I normally water every couple of couple of months, but thought it would be smart to check early this time just in case I was boiling off a ton of water.
The water use was in line with what I normally see. I got a couple bloops out of each cell, with the exception of one cell that took 4 bloops. Misfilled before? Venting more?
WAG
I have two wild-ass guesses as to why:
- atmospheric conditions have been so bad I actually haven’t been spending that much time in Absorption :-(; and/or
- maybe electrolysis is a function of current and voltage, and not just voltage. In other words, maybe long periods of absorption with relatively little current just don’t gas that much. Hmmm.
reading
I started googling the topic and here are the first few resources I found.
From this quote:
> Increasing the voltage/current and higher ambient temperatures accelerate this outgassing
… which seems to suggest that current is a partial factor.
And this one:
> IEEE 484 is the standard governing the installation practices for lead-acid batteries and it states that…. [the] worst-case condition exists when forcing maximum current into a fully charged battery…
… which suggests current is the culprit. It also holds this image:
This page has a formula for calculating outgassing, and one factor (G) is:
> Volume of hydrogen produced by one ampere hour of charge.
Voltage does not appear in the formula.
tentative conclusion
I assumed that extended absorption would increase ougassing linearly, ie, 3 hrs would outgas X ml and 6 hours would outgas 2X ml, leading to the need for greater attention to water levels. That does not appear to be the case either in my experiment or in the literature.
I am not a chemist and this is just one datapoint, so it will be interesting to see where it leads.
a boondocking retirement 