An Ideal Power supply For HHO Generation ?

[janmarsh]

My place of work gave me 37 of these cells when they replaced them. They were on a pallet next to an Automatic Guidance Vehicle they had been removed from.

They are Nickle Cadmium vented cells, 1.2 Volt, 80Ah  manufactured by the german company Hoppecke.

They were being replaced because their performance had dropped & the simplest thing was to renew.

Hoppeckes literature from the internet pointed out that performance drop would occur over time if an AGV had only short runs & was returned to charging.

Charging voltage for a cell is 1.4 Volt.  "conditioning" voltage (To correct performance drop) is 1.9 volt for 4 hours with the vent cap open.

I coupled the cells up in groups of 6 in series & put them on my 12 Volt, 20 amp charger.  The venting from the cells was alarming, yet very little heat generated. After only 2 of the 4 hour conditioning  I got really worried & disconnected.

It did the trick.  After 4 months in storage 36 of the 37 cells are reading 1.299 to 1.3 volts.

These cells take a charge of up to 200 amps.

[Manta]

Janmarsh,

Does running a few deep discharge/charge cycles help to recover Ni Cads as it does (sometimes) with Lead acid cells ?

Manta

[janmarsh]

Not certain Dave.   All I know is vented Ni Cad. are totally different to the Gell dry type which have that bad memory condition.

They look just like a lead acid battery except the electrolyte is Potassium Hydroxide with a Lithium additive.

The more I read about them, the more impressed I get.  They are silly money to buy........... my Company paid out £1800 to replace them.

Hoppecke have developed a flexible cell structure which allows them to deform through heavy demand & charging.

With a service life of 20 years, I should have healthy cells for another 15 years.