your personality in how you deal with people.

Also, I really did try to keep the terms module versus cells straight--must have been a typo. Sorry.

But now that I'm more educated on niMh batteries, Jeff's site makes a lot of sense about deep
discharging to extend battery life. I love his graph's and evidence to that effect.

But his system does have the advantage that an individual (like my daughter) can use it themselves but
it doesn't seem like fast enough charger/discharger to use in a reconditioning business. And the discharger
requires manually watching the voltage drop during deep discharge with a meter. Again, it's affordable
for individuals and easy to install and use so it's smart idea.

I do love his idea to charge/discharge or recondition the entire pack in the car without removing it except
that means the car is out of service until the reconditioning completes.

Brad, is there a way to use the Turnigy Reaktor 1200W to charge the entire battery pack using a voltage
transformer? Hmmm. I just got the idea to ask the HobbyKing folks and will do so. What do you think?
Also, several threads do say that "balance" the entire pack by charging it, can you do that with a Turnigy
Reaktor 1200W without a transformer?

 

It seems really clear from my research that there is definite value in pulsing batteries at higher voltage to restore their function to like new. So far the only 2 ways that I seen was to manually spark the battery briefly which seems dangerous and the other was to charge up a capacitor and then let it discharge into the battery.

The Tesla idea seems most interesting. It's sad the guy is gone. I share your interest!

 

Oh I didn't intend to start flames. I hope this thread doesn't get flamed. I'll do my homework Brad. Thanks.

 

It's clear that I will eventually design my own pulser/charger/discharger/conditioner using an Arduino controller and circuits to monitor voltage during charging and discharging plus temperature sensor. That way, it can use a program to monitor the voltages automatically during discharging and control the current levels during charging and discharging plus have the ability to experiment with pulses discharge/charge during charging according to some patents. It will need inputs of the internal impedance of the battery too for controlling the need to pulse. Interestingly there are already open source circuits for Arduino that do most of this so it won't be a stretch to get all this done. Then the actual charging strategy will be up to the programming logic in the Arduino which will flexible way to experiment with charging strategies recommended in various online sources but have then totally automated. The only part of that unsure about yet is reverse charging back into the A/C power grid similar to how Solar power does it. That seems much better way to discharge batteries instead of dissipating it as heat.

EDIT: Okay using in inverter to create A/C current will feed back into the grid. But my local power company will have to approve my system before they'll install a net meter.

 

I'm looking building an entire pack charger/discharger controlled by Arduino that can do the following.

Microcontroller will be connected to the following:
Charging:
1. Monitor current flow charging using Hall effect sensor
2. Control amount of current with MOSFET
3. Monitor battery temperature using temperature sensor.
4. Monitor battery voltage using voltage dividing resisters.
5. Monitor battery internal impedance. (Didn't research how yet.)
6. Control variable speed cooling fan for the battery.
7. Display on LCD status information.
8. Log to PC output or SD card of data collected.
The idea is that during charging the microcontroller can charge with higher current
until the battery temperature begins to rise and then reduce current to trickle charge
until temperate rises to a point indicating the battery is full. Also will have time limit
and voltage limits for safety.

Discharging:
1. Monitor current flow during discharge using Hall effect sensor.
2. Control amount of current for discharge via MOSFET.
3. Monitor battery voltage using voltage dividing resisters.
4. Monitor battery internal impedance. (Didn't research how yet.)
5. Discharge power back in to the power grid.
This gets expensive with cost of an inverter, voltage regulator, step-down voltage and more
parts to the circuit. (Now a light bulb to discharge the battery seems not so dumb. )
6. Display LCD status info.
7. Log to PC output or SD card of data collected.
For discharging, the idea is to discharge to specific voltage levels in the battery
similar to Jeff's site of lower voltages for each of 3 cycles to deep discharge.
Also there seems to be value when charging to pulse with short discharge followed
by longer charging pulses until fully charged as this helps reduce impedance and heat.
The micocontroller can control the alternating of discharge and charge pulses.

Challenges to this design is the cost of high power components for charging and
discharging the entire battery pack. A MOSFET rated for 110A and 800V is about
$30. Hall effect current sensor salso get expensive for high power circuits over $40.
Grid power supplies also add to the cost.

So the circuit design, to keep costs down, needs to be able to use the same
components for both directions of charging or discharging which seems possible
using diodes. This will be better than separate circuits for charging and discharging.

So I'm considering to build a low power version of this that can only charge a single
module and verify all the circuitry works and the idea for different advanced ways of
charging. Then I could invest in the high power version of the circuit after the kinks
are all worked out of the low power version.

In the low power version, it could run off a 12V car battery like the Reaktor so that
it can discharge back into the 12V battery to reduce heat dissipation during discharge.
But that won't work in the high power version.

WAIT, here's an idea. What if for the high power version, I use a Prius battery pack
instead of a 12 V battery to power the charger / discharger? Then when discharging
the target battery, it is recharging the source battery. Hmmmm there's an interesting idea.

 

My concern about heat is because I want to discharge a battery as rapidly as is practical. My research shows that to recondition a battery you first fully charge it, then you discharge it down to a certain voltage. But you can discharge most of the battery quickly at high current like 80Amps similar to if it's turning the electric engine--that is also beneficial to measure it's capacity under a real load. But then you drop the amps much smaller to "trickle" discharge it down the rest of the way to the low voltage goal. This deep discharging reconditions it.

Well during discharging most of it with a large load quickly, that can generate ginormous amount of heat in the discharging device like 1200W heater. It can catch fire if not kept cool with a fan and what if the fan dies for some reason. etc. Heat is bad. It's better to have cool running equipment.

And you're right about it being only 10 cents. I decide to drop the idea of bothering with the power company setting up a net meter. I'll just pay them the 10 cents. ha ha.

 

Actually the amount of power is trivial in terms of cost for discharging a prius battery like another poster said-- only about 10 cents.

So I'm not going to get the power company involved. When (or if) I bother to do this, I'll just feed it back and pay them for the that since it's mainly helping me discharge the heat.

But due to the cost of inverter and voltage regulator needed, I'm going to just use a heating element or something similar to discharge the batter till it get low enough charge and then switch to a couple of light bulbs like Jeff does to further discharge it.

I'm going to do much of this manually this first time around to experiment. But if this turns out viable business, then I'll automate it more.

Frankly, I was desiring to play with building an Arduino Micro Controller device for long time. Now I have a good "excuse" to tinker!. And then build the "ideal" HV battery reconditioning system.

So I'm ordering an arduino kit and do some of the basic projects and then work towards first using it to simply measure and record the voltage, impedance, capacity, temperate of the battery and allow graphing that. Then I can extend it to controlling more and more with baby steps by first controlling the switch over from heating element to light bulb, then switching to charging it.

And I'll start first with charging a single module of 6 cells since the parts for that are much cheaper for tinkering.

Only after I feel that I have enough knowledge and have a few battery customers, then I'll invest in building a full powered grid charger/discharger/reconditioner.