Bedini SG notes

[Farmhand]

Here is my circuit and code, the program code has some extra code in the humm section where I was trying out the sleep mode,
not important, the working code is in the boost and charge blocks.

I called it the "Machine of Light" to poke fun at the crew that were working with Bedini at the time that had a circuit they called
the "Machine of Time.  They wouldn't share code, only drawings. Eventually they got stiffed anyway by the Bedini "Machine"/crew.

The circuit ground is not indicated on the solar input negative.

The circuit drawing is hard to see when the image is reduced in size so I zipped it and the image is in the zip file.

..
It's not the best design, I can't even say it's a good design, but it worked for me as a project, it's now dismantled, I never
really needed it I just wanted to do it.   

Who needs Bedini anyway, we're supposed be working open source, not idolizing scam artists - profiteers. That was my point,
if we work together we could achieve a lot, I do my projects alone mostly, I just ask for help when I need it or want it, which I
think is how it should be. It's too difficult to agree with a group all the time.

.

[Pirate88179]

if we work together we could achieve a lot, I do my projects alone mostly, I just ask for help when I need it or want it, which I
think is how it should be. It's too difficult to agree with a group all the time.

.

I agree 100%.

Bill

[SeaMonkey]

As I have stated in another topic, ALL of my 5 Bedini type motors only gave a "surface charge"  or "empty voltage" to the charging battery.  I started out with new bats and after a little while (no matter what the meters were showing me) the run bat could no longer run the motor.  This happened with 9 volt bats and 12 volt bats...it was all the same with all of my replications.  Everything always looked good, higher voltage going into the charging battery than from the run battery but, in the end, when you swapped them out more than a few times, the motor would no longer run at all.

After my experiments with the 2 new motorcycle bats (12 volt) which cost me like $50 each, I decided to use them for other experiments but learned that they would no longer charge up using my car battery charger and, when I returned them to where I had purchased them, they tested them and said they were both "shot".

This again is my own experience and you can watch my videos at youtube by looking at Piratelabs.

Bill

You raise good points Pirate.  MileHigh and FarmHand have also
made very sound contributions to understanding the fallacies of
Bedini technology.

To properly maintain a lead-acid battery by means of pulse charging
the pulses applied to the battery must be very substantial; up to
twice the normal battery voltage and a minimum of 10 Amperes for
the duration of each very brief pulse.

If the pulses from the Bedini device are too weak to fully charge the
battery being charged/rejuvenated it will not be fully charged and
sulfation will begin to set in.  Once the sulfation becomes hardened
after several months of chronic undercharging it will exhibit the
"surface charge" phenomenon.

A battery which has lost capacity due to hardened sulfation will partially
respond to weak pulsing and will show what appears to be a normal charged
voltage.  When discharged into a load though, this charge is rapidly dissipated
and the battery becomes dead.  Weak pulses from Bedini inductive discharge
devices (very high voltage but very little current) are simply not strong enough
to reverse the build-up of hardened sulfation so the battery will progressively
get worse and worse as the degree of sulfation increases.  Finally, when heavily
sulfated, the battery will not respond at all to normal charging voltages.

To restore/rejuvenate a battery that has lost nearly all of its capacity to hardened
sulfation, high powered capacitive discharge pulses are required.  Providing the battery
in question hasn't been internally damaged by the sulfation stresses it should
respond to desulfation pulsing over a period of several weeks and most of its
capacity should be made available again.

Unfortunately, the small sealed lead acid batteries most favored by experimenters
do not tolerate hardened sulfation well and will invariably develop "shorts" in one
or more of the cells as they are being rejuvenated.  The plate separators (glass mat)
are too thin and the hardened sulfate crystals are often able to physically punch
through the separators as the crystals grow and expand as a consequence of chronic
undercharging of the battery.

This probably explains why Bedini and Co. are bringing their battery charging
algorithms into conformity with established conventional wisdom regarding battery
care and maintenance in their newer product lines.

[Farmhand]

And another thing that isn't mentioned much is that a lot of problems can be avoided if any "starter type" batteries
are kept charged up. If they are allowed to self discharge and the voltage gets too low then sulfation will creep in.
I've seen quite a few experimenters discharge batteries and run setups with batteries that are basically discharged
for too long, after discharging a lead acid battery it should be recharged immediately no matter how much energy was
removed from it, the rules I go by are, if I use it I recharge it as soon as I finish with it, and if I have batteries sitting I
recharge them every couple of weeks or so. I usually give them a usage as well.

Hard charging with a gassing battery which traps the gas in bubbles I think causes the plates to be exposed (in the bubbles)
while they get heated up by the charging current. So avoiding excessive gassing has to be a good thing as well.

..

[SeaMonkey]

Very well stated FarmHand!  Lead-Acid batteries like to
be worked within their designed zone of maximum performance
and high reliability.

Recharging them fully as soon as possible after each use is
vitally important.  Overcharging and excessive gassing are
battery killers.

They need lots of TLC just like the household cat or dog.

Maybe even just a bit more...