Flight Training - January 2015 - 13

HOW IT WORKS

BY IAN J. TWOMBLY

Hard charger
How your airplane's battery keeps going-or not
LEARNING ABOUT AIRCRAFT batteries
will make you wish you had stayed awake
in high school chemistry. That's because
batteries are electrical devices driven by a
chemical reaction.
Inside the hard case sit individual cells,
each capable of producing two volts. A
12-volt battery, therefore, has six cells.
Two plates of lead, one solid lead and the
other lead oxide, interlace within the cell.
Surrounding all of it is a mixture of water
and sulfuric acid that acts as an electrolyte, carrying electricity to and from the
plates.
As the battery is called upon for power,
the positive charge of the lead dioxide
plate passes its energy through the electrolyte to the lead plate. Eventually, both
equalize to form lead sulfate. When the
battery is recharged the opposite happens, as the lead sulfate converts back to
transform the positive plate to lead oxide.
Aviation uses two primary types of
batteries: the traditional lead-acid battery

and the more modern "sealed" battery,
formally called a valve-regulated lead
acid battery. In aviation applications,
it features a fiberglass mesh between
the plates that contains the electrolyte.
Typically it's marketed as an AGM bat-

tery, which stands for absorbed gas mat.
Sealed batteries don't require as much
maintenance as the traditional lead-acid
battery, they don't discharge as fast, and
they typically don't leak fluid into the battery box-which can cause corrosion.

WHAT A DRAIN!

STEVE KARP

A battery's untimely end

Batteries die for a number of reasons, and under a number of different conditions. A traditional lead-acid battery will discharge by
one percent per day or more simply by sitting. A deep discharge, one in which the battery is completely drained for an extended
period, can result in an excessive build-up of lead sulfate. This powdery substance physically stops the battery from working. As a
pilot you can make sure a battery you are responsible for is on a trickle charger if it sits for an extended period, and if you deeply
discharge it during a start that you have it recharged again soon.

JANUARY 2015 FLIGHT TRAINING

/ 13



Flight Training - January 2015

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Flight Training - January 2015

Contents
Flight Training - January 2015 - Cover1
Flight Training - January 2015 - Cover2
Flight Training - January 2015 - Contents
Flight Training - January 2015 - 2
Flight Training - January 2015 - 3
Flight Training - January 2015 - 4
Flight Training - January 2015 - 5
Flight Training - January 2015 - 6
Flight Training - January 2015 - 7
Flight Training - January 2015 - 8
Flight Training - January 2015 - 9
Flight Training - January 2015 - 10
Flight Training - January 2015 - 11
Flight Training - January 2015 - 12
Flight Training - January 2015 - 13
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Flight Training - January 2015 - 55
Flight Training - January 2015 - 56
Flight Training - January 2015 - Cover3
Flight Training - January 2015 - Cover4
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