I have a set of S&K dry cells that don't work worth a crap. I measured only .4 LPM from both cells, using the bottle-in-water method. That's only .2LMP each -- far from the .8 to 1.0 lpm per cell I expected. The electrolyte gets hot with lots of foam. This was at 13.5v and 25 amps with a duty cycle of 80% through a PWM. Electrolyte was potassium carbonate, one gram to one ounce or water.
The cell arrangement was...
n-nnnn+n and the left hand 3 n plates are electrically bonded to each other and the right hand 6n plates are electrically bonded to each other.
From reading this forum, I learned that having 5 neutral plates between + and - is better than 4 neutrals.
I have no idea what the neutrals on each end do -- any thoughts?
Anyway, I took the cells apart and swapped the two end plates so I now have n-nnnnn+. I didn't know what to do about electrically bonding the neutral plates, as I haven't read anything here about that, so I left them as they were -- the left 3 are electrically connected to one another and the right 3 are electrically connected to one another.
Also after reading this forum, I decided my electrolyte concentration may be too weak, so I increased it to 2 grams per ounce of water.
I just completed my first tests. My results were .67 lpm for the two cells, so I saw an increase, but not as much as I'd hoped. This test was also at 13.5v and 25 amps, but the duty cycle of the PWM had reduced to 50% (from the higher electrolyte concentration I presume). I have not run this setup long enough to know yet about heat or foam.
Since I hadn't read anything about electrically connecting the neutral plates, I started wondering about this. It was easy to jumper from the left bank to the right bank, so I tried this, making all the neutral plates electricaly connected. This REDUCED the output to .58 lpm. So now I'm wondering if they should be connected at all?
What should I do?
Thanks,
AstroCady