Battery Desulfators

Basic technical information.
Basically, lead acid batteries are made up of lead and lead dioxide plates immersed in an electrolyte or sulfuric acid.
During normal use the sulfuric acid reacts with the lead dioxides plates to generate electricity (i.e. power) and in the process a thin layer of solid lead sulfate crystals are deposited on the plates. If inspected, these crystals will cover the battery plates and looks white as shown below.

This hardened lead sulfate is an unwanted product of this chemical reaction and is called sulfation, one of the main reasons why lead acid batteries start loosing capacity and eventually become unable to hold any charge and need to be thrown away. This happens because these large crystals clog the pores of the lead dioxide active material and therefore charging becomes impossible.
During charging, the reverse process occurs and the lead sulfate is converted back to lead dioxide and sulfuric acid, restoring the battery to it's pre-discharge state. Unfortunately, this charging process is not perfect and in fact with every charging/discharging cycle, more sulfate is deposited on the plates and never removed, thus the battery loosing slowly it's original capacity. That's why a battery is also rated on the number of cycles it can sustain. A cycle is considered to be a battery from a charged state, discharged and charged again. Expensive fork lift batteries are rated to sustain > 3000 cycles i.e. if the battery is charged/discharged daily, the battery can survive 8+ years with very little loss of capacity!
A battery desulfator is a device which will clean the batteries internal plates, i.e. it's able to remove the hardened crystals (which were not previously removed by the normal charging process) and restore the battery to a better state, holding more charge and capacity. A good desulfator uses pulse frequency to dissolve these crystals.

There is a lot of literature and videos on the internet about Battery Desulfators however all seem to lack to draw a definite conclusion, do Battery Desulfators really work?

Deep Cycle Batteries are expensive! In fact I preferred to spend extra Euros on the Desulfators in the hope that they will maintain my batteries in better shape and prolong their useful life.

Installation
I opted for these Battery Desulfators from infinitumstore. I like their design, fully enclosed/sealed making them ideal to sit next to batteries. Also these devices use Amplitude Modulated Pulses at the resonance frequency of the crystals to shatter the covalent bonds that hold it together.

I installed 4 desulfators in total, 2 in parallel for the 24v forklift batteries while another 2 desulfators in parallel for the Trojan 12v system.

The image below is showing the installation details.

• The top 2 desulfators are 12v
• They are installed just after the 12v battery main switch. I used an old (but unused) 240v AC 45 amp fuse box, containing a 30 and 15 amp fuse inside. I used the 30 amp as the 12v battery main fuse, while the 15 amp fuse holder for the 12v desulfators. I did replace the desulfators 15 amp fuse wire with a 5 amp fuse wire.
• The bottom 2 desulfators are 24v
• They are also installed just after the 24v battery main switch. I used an old (but unused) 240v AC 60 amp fuse box, containing two 30 and one 15 amp fuse inside. I paralleled the 30 amp fuses as the 24v battery main fuse, while the 15 amp fuse holder for the 24v desulfators. I also did replace the desulfators 15 amp fuse wire with a 5 amp fuse wire.
• All components have been fitted to a piece of wood which in turn was fitted against the battery box.

The desulfators have been installed just against the outside of the battery box.