US 5,319,298 AGranted

Battery maintainer and charger apparatus

OwnerVern Wanzong, A. Gerald Marquezinventors

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Abstract

A current limited, voltage regulated, battery maintainer and charger apparatus includes a circuit for monitoring and maintaining a 12 volt storage battery, determining the presence of forward polarity and in response controlling the amount of charging current necessary to continuously maintain the battery in a ready state, without overcharging or causing other damage to said battery. The battery maintainer device selectively charges 12 volt lead acid, gel-cell or sealed lead acid batterys using current limitation and voltage regulation circuitry, to modulate an amount of current to maintain a voltage potential across the battery, whereby the current flow can drop to zero current flow, to maintain a constant and continuous storage battery voltage of 13.8 volts. The battery maintainer apparatus also includes a variety of safety features not ordinarily associated with a battery charger including but not limited to a circuit which shuts out charging current when reverse polarity is detected, a feature whereby current is not supplied to the output terminals until said terminals have come in contact with a storage battery of sufficient initial voltage, thus preventing the output terminals from sparking should they accidentally contact each other prior to hook-up with the storage battery. Furthermore, the battery maintainer device is designed for constant, continuous and non-supervised use on all 12 volt lead acid, gel-cell, and sealed lead acid batteries.

Claims1

Dependent claims

A battery maintainer apparatus for preserving a storage battery at the optimum charge, comprising:

a charging means for charging the storage battery to a full charge;
and
a maintainer means for maintaining the battery at the full charge, wherein the maintainer means comprises:
a sensing means, to sense the voltage of the storage battery, wherein at least a minimal amount of voltage must be detected before the battery maintainer apparatus applies a charging current to the storage battery;
a comparison means, to compare the storage battery voltage against a high voltage reference and a low voltage reference, wherein charging current will be applied to the storage battery when the storage battery voltage is greater than the low voltage reference but less than the high voltage reference;
a controller, to selectively vary the charging current applied to the storage battery, wherein the charging current is a current limited/voltage regulated charging current such that when the storage battery is in a transient state the charging current is constant and the voltage is varying, and when the battery is in a maintenance state the current is varying and the voltage is constant, the charging current having a low charging current of zero milliamps, a high charging current of 300 milliamps and an intermediate charging current selectively variable between zero milliamps and 300 milliamps, to maintain the storage battery voltage at a generally constant voltage;
and
a safety means, to selectively divert the charging current away from the storage battery when the storage battery voltage is less than the low voltage reference and when the polarities of at least one output terminal and the storage battery become reversed.

5 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.