Have you ever experienced that weird happening one faithful morning when your car just won't start? Initially, we might think that the battery is just dead. But then again, you just bought that battery a month ago. It couldn't have been dead that soon. So what really happened? Well, you have just been a victim of a known phenomenon called battery sulfation.
A battery works by providing voltage from electrical processes between several plates suspended in a liquid solution. In lead acid batteries, the plates are a lead compound and the electrolyte in the liquid solution is sulfuric acid. Sometimes, the lead in the plates reacts with the sulfuric acid and forms lead sulfate. That is basically what sulfation is.
This could happen to any battery. Those who are most prone to this kind of chemical reaction are those batteries who have been left unused for a long time like in storage rooms or just being displayed and not bought in a store.
The symptoms of battery sulfation are usually the same for most batteries. Your car starts with a little voltage then suddenly dies as if drained immediately of all its energy.
The lead sulfate that has formed from the lead and the sulfuric acid is a kind of precipitate which slowly covers the metallic plates in crust. A precipitate is a kind of rust, which instead of eating away the metal it has formed on, just covers it entirely.
Fortunately for you, there are available devices in the market called battery desulfators which can rectify this problem easily. They simply remove the rust off of the plates and you'll find your batteries performing like new. Ask your mechanic about it.