What is a wet cell battery?

And what is the difference with a sealed lead acid battery?

Links to pictures would be appreciated

Reply to
Denis Leveille
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a wet cell is something likely used in your riding mower, or motorcycle. a Sealed lead acid is just what it implies sealed and can be positioned in any position without leaking any of the acid out.

Reply to
tailfeathers

The electrolyrte is instead of a watery dilute suphuric acid, a gel.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

A wet cell battery is like the one you find in a car. It contains liquid sulphuric acid.

A sealed lead acid (SLA) or a gel cell has the acid in gelled form and the battery is totally sealed.

SLA is good because they can be run inverted/angled and in environments where normal lead acid (wet cell) batteries are not as safe.

The batteries found in most R/C field/flight boxes (12V 7A) are of the SLA variety.... Portable, non-leaking etc.

One siginficant difference between the two is that SLA batteries can not be charged as fast as wet cell. That's normally not an issue for R/C use.

Reply to
The Raven

Pictures are easy.

  1. Open the hood of your, or your parent's car. Wet cell battery.

  1. Open the battery compartment on your field box, a "jump start" power pack, a security system, a cordless spotlight, a computer UPS, or any number of other small 12V items. Sealed gel cell battery.

Reply to
Mathew Kirsch

Thanks, The Raven and Mathew. Your descriptions are exactly what I was looking for.

Reply to
Denis Leveille

Would it be safe to charge a sealed lead acid battery with a 1 amp charger?

Reply to
Denis Leveille

Look at the side of the battery, most manufacturers print the charge rates on the side. The typical 12V 7Amp battery that we use in field boxes typically take charge rates up to 2Amps.

If the charger is designed for charging lead acid batteries (wet or SLA) it should be OK at that rate. If the charger isn't designed for lead acid batteries I'd go and buy a suitable "wall wart" charger from your local electrical store (eg. Tandy or whatever).

Reply to
The Raven

The charger I am talking about is the Battery Tender Plus. I rarely use one of my cars (long story) and I use this charger to keep the battery charged. It is a slow / trickle charger with a very good reputation for car / motorcycle batteries. I guess it should be OK to charge my sealed lead acid batteries.

Reply to
Denis Leveille

It may be fine but I'd monitor it very careful the first time you use it. Any hint of the battery getting hot or venting, pull the plug!

Reply to
The Raven

Some of the wal-warts used to charge gell-cell or lead-acid batteries have no sort of voltage control at all. For example, the one that came with the little electric car that my daughter rides in. It'll happily cook the battery if you let it.

When you're overcharging a Pb battery, you can hear it -- it sounds like frying eggs, very soft. This is bad. If your charger does this, get a new one ...

The battery won't really get hot -- the charger doesn't charge fast enough. But it'll happily convert the electrolyte into hydrogen and oxygen -- not fast enough to cause an explosion hazard, but it still ruins the battery over time.

Reply to
Doug McLaren

The little rat is probably going through Big Brother's Playboy collection! Dr.1 Driver "There's a Hun in the sun!"

Reply to
Dr1Driver

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