No room for a booom!!!

A few years ago a beverage cart driver walked into my shop. It was the first indication of trouble because a driver walking means something is broken. I asked her what she needed, and she yelled: “My bev cart is broken down on No. 6 cart path. The battery exploded. I couldn’t hear anything for about 45 minutes, but I am OK now.”

On that beverage cart model, the battery is under the driver’s seat, and the explosion’s force was directed out of the cart’s open bottom. She didn’t realize she was shouting, so she wasn’t really OK.

I found a trail of plastic shrapnel, lead battery plates, a streak of liquid and the beverage cart where it had rolled to a stop. I collected the pieces for recycling and towed the cart to the shop, leaving a streak of battery acid for the approaching rain to wash off the cart path.

Back in the shop, I learned the new-style, solid-state voltage regulator these beverage carts were outfitted with had failed in the “max-charging” mode and probably caused the explosion by overcharging the battery. I replaced the voltage regulator with the OEM replacement part. A few days later, another beverage cart battery exploded for the same reason. Since all the voltage regulators on the beverage carts were identical and the same age, I was concerned the rest would fail. To avoid more explosions, I replaced the new-style, solid-state voltage regulators on all six beverage carts with an older proven design that fails safe in the “no charging” mode. There were no more battery explosions after making the change.

How do you avoid explosive situations around your course and shop? Understanding the differences between battery types is a good place to start.
 

Disposable primary cells

Look around during the work day and you’ll discover you are surrounded by an amazing variety of batteries. They are essential to everyday activities such as opening garage doors with a wireless remote, unlocking car doors with a key fob or using a metal detector to find keys in the snow. The batteries in all these things are inexpensive throwaways that produce a small amount of power. They work for a while, and when they quit, you toss them into the recycling and replace them with a fresh one.
 

Built-in rechargeable batteries

Electronic devices such as smartphones, tablet computers and other electronic devices contain tiny rechargeable batteries that you recharge frequently with the special charger that came with them. The life of these batteries is long enough that before they quit working you will have moved on to a newer model of the electronic device. These, too, are low-power batteries.
 

Starting batteries

For the necessarily bigger batteries used to start the plow truck, mowers, tractors and utility vehicles, rechargeable lead acid car batteries are the most economical. The trend in these automotive style batteries is toward “maintenance-free” designs, so most of the starting batteries you have will be sealed say “maintenance free” on them and have a warning not to open them.

Automobile-style batteries last about five years if they are properly maintained. In the case of the maintenance-free batteries, “maintained” means washed once a month to remove accumulated dust and dirt that might be conductive while making sure the connections are clean and tight.

Lead-acid batteries live longest if they are kept fully charged. Keeping them fully charged is usually taken care of by the vehicle’s charging system when the vehicle is run regularly. Lead-acid batteries will slowly discharge themselves over time so a vehicle in storage should be checked once a month with a load-type battery tester and recharged as necessary.

In Michigan, fully charged batteries can be left out in the cold. However, if left in the cold in the discharged state, they will freeze and split their case, destroying the battery.

The second style of lead-acid battery is the flooded cell battery, represented by the less expensive full maintenance automotive-style starting batteries and the hard working “deep-cycle” batteries for electric golf course vehicles. Removable caps allow access to the individual cells of the battery for adding distilled water (to keep the electrolyte level where it should be) and for measuring the specific gravity of the electrolyte with a hydrometer as part of checking the battery’s health.
 

Electric vehicles

While several different chemistries are available to choose from and are available in maintenance-free versions, the least expensive way to store electrical power is with the deep-cycle version of the lead-acid flooded battery that requires regular maintenance.

This battery has been improved over the years, and is produced in large numbers for electric golf cars. It is also used for silent electric mowers and utility vehicles.

Since the amount of power these machines take to run is substantial, electric vehicles are powered by an array of batteries. For banks of batteries like this, semi-automatic watering systems are available which greatly improve the accuracy and speed of raising the electrolyte to the proper level without overfilling. When watering fleets of 60 to 400 vehicles weekly, the time savings of a watering system for batteries can be substantial. It is important to use distilled water because in the five years of the battery’s lifetime, the total volume of the battery liquid will have been replaced 16 times. If there were any minerals in the water, they would be left behind in the battery, shortening battery life.
 

Safety warnings

You should have an MSDS sheet on lead acid batteries in your MSDS binder. The MSDS sheet points out to the workers what hazards are associated with the materials constructed to create the battery. If you need an MSDS sheet, the battery companies have printable PDFs available online.

Warnings appear molded into the case or as stickers applied to the outside of batteries. Lead, sulfuric acid and hydrogen gas are part of the warnings anyone working with batteries should be prepared to deal with. In the typical lead-acid flooded battery, water is lost both when the battery is charging and when it is discharging. The water is broken down into hydrogen and oxygen, and bubbles out of the batteries.

Maintenance-free cells have a catalyst built into the caps that return the gasses, recombined as water, to the battery. In the older style, the gasses vent out of the battery – which explains the importance in keeping fire and sparks away from batteries. The gasses are produced in the perfect ration (HH:O) for an explosion. Good ventilation, caution and flame arrestor caps can prevent an explosion from happening.

Paul Grayson is the equipment manager at Crown Golf Club in Traverse City, Mich.