I got my Sterling Charger last night - (Thanks for the great deal) - included was a Sterling catalog - one item caught my eye. The "Pro Pulse Battery De-Sulphation & Maintenance Device". Would this work on my AGM batteries in place of equalization?? is it snake oil?? Opinions and comments welcome
https://sterling-power.com/products/pro-pulse-battery-de-sulphation-maintenance-device
Thanks
Les
I have been testing desulphators now for well in excess of 6 years, and have compiled lots and lots of data. Unfortunately none of the data I have collected paints a good light on these products for actually “desulfating”.
I have tested multiple products including the PulseTech a BLS and even the Sterling Power model desulfator you mention. I can’t talk to the actual data, because PS has asked me for it, but suffice it to say I have looked at this every way from Sunday and I have never seen any sort of “
desulfating” occurring nor seen any measurable changes in terms of restoring lost capacity, internal resistance changes or better cranking abilities..
I have tested these using:
-Baseline Ah capacity (Array 3721A) then > moving forward Ah capacity changes
-Baseline internal resistance (Argus) then > moving forward internal resistance changes
-Baseline CCA/MCA (Midtronics EXP-1000HD) then > moving forward changes
-Baseline CCA (Argus 500WP) then > moving forward changes
-Baseline peak deliverable in-rush current (Fluke 376) to starter then > moving forward changes
-Baseline peak in-rush low voltage (Fluke 289) to starter motor then > moving forward changes.
Each battery I have tested has had no less than 6 months on a desulfator product. All batteries chosen for testing have come from quite freshly abused banks and none have exceeded 2 years old. Most are less than 18 months old and suffering from chronic undercharging and sulfation. I use and look for batteries that came from parallel wired banks or contiguously wired banks. This gives me a similar matching battery to run other conditioning protocols on. In every single situation standard equalizing procedures has beat the desulfator and done so in a matter of hours as opposed to 6+ months.
I really hate to just bash a whole class of products so have not yet decided whether to publish or not, but from where I sit, having done huge amounts of testing using lab grade tools, I would advise saving your money if you expect a desulfator to actually desulfate a sulfated battery or to restore lost performance.
One thing that gets completely ignored by folks is that once the lead sulfate has
hardened and
clustered it is dead material, just like a dead skin cell. No amount of
Jergens is going to make a dead skin cell live again.
I can’t comment on what would happen if they were used from new as this data would take multiple A/B testing scenarios and 8-10 years to complete. I suspect the manufacturers of these devices know this, so they also know it's very difficult to prove they don’t work when used from new.
As for desulfating a sulfated battery that is pretty easy to test for and they simple answer is no, I’ve not seen them do anything measurable in terms of improving a sulfated battery on numerous measurable points.
My testing has been frustrating because it was first intended for myself because I do need a reliable way to recover abused batteries. I spent my own hard earned dough on all of them and none have done what I need, expect or was told they could do..
