Lead / acid battery construction using old organ pipes as battery plate.?

Question

I have access to old, abused and sub-standard organ pipes due to my occupation. Often for free or at a pittance. I have been experimenting and researching setting up a whole house UPS and eventually an "off the grid" electrical system. I can get "usable" car batteries for about $25 a piece and have been using a pair of them with a small inverter to power lights and small appliances during power outages. These are batteries that have cosmetic blemishes - "scratch and dent." However, as you may know the demands of home electrical consumption are quite different than the power requirements of vehicles. Deep cycle batteries and other types of batteries intended for powering stationary electrical systems are expensive. I'm a frugal DIYer (a cheapskate). Therefore I am considering constructing large batteries from a few old aquariums that are languishing in my storage sheds and organ pipes cut and flattened into sheets. The pipes are pretty much pure lead with a little bit of antimony as a hardener. I also have cold rolled zinc pipes. My workshop contains equipment for metal, wood and electrical work and I am well aware of the safety precautions necessary when working with toxic materials and electricity. However I can find no information about anyone ever having done this. I have to wonder if alternative energy experimenters, tinkerers, DIYers, may know something about constructing lead acid batteries and the requirements of the plates - thickness, treatment, alloys, etc.

Answer 1

Well, I don't say this very often about unorthodox DIY projects people dream up, but I think this might actually work.



As another said, you will have to come up with a way to suspend the plates near each other without them touching (using aforementioned fiberglass separators). You'll also have to think about how you will partition the tanks so you can get multiple cells in them. The hardest part will be getting them electrically tight from one another. If there is any kind of leak or electrical contact between cells, the cells will short and your battery voltage will drop by 2 volts. I don't know if caulk will work or not because it still might allow an ion bridge to form through the pores of the caulk. You'll have to test it in small scale to see. Remember a 12V battery has six cells, so you will have to decide how to construct your battery (many cells for a higher voltage, but lower capacity, or fewer cells for lower voltage, but a higher capacity). You could use a separate tank for each cell if you wanted to.



Believe it or not, up until recently 5-10% antimony was used in car batteries for the same reason it's in the organ pipes - to stiffen the plates. This makes the plates easier to cast and helps present the plates from warping and falling apart with repeated charge/discharge cycles, so it seems you have the perfect starting material.



The other critical factor is the sulfuric acid concentration. I think you can buy battery acid in auto parts stores, but if you mix your own it should be at a concentration of about 33% w/w. As the battery discharges, the concentration will go down as lead sulfate forms on the plates (you can track this with hydrometer that measures the density of the electrolyte).



You will have to read up on your lead-acid battery chemistry and take a look inside a few car batteries to understand what's going on, but I think this is a very interesting project that is conceivably doable. Please take proper safety precautions since you will have the hazards of acid burns, lead poisoning, electricity, and hydrogen explosions to worry about. If you do this, please take pictures and post it on the internet somewhere so other DIY nerds can admire it! I wish you the best of luck!

Answer 2

I am in no way a battery expert, but I'll try to help as much as I can.



A battery is basically two sets of conductive plates immersed in an electrolyte, typically sulfuric acid for lead-acid batteries.



You will also need acid-resistant separators to keep the plates from touching each other. If you can find some fiberglass sheet that you can cut up, I believe these will work in acid. Otherwise, thin glass epoxy sheets will work. These might be available from printed circuit board manufacturers as scrap.



Batteries work by ion exchange between the two sets of plates. Basically, the material from one set of plates is electroplated onto the other set. During this process, you get electricity. When the receiving plates are saturated , the battery must be recharged.



Now you need to charge the battery by inducing current flow in the opposite direction to reverse the electrolysis. Lead acid batteries are no longer usable when the lead is in a heap of lead oxide at the bottom of the battery compartment.



I don't know what antimony will do to the battery's efficiency. It will either facilitate or retard electrolysis. If you're serious about the science of what you're trying to do, you need to get a copy of the Periodic Table of the Elements and find out where these different metals are, on the chart. This will give you an idea which metals would be better as anodes and which would work better as cathodes.



The principle of what you want to do is sound. I'm just not sure of the efficiency of your homemade batteries. Still, I encourage you to give it a shot.



You also need to research electrolytes and find out if there are more efficient battery electrolytes than sulfuric acid.



Talk to engineers and those in the power generating industries. Maybe they can give you some hints that will make your batteries work better.

Answer 3

Ok this is what you do-get a meter-check standing voltage after a complete charge12.2-12.8 or above is good.Next check with the bike running-12.4 or so,is ok at idle.Next turn the brights on,rev up to4500 rpm's,you should see the voltage rise to about 14.2 or so then abruptly fall back to the mid 13's or high 12's.If it is not doing this then there is a problem with the charging system.I would almost bet that the stator is bad.You can check that by unplugging from the harness and taking the meter(put it on for a continuity check).Take the black lead and hold it to a good ground on the bike.Next take the red and touch each pin on the connector-if the meter goes off,the stator is bad.You can also use both leads of the meter on just the pin connector.Try all different combinations and once again if the meter goes off bad stator.I have had the same battery in my bike going on 6 seasons.Something is definitely wrong.Don't use those batteries they are not designed to accept a charge of that voltage and if they leak you will have a mugged up looking bike.

Answer 4

As one other answer stated, I'd be concerned about the impurity of the lead.

I am an organist, not a pipe maker, but I can tell you that the lead is probably has a lot more tin than you might think. Metal organ pipes are almost always an alloy of tin and led, led won't stand on its own. Often the alloy will also contain trace amounts of antimony. The amount of non-lead metals might cause you major problems, I'd look into how these extra materials might interact and cause problems.



Although I never like to see organ pipes destroyed, I'd rather see them re-purposed than thrown into the dump - this is a really cool idea.

Answer 5

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Answer 6

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Answer 7

Brother, I seriously have no advice to give you and am sorry for wasting your time, but I am FASCINATED by this project. I hope you blog about it; I'm very, very interested to see how it turns out! As a music nerd, my general view of organ pipes does not include battery plates.

Answer 8

Lead acid batteries invole both lead and lead oxide.

You'd need to make grid plates and press in lead oxide.

that's pretty heavy industrial tooling.

Sell the lead to bullet casters, (find em at a pistol range),

and buy deep cycle batteries.

(Note battery banks need to be 'matched/normalized' to work well together.)

ref. sites:

www.windsun.com/batteries/battery_FAQ.htm

www.mpoweruk.com/life.htm