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Desulfators and Lithium

 
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nuckolls.bob(at)aeroelect
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 22, 2019 8:19 am    Post subject: Desulfators and Lithium Reply with quote

At 01:33 AM 10/21/2019, you wrote:
Quote:
I too have read many articles that both applaud and disprove the desulfurization theory. What I “more or less” believe is the results that many tell about where they get 6 or 7 years from batteries well maintained with with BATTERY MINDER maintainers.

Yup, been using the wall-wart BM and BT maintainers
for decades enjoying very good service lives on
a constellation of laboratory/test batteries.
But those were batteries that lived in a house
and were called upon perhaps a dozen hours/year
or to jump start a vehicle.

Quote:
In my 50 years of dealing with batteries, I get about 3 or 4 years from flooded batteries and sealed
batteries, but I have gotten 5 to 6 with the BATTERY MINDERS.

These are maintainers used routinely
on often used batteries?

Quote:
However, I totally agree my experience does not have documented scientific recorded results and maintenance notes to back it up. Overall, I think the BATTERY MINDERS do offer some increased longevity, but I certainly have no proof, just an opinion.

There's no contrary argument for the
century plus old philosophy for
holding a battery at or just above it's
nominal open circuit voltage while at-rest.
It's never a bad thing and often an
essential thing to do for any battery that
demonstrates a significant self-discharge
characteristic.

The external maintainer storage philosophy is
endorsed by virtually every battery manufacturer . . .
a few of which even offer their own 'flavor'
of maintainer . . . which differs in no
significant way from other maintainers.

The question before us goes to whether
or not we have both a justification in the
physics of battery operations and a
demonstration in experience that says a
battery suffering loss of capacity due
to sulfation can be recovered by some
external means that reverses the condition.

Quote:
Battery chemistry is changing fairly rapidly these days and I am
a big fan of Lithium batteries, and I am a real believer that
they will smoke and burn if not maintained properly.

As will severely abused svla and ni-cad batteries . . .
Quote:

Boeing has proved that even the best Lithium battery maintenance and equipment cannot guarantee that there will be no smoke and fire.

The Boeing experience has little relevancy
to the OBAM aviation experience with
lithium technology.

Quote:
Personally I will not be using a lithium battery in an airplane that I will ride in. The weight and high current capability are very tempting, but not tempting enough for me.

The TSO for an airworthy lithium product
calls for a demonstration of ability to
contain the worst possible failure mode
without endangering either aluminum or
bones. I witnessed some of the extreme
faults testing conducted on True Blue products at
Cessna.

https://tinyurl.com/yywq4tw9

https://tinyurl.com/yy4yva7f


The enclosures are vented overboard
and testing demonstrated that enclosure
surface temps under worst case failures
are benign. Boeing has, no doubt,
incorporated similar capability in their
aircraft. The Boeing experience is an outlier
. . . the procurement specification
for their problem child battery was finalize as
much as a decade before the battery fire
events. A great deal was learned about
lithium battery technology in the interval
from Boeing's award of contract to the
time of the fires.

With time-honored, 20/20 hind-sight,
I'm sure there are folks at Boeing who
wished for better information that would
have gone to better decisions.

To my knowledge, no lithium offerings to
OBAM aviation have adopted such practices.
But the probability of serious battery fires
with LiFePO4 cells is exceedingly low. Of
ALL the Li chemistries, LiFePO4 is the most
robust and least reactive to catastrophic
degradation.

Risks for flying with a thoughtfully integrated
lithium product are falling rapidly . . .
having said that . . .

I'm still wrestling with the question of
economics for having replaced SLVA with
lithium in a light aircraft. When you
take six pounds out of your ship's empty
weight, do the fuel tanks get one-gallon
larger? Can you now fly over terrain
at altitudes previously unsurmountable?
Are you now able to depart runways previously
too short? Is there value in being able
to put 6# more 'stuff' in the baggage
compartment?

Yeah, light is always good in airplanes,
even better in helicopters. But for
Joe R.V. Driver, does the cost-of-ownership
for installing a top of the line
lithium project have a positive return?

Given what I've learned and observed so far,
I can deduce no positive return on investment
for having swapped lithium for SVLA. If somebody
has happier numbers to share I'd be pleased
to know them.


Bob . . .


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ceengland7(at)gmail.com
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 22, 2019 9:15 am    Post subject: Desulfators and Lithium Reply with quote

snipped 

Quote:
  Given what I've learned and observed so far,
  I can deduce no positive return on investment
  for having swapped lithium for SVLA. If somebody
  has happier numbers to share I'd be pleased
  to know them.


  Bob . . .
I agree that there's no practical justification for lithium at this point.

But the one *potential* method to justify it would be an electrically dependent engine, specifically electronic fuel injection, that requires significant current to operate, *and* the decision by the builder to keep his electrical system a simple 1 alt, 1 battery system. In that case, it would be possible to 'upsize' the battery to significantly higher capacity and longer run-time with no gain in weight or size (at considerable expense).

Not the path I chose, but I do see it as a potential option.

Charlie
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echristley(at)att.net
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 22, 2019 9:22 am    Post subject: Desulfators and Lithium Reply with quote

In my case, it wasn't just the #6 saved from the battery switch, but the other #6 that I had to put in the opposite end of the plane to balance the battery.
The best decision technique I've found for deciding when to spend more for a product is to set a price for how much you're willing to pay to save a pound. For me, it is $30. All else being equal, if two products are identical, I'm will to pay $30 to save a pound.
A typical SVLA is somewhere around $100 (IIRC). A LiFePo can be had for less than $200 (SSTZ14S-FP Scorpion Stinger 12v 387 CCA LiFePo4 Extreme High Output Battery). That is about half of *my* cost-to-weight threshold for the battery alone, and 1/4 the threshold once the balance weight is added.
And, yes, these sort of modifications can enable more gas in the tank. I say that as someone that has had to leave gas on the ground to stay under recommended gross. While just this one mod would only add one gallon, the weight savings are additive.

<![endif]--><![endif]-->$178.00
<![endif]-->SSTZ14S-FP Scorpion Stinger 12v 387 CCA LiFePo4 Extreme High Output Battery
In order to ship Priority IATA imposed new Shipping Regulations regarding Lithium Batteries. Lithium Batteries b...



On Tuesday, October 22, 2019, 12:20:18 PM EDT, Robert L. Nuckolls, III <nuckolls.bob(at)aeroelectric.com> wrote:

I'm still wrestling with the question of
economics for having replaced SLVA with
lithium in a light aircraft. When you
take six pounds out of your ship's empty
weight, do the fuel tanks get one-gallon
larger? Can you now fly over terrain
at altitudes previously unsurmountable?
Are you now able to depart runways previously
too short? Is there value in being able
to put 6# more 'stuff' in the baggage
compartment?

Yeah, light is always good in airplanes,
even better in helicopters. But for
Joe R.V. Driver, does the cost-of-ownership
for installing a top of the line
lithium project have a positive return?

Given what I've learned and observed so far,
I can deduce no positive return on investment
for having swapped lithium for SVLA. If somebody
has happier numbers to share I'd be pleased
to know them.


Bob . . .


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ashleysc(at)broadstripe.n
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 22, 2019 9:32 am    Post subject: Desulfators and Lithium Reply with quote

Hi Folks;
Let's be honest, buying anything that deteriorates (such as a car or a battery) never has a "positive return." It's a cost, not an investment.
Concerning LiFePO4 batteries, mine has behaved flawlessly, so far. It stays "topped up" with the maintainer intended for it. (Don't use desulfinator-type chargers.)
It weighs 3-1/2 pounds and has surprising power to rapidly turn over and start a 100 HP engine. So far it hasn't burned up anything; hasn't even gotten warm. It remains to be seen how long this battery will last, but "so far so good."
Cheers! Stu.
From: "Charlie England" <ceengland7(at)gmail.com>
To: aeroelectric-list(at)matronics.com
Sent: Tuesday, October 22, 2019 10:08:53 AM
Subject: Re: Desulfators and Lithium
snipped

Quote:
Given what I've learned and observed so far,
I can deduce no positive return on investment
for having swapped lithium for SVLA. If somebody
has happier numbers to share I'd be pleased
to know them.


Bob . . .
I agree that there's no practical justification for lithium at this point.

But the one *potential* method to justify it would be an electrically dependent engine, specifically electronic fuel injection, that requires significant current to operate, *and* the decision by the builder to keep his electrical system a simple 1 alt, 1 battery system. In that case, it would be possible to 'upsize' the battery to significantly higher capacity and longer run-time with no gain in weight or size (at considerable expense).

Not the path I chose, but I do see it as a potential option.

Charlie

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cluros(at)gmail.com
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 22, 2019 9:47 am    Post subject: Desulfators and Lithium Reply with quote

I'd like to address this point Bob 
Quote:
I'm still wrestling with the question of
  economics for having replaced SLVA with
  lithium in a light aircraft. When you
  take six pounds out of your ship's empty
  weight, do the fuel tanks get one-gallon
  larger? Can you now fly over terrain
  at altitudes previously unsurmountable?
  Are you now able to depart runways previously
  too short? Is there value in being able
  to put 6# more 'stuff' in the baggage
  compartment?  


About 30% of my flights are at maximum takeoff weight. When at maximum takeoff weight, the fuel tanks are almost never full. So in practice, yes the fuel tanks get one gallon larger in than I can actually carry one more gallon of fuel.
While the maximum terrain and available airports remain the same, the wear and tear on the aircraft is slightly reduced by the shorter takeoff and landing distance and the reduced time to climb. The fuel burn itself is reduced by a very small but very real amount. If an aircraft flies 100 hours a year and a lighter battery is $200 more and lasts 6 years, at 15 gal / hour and $5 / gallon the battery pays for itself if it saves 0.4% fuel burn. If it's also saving $5 a year on tires and $5 a year on brakes (I made that up), you now only need a 0.3% improvement in mpg to completely pay for the battery. I doubt the math actually adds up to pay for the battery, but it does reduce the actual cost for airplanes that fly rather than sit in a hangar.
As for the value of 6# more stuff in an RV, I fly a couple of well equipped RVs that have a useful load of 40 pounds with 3 hours of fuel (plus reserve) and 2 adults. 6 pounds would be a 15% increase in baggage capacity and very welcome.
On the other hand, my friend's super rebel has the battery on the firewall and any decrease in weight up front decreases the useful baggage load. So it all depends on the aircraft I guess.
On Tue, Oct 22, 2019 at 10:22 AM Charlie England <ceengland7(at)gmail.com (ceengland7(at)gmail.com)> wrote:

Quote:
snipped 

Quote:
  Given what I've learned and observed so far,
  I can deduce no positive return on investment
  for having swapped lithium for SVLA. If somebody
  has happier numbers to share I'd be pleased
  to know them.


  Bob . . .
I agree that there's no practical justification for lithium at this point.

But the one *potential* method to justify it would be an electrically dependent engine, specifically electronic fuel injection, that requires significant current to operate, *and* the decision by the builder to keep his electrical system a simple 1 alt, 1 battery system. In that case, it would be possible to 'upsize' the battery to significantly higher capacity and longer run-time with no gain in weight or size (at considerable expense).

Not the path I chose, but I do see it as a potential option.

Charlie

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