Captain Pete
Guest
Anyone know of a like type replacement battery for apollo scooters? Does anyone make a high tech battery with longer run time? Vendors?
Thanks
Thanks
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One danger in switching from Lead Acid to Lithium that's possible is thruster burnout.
Lithium creates much more heat than LA in discharge also. May or may not be a problem with other components in the Apollo.
Tobin,
We have used LA, Silver Zinc and Li Ion extensively and what I saw in discharge was that the Lithium tends to discharge at a constant voltage while silver zinc drops then plateaus for long period. LA starts dropping in voltage as soon as you begin the draw. The drop in LA is slow of course, in our case 2-3 volts over 3 hours but it is a constant drop.
I am far from being an expert but I have monitored the volts/amps during many dives and I felt the thrusters were suffering greatly from the constant power supplied by the Li-Ion.
Extensive modifications were required to finally operate at full power over the life of the battery.
Concisely said, and exactly as observed under the experiments we performed at the Tahoe Benchmark. I might add that the Lead Acid results exhibited a pronounced slope that significantly hindered their performance, and belied much of their "common knowledge" reputation.<snip> A 5 x times greater capacity combined with higher initial voltage (7 x 4.2 = 29.4 volts), will result in a battery that will due to it's much lower internal resistance, output a voltage, even under load that is much higher than a 6 cell, 24 volt nominal SLA.
It's worthwhile remembering that capacity vs load also impact the apparent slope of any discharge curve.
A 10 amp hour SLA driving a 10 load will have a pretty steep curve. A 50 amp hour SLA driving the same load will have a much flatter curve, in part due to the 5:1 reduction in "C" rate of discharge, and in part due to the increase in the effective capacity of the battery at lower "C" rates.
<snip>Tobin
BTW, VERY nice work, both the trial and the written report. I hope that manufacturers find a way to be more supportive, by provding equipment for testing, for future trials.Concisely said, and exactly as observed under the experiments we performed at the Tahoe Benchmark.