battery charging

You are electrolysing water to it's component elements with a lot of electrical energy. That energy change is reversed in a millisecond if there is a spark.....boom.

It does not need 6 amps, or more, to cause this change. Simply too high a charge rate (an alternator can charge at 60+ amps with no problems on a good battery but on a poor or undersized battery that could easily ruin the battery in a short time). Simply passing a current through a cell which is not accepting the charge will electrolyse the electrolyte and things will be made worse, if it cannot vent easily.

Also you should not pressurise a cell in any way. That could cause deformation/buckling, resulting in an internal spark and explosion.

Checking the S.G is important but simply, if only one cell is gassing, that cell is likely to be on the way out, as the others are charging and that one is electrolysing.

There must be loads of manufacture/ supplier information on the net. You will get more good information there than listening to those who give you a bum-steer on any discussion forum.

I am assuming you are using a flooded lead/acid battery. Gel batteries require a different procedure and if you have one of those it is probably ruined if you have gassed the cells for any length of time.

Regards, RAB

Decades back as a kid when worked at an auto parts store after school, sometimes folks would come in poorer than church mice with dead batteries on the coldest days of the years, often scraping pennies together to buy the cheapest battery that we sold, and often didn't have enough for that. I used to take a tester and test batteries we'd taken in as cores, find the best one, clean it and toss it on a charger filled with distilled water mixed with lite liquid dish soap until bubbled good, then rinse it out good, then fill it with new electrolyte and charge it and test it. Then I'd swap it with their's...a core is a core, so long as I got one back and send them on their way after charging them 25 or 50 cents for the electrolyte. Usually got them through the winter, and they usually came back pretty greatful down the road when they could afford to buy a new one. I figure doesn't hurt nobody to help someone when I can, and try not to leave folks stranded.

Mark