Yeah I'm pretty sure I know why they're not charging. I use to work at a lead acid battery factory. The negative plate loves organics in the lemon liquid but the positive plate absolutely does not like organics in the lemon juice. It's literally killing the positive plate. Just FYI
Knowing very little about this I was wondering if some kind of barrier similar to oxidation was forming on the cathode or anode. Thanks for the insight.
@@dubskulls9554Both the positive and negative plate are in the same acid bath. They cannot be separated because the acid itself is what act as a transfer medium for the electric charge. To simplify, the acid is kinda like a wires in a circuit. If wires are disconnected, the circuit will not work, right?
What would have been a good and valid further experiment would have been to flush out the batteries and refill them with the original acid, then tested them to see how much of the batteries' original capacity had been lost, and whether or not the batteries would have once again been able to start the car. You never know, those batteries may have been entirely recoverable, or very nearly. Go on guys, I dare you, repeat this experiment and then restore the original chemistry - See what happens next?!
I'm thinking the acidity isn't concentrated enough. Batteries are 30-40% sulfuric acid, and fresh lemon juice that hasn't been concentrated is likely the 5% acidity ballpark I would guess. Slowly evaporating off some excess liquid and increasing the concentration of the citric acid might work better. I would probably try draining those batteries and refill with the concentrated juice.
Unfortunate that this was from 2019, so that's alot of work to go through again, since they'd need to recreate the initial setup (charging them with lemon juice).
@@dragan3290 It's also lemon juice instead of sulfuric acid. It might take a higher concentration and definitely some experimenting to find the best results.
Yes, that would increase voltage, but it would also reduce current. Remember, the total short circuit current of all six batteries in parallel was only 18 amps. That's enough to run the headlights, but won't even turn a starter motor, never mind, crank an engine.
@@russelllopez4171 That would actually work! The Lemons could charge the capacitors over an hour or so, so the capacitors can produce the enormous current needed for the few seconds it takes to start an engine.
100% It totally works too! I had 3 flat batteries (1 in my car) and i put 2 in series making 18v and it started the car no worries 👍 Ford 4 litre straight 6. I got at least 20 jump starts out of my make shift battery
Too much lemon juice and too short charging time... You also need to use lower charging current with a new battery. Old school mechanics use capacitor to help the battery accept charge.
I reckon if you wash out the lemon juice in those batteries and fill with the acid again they will work. I washed a battery out before and it worked like a charm. :) What normally happens in a lead acid battery is the lead sulphate falls to the base of the battery and short circuits it, if that lead precipitate is removed it no longer shorts and the battery has a longer life than one would expect.
I would save those batteries, dump the lemon juice out and try it again when concentrated lemon juice. Think about the concentration of sulfuric acid in the battery. If the lemon juice were concentrated to the same acidity, it might work better. Would be cool to see lemon juice or vinegar at a similar or greater concentration. Maybe even 40% might be more ideal. If you can drain those, you might be able to reuse them. Anyway still a cool experiment. Love you guys.👍
The juice is the problem, because it's juice, made up with water, sugars, fibre from the lemons, and in there is the citric acid which is what makes the batteries "work", boiling the juice down, filtering out the fibre and somehow separating out the sugars would yeild a useful amount of citric acid, which would very likely get the batteries working, of course, it'd be easier just to get a tub of citric acid, make up a saturated solution of it in distilled water and you're off the the lemon races... :P
i wonder if you dump them out, rinse them with distilled water, and then refill with battery acid if they will work again? I would give it a shot since you probably got the acid in one of those filler gizmos when you bought the batteries 😉
@@user-qi9be4lv7l The day when my friends were buying EVs. I set them all down, asked one simple question. Where does the electricity come from? Some were Clueless. Others made up their own stories. 75% Fossil fuels. The entire EV movement is a Hoax a Scam. Makes no sense at all. If anything, Hybrid.
If the batteries are ruined, then you may as well put 2 in series to see if you can bump the voltage up to 12v? With a flat battery in my car, I used 2 flat car batteries in series to get my total voltage to 18v and that cranked my 4.0L straight 6 over many many times? I think it was near 20 cranks before the voltage sagged and it struggled to start? I would also try connect 1 battery to your charger as the charger is distributing the amps over the batteries in parallel, so that will make each battery charge very very slow? Some battery chargers need to see a minimum amount of voltage before the charger will charge at the full amps? Put 1 battery on the charger and then use a fully charged car battery positive to positive (making only 2 batteries in parallel - 1 fully charged the other 1 of your lemon batteries) the fully charged battery should bump the voltage up on the lemon battery and allow the charger to charge at full amps 👍 Very last thing is to try a different battery charger with different modes on it? Select the recondition mode and try changing the battery? I have 2 chargers at home and 1 of them will error out and not charge the battery if it's too flat; the other charger with the various modes on it, will charge the battery that wouldn't charge on the other battery charger? I hope you get to try these tips and one then helps.....I really want to see you start the car with a lemon battery breaking bad style hahaha
It's Russia use potatoes, copper, and magnesium. It will work. Each cell will provide a potential 1.5 volts at 300ma each potato 🥔 😀 100 potatoes approximately 30amps if everything is setup well
That would work to charge a proper battery over a long time, to store enough energy for the high current for the few seconds it takes to start an engine.
My battery wore a hole through the front. The battery hold down bolt and mount were loose. It was a rotten battery tray. We couldn't start the truck. The battery only had enough power to make a clicking sound from the starter. I removed the battery and put duck tape on the hole. Then filled the battery with Coors beer. Then we waited for the foam to settle. I kept adding beer until it was full. I waited an hour for everything to settle. It started right up. I drove the truck like that for three months until the sugar in the beer killed the battery. Rocky mountain spring water is good in an emergency.
Sorry, but this was completely stupid. When the voltage is going down during charging, it is a good sign - it means that internal resistance is dropping. I would use lower current (so it is not boiling so much) and let it charge at least 24 hours.
They can't power a starter/solenoid because they were wired wrong. You need around 11.5v-14v to run those things, but still a good amount of amperage. So maybe try it like this: two sets of batteries - each set has 3 batteries wired in parallel. Now wire the two sets in series, about 15v. That probably would have at least turned the starter that was outside the engine.
In a normal lead acid car battery, the battery acid (sulfuric acid) is created when charging by removing the sulfate ions from the lead sulfate on the negative plate, which combine with the hydrogen ions in the electrolyte which come from water (H2O). As it discharged, the opposite happens, the sulfate recombines with the lead and current flows. This is why you only ever add water to a battery as the “acid” is never really lost and why a fully charged battery has the highest concentration of sulfuric acid - and how those old battery hydrometers can show you the state of charge (pure sulfuric acid is almost twice the specific gravity of water). When citric acid is added, you break this process and replace the sulfate formation with citrate. Also citric acid doesn’t conduct electricity as well so it won’t store nor deliver power as well, it will have a much higher internal resistance which will require more power to charge, causing higher heat and the boiling you are seeing.
Don't even compare a bulb to a starter motor. You need roughly 100x more power for it ;) Now why it doesn't work well: the orange juice contains some citric acid that theoretically should do the job, but also water and other chemicals. It may be too weak (acid concentration too low), then - the other, not very conductive or reactive impurities might cover the electrodes and introduce resistance. The resistance is the worst thing because it means a huge loss of power when a heavy load (as a starter motor) is connected. Well, the lemon juice works as "battery acid", but pretty poorly.
I want to see Garage54 reverse the GagFilms “Insane Car Battery Hack” by taking the housing of an OEM car battery and filling it up with AA batteries, wired appropriately. How many times can you start with car with several hundred AA batteries?
You had 6 batteries, so, as they showed they did't have the 'Punch' to turn the starter motor, you could have done 2 sets of three in parallel, then wire the 'Two' parallel batteries in series. It would have upped the Voltage but also upped the Amps too....
That would increase voltage, but would also reduce available current. Remember, all six batteries in parallel only managed a short-circuit current of only 18 amps. Series-paralleling the batteries for 24 volts, would cut that current to a mere 9 amps.
@@vincentrobinette1507Ohm's law only works when using Ohmic resistance and it probably won't apply for that set up. I wanted to see it tried, then finally I'd like to see them all in series. It's not a great deal more effort.
With pure lemon juice the acid level was too high. It may have worked if the PH level was correct before filling the batteries. Battery health or ability to function is directly correlated to the PH of the electrolyte.
A car battery, also known as a lead-acid battery, contains several components, including: Battery case Made of polypropylene resin, this holds the battery plates, electrolyte, and straps. It's designed to extend the battery's life and reduce the impact of vibrations.
The acid is not strong enough. IT may be residual sulfate when lead acid batteries are precharged in the store. You may be better off using aluminum and magnesium sulfate mixed in distilled water in the lead acid battery. You may have to clean out the used batteries of lemon juice and flush with distilled water. And trickle charge them after filling with the aluminum and magnesium sulfates, if not 50% aluminum sulfate and 25% potassium and magnesium sulfate for alum battery. It may take time for them to form. Expect about 8 volts per battery or so. Aluminum sulfate should do okay by itself.
Citric acid wiill dissolve thelead anode and lead dioxide cathode while sulfuric acid will not attack the cathode. So my guess is, that the citric acid dissolves the cathode and that lowers the voltage.
should have put two x 2 in parallel then put those 2 set in series you would have had the right amount needed with just four, it's the way you connected them
I think you should have left them on charge much longer to give them a chance to get fully charged. 6 batteries even with acid would take a long time to charge with that small charger.
You should try to use a solution of lemon salt instead - You can mix the right amount whatever acid concentration you need. Can we replace a lead-acid battery with a Lithium-Ion battery instead?
When heating lemon juice (citric acid) it breaks down so the acid boiling is a bad thing if you want it to charge it you must do it slower and with temperature monitoring
And there is a lot of water in the lemon juice so it's going to cause issues either way with the oxygen reacting with the lead and the higher levels of hydrogen production than a normal battery
Even if you filter the lemon juice, pure lemon juice is a much weaker acid than 35% concentration sulphuric acid. Real battery electrolyte consists of 35% sulphuric acid & 65% distilled water. But then I guess everyone knows that. If i had to try lemon juice, I'd filter it a few times to get it as clear as possible. Then concentrate it till you get the correct specific gravity (1260 gravity measured with hydrometer) It may still not work but we'd like to see the results. Very entertaining channel though and great voiceover.
Citric acid can be used instead of cyanide as an electroplating flash agent my guess is your dissolving the lead into lead citrate more expensive batteries contain calcium metal and silver which also make citrates
What if you have flat battery situation and you use that battery to get a spark when car is given push-start. I kind of expected them to even try this.
That would work! I have started a car using a 9 volt transistor radio battery and push started the car.! The solenoid and starter motor are the worst enemies of the battery. It's also worth taking note that if you wire a 9 volt battery to the terminals then take the battery off to charge or replace you don't have to re-program a car radio with a code as the radio will have enough power to store the information.
OK so after talking to ChatGPT it seems that "During discharge (when current is drawn), sulfuric acid dissociates into ions, facilitating the flow of electrons and generating electrical energy." and that lemon juice, while acidic, is not reactive enough to provide enough ions. This implies it would cause a bottleneck for the electrons, which makes sense since you are seeing voltage and SOME current flow, but not as much as you would get from the more reactive sulfuric acid for the same volume of liquid. SOLUTION: A lot more batteries. You can also do a "bank" of a few batteries in series to increase the voltage, and then combine the banks in parallel to divide the current draw between them
Actually you can get a lot closer to sulfuric acid performance by making a saturated solution of sodium sulfate and aluminum sulfate for the electrolyte. It makes 2 volts per cell and has decent capacity and performance. and can provide power for at least some time. You can just use one car battery instead of a bank of small ones. it works ive tried it.
Now I wonder how long a battery would last, how many times can you charge/discharge it before it stops charging all the way up? Love this channel! We need more crazy hackers like you folks!
Wouldnt the liquid jumping over to the other cell be causing a short?. Be why your getting spuracted voltage drops. The expanshion of liquids means theres less space in the meaning there is to much acid.
I believe from memory "aka I can’t be bothered googling it" the chemical reaction that takes place in a lead acid accumulator as it was known is very specific with the chemical reaction involving particular compounds the reaction I believe is from lead and lead oxide then the acid actually binds with the plates on discharge to be come lead sulphate and the charge cycle reverses the process drives the lead out of the plates to restore the original state hence this reaction doesn’t work in the absence of sulphuric acid this being a key part of the reaction and isn’t necessarily replaceable with a different acid especially one so different as to if a different acid works it’s remotely possible I suppose but I doubt it.
When will people understand that you actually need a lot of Amps to even turn the starter motor, on 12V system you need roughtly 170A just to get 2KW of cranking power. STARTING A CAR CAN TAKE UP TO 400A WITHOUT A SWEAT💀
The sulfates from the sulferic acid are dissolving into the Lemmon juice. The organic material is disolved, causing a loss of internal resistance. You need to use something non organic if you are going to use lead and acid.
Run it in two series groups of parallel batteries to get it to 14v. That will get the voltage high enough. But with the voltage drop you're getting from the light, you're going to need a lot more batteries to get the current up enough to start an engine.
The lemon juice will cause internal shorts in the battery. IF you had filled it with water, you'd have a better chance of making a battery out of it after charging.
Fitting these batteries to brand new vehicles in the USA, could lead to mass consumer rejection / buy-backs of vehicles............. Due to the LEMON laws 😂
