This is a brief survey of Battery Desulfator projects accessable on the web.
Firstly, you may ask, “What is sulfation?” (Battery Plate Sulfation For Us Dummies/Aviation Battery Plate Sulfation and Resultant Degradation Explained)
Sulfation occurs when a battery discharges and the lead in the plates combines with sulfuric acid to form lead sulfate. When you recharge the battery, some of the the newly formed Lead Sulphate will not ‘convert’ back into lead and sulfuric acid, but rather some of the sulfate begins to crystalize; these crystals act like insulators, the more you discharge a battery, the less capacity it has as the crystals begin to cover the plates and deprive plate area contact with the electrolyte. After awhile, the sulfate crystals may also become somewhat ‘permanent’, and are hard to remove (or ‘force’ back into the electrolyte).
So now, what is desulfation (aka “Pulse Conditioning”)? It’s the ‘bringing back’ of a lead acid battery by putting the sulfation back into the electrolyte. Those who have been at the forefront of this technology are those who need the utmost of performance from their battery banks, e.g. anybody running ‘off the grid’ (from photo-voltaics alone) for instance.