7. Insufficient charging rate.
8. Battery allowed to remain idle.
Dead Cells
1. Worn out Separators. The duties of separators are to prevent the plates from touching each other, and to prevent "treeing," or growth of active material from the negative to the positive plates. If they fail to perform these duties, the battery will become short-circuited internally. The separator troubles described on page 81 eventually lead to short-circuited cells.
2. Foreign Material. If a piece of lead falls between plates so as to later punch a hole through a separator, a short circuit will result. Great care should be taken in burning plates on the straps to prevent lead from running down between plates, as this lead will cause a short circuit by punching through the separator.
3. Accumulation of Sediment. The active material which drops from the plates accumulates in the "mud" space in the bottom of the jar. If this rises until it touches the bottom of the plates, a short-circuit results. Usually it is advisable to renew the positives in a battery which has become short-circuited by sediment, since the sediment comes largely from the positives, and if they have lost enough active material to completely fill the sediment space, they are no longer fit for use.
4. Badly sulphated plates and separators, impurities which attack the plates.
Loss of Capacity
A battery loses capacity due to a number of causes. Some of them have already been considered.
1. Impurities in the Electrolyte. These have already been discussed.