Trickle charging

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Trickle charging is the process of charging a fully charged battery at a rate equal to its self-discharge rate, enabling the battery to remain at its fully charged level. This state occurs almost exclusively when the battery is not loaded, as trickle charging will not keep a battery charged if current is being drawn by a load. [1] [2] A battery under continuous float voltage charging is said to be float-charging. [3]

For lead–acid batteries under no-load float charging (such as in SLI batteries), trickle charging happens naturally at the end-of-charge, when the lead–acid battery internal resistance to the charging current increases enough to reduce additional charging current to a trickle, hence the name. In such cases, the trickle charging equals the energy expended by the lead–acid battery splitting the water in the electrolyte into hydrogen and oxygen gases. [4]

Other battery chemistries, such as lithium-ion battery technology, cannot be safely trickle charged. In that case, supervisory circuits (sometimes called battery management systems ) adjust electrical conditions during charging to match the requirements of the battery chemistry. For Li-ion batteries generally, and for some variants especially, failure to accommodate the limitations of the chemistry and electro-chemistry of a cell, with regard to trickle charging after reaching a fully charged state, can lead to overheating and fire or explosion. [5] [6]

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This glossary of civil engineering terms is a list of definitions of terms and concepts pertaining specifically to civil engineering, its sub-disciplines, and related fields. For a more general overview of concepts within engineering as a whole, see Glossary of engineering.

References

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  2. George Wood Vinal (December 1955). Storage batteries: a general treatise on the physics and chemistry of secondary batteries and their engineering applications. Wiley. ISBN   9780471908166 . Retrieved 12 January 2012.
  3. InfoWorld Media Group, Inc. (28 August 1989). InfoWorld. InfoWorld Media Group, Inc. p. 29. ISSN   0199-6649 . Retrieved 12 January 2012.
  4. David Anthony James Rand (24 February 2004). Valve-regulated lead-acid batteries. Elsevier. p. 258. ISBN   978-0-444-50746-4 . Retrieved 12 January 2012.
  5. Thomas Roy Crompton (11 May 2000). Battery reference book. Newnes. p. 47. ISBN   978-0-7506-4625-3 . Retrieved 12 January 2012.
  6. Henk Jan Bergveld; Wanda S. Kruijt; Peter H. L. Notten (1 November 2002). Battery management systems: design by modelling. Springer. p. 171. ISBN   978-1-4020-0832-0 . Retrieved 12 January 2012.