Some General Types of Deep Cycle Batteries

Lead acid batteries are commonly classified as starting batteries, deep cycle batteries and marine batteries. The author wrote this article to tell something about types of deep cycle battery. Deep cycle batteries are used to store electricity in autonomous power systems, for emergency back-up and electric vehicles. These batteries are designed to discharge by as much as 80% of their capacity over thousands of charging and discharging cycles. True deep cycle batteries have solid lead plates however many batteries that do not have solid plates are called semi-deep cycle. Introduce the types of deep cycle batteries in detail as following:

Flooded – These batteries have a conventional liquid electrolyte. Standard types have removable caps so that the electrolyte can be diluted and the specific gravity measured, such batteries are supplied dry and you add distilled water. Standard flooded batteries are cheap and if they are kept topped up they are not overly sensitive to high charging voltages. Sealed batteries are supplied pre-flooded and have fixed valves to allow gases to vent during use however, they will still leak if inverted and the electrolyte can not be replenished so that over charging will cause damage.

Gelled Electrolyte – The electrolyte is a jelly and so will not leak. The electrolyte can not be diluted so that over charging must be avoided and these batteries may only last for 2 or 3 years in hot climates although with good care they can last for 5 years.

Absorbed Glass Mat (AGM) Batteries – The electrolyte is held between the plates absorbed in a fine boron-silicate mat. Like gelled electrolyte batteries they will not leak acid but they can withstand more careless treatment and are less sensitive to over charging since they are designed to retain vented gases. AGM batteries can also stand for 30 days in a totally discharged state and still be recharged successfully. The major drawback to these batteries is that they cost between 2 or 3 times as much as flooded batteries.

No matter which types of deep cycle batteries you have, they are all lead acid battery. They used the similar theory and different electrolyte. Maybe some of them are maintenance free batteries, but we are still careful of disposing of these batteries. Anyway, batteries adopted chemical reactions to store electric energy so that we need to know their basic characteristics to avoid unnecessary hurt.

If you want to know about batteries, please visit http://www.leoch.com