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Batteries produceing carbon monoxide?

I charged my two boat batteries and the lawn mower battery and put them in the utility room for winter storage the other day. We just got a carbon monoxide detector in the house, and after I brought the batteries in, we are getting a pretty high CO reading. I put the batteries outside and the reading goes back to 0. Is this normal or are the batteries not in proper working order. I put the detector in the garage by the car and there is'nt a reading coming from the car battery. Any info would be great. I'd like to keep the batteries inside over winter, but I don't like the CO problem. Thanks in advance
 
Interesting! I understood that while charging a battery hydrogen and oxygen were produced....I wonder how your particular sensor senses CO levels. I checked wikipedia and came up with this about a type of CO monitors:

"Electrochemical
A type of fuel cell that instead of being designed to produce power, is designed to produce a current that is precisely related to the amount of the target gas (in this case carbon monoxide) in the atmosphere. Measurement of the current gives a measure of the concentration of carbon monoxide in the atmosphere. Essentially the electrochemical cell consists of a container, 2 electrodes, connection wires and an electrolyte - typically sulfuric acid. Carbon monoxide is oxidised at one electrode to carbon dioxide whilst oxygen is consumed at the other electrode. For carbon monoxide detection, the electrochemical cell has advantages over other technologies in that it has a highly accurate and linear output to carbon monoxide concentration, requires minimal power as it is operated at room temperature, and has a long lifetime (typically commercial available cells now have lifetimes of 5 years or greater). Until recently, the cost of these cells and concerns about their long term reliability had limited uptake of this technology in the marketplace, although these concerns are now largely overcome"

I wonder if the added presense of elevated hydrogen levels skewed how the sensor was sensing the CO levels....??????????
 
uhhh... yeah, batteries contain sulfuric acid (H2SO4) and do produce hydrogen (H2) when charging... no carbon in there.... it's possible the fuel cell in the CO alarm was reacting to the H from the batteries.

huh, just found this...
The reason you got a readout on your CO monitor from the garage area was probably because of the interference gas of hydrogen sulfide that was evolved from the charging battery. The CO and H2S sensor are exactly the same so therefore you will get cross-sensitivity. Each sensor does have a filter to prevent the other gas from getting in but some alawys does.
Good luck!
 
Thanks for the info guys. I let the batteries sit out in the garage for a day and then brought them in and there is a zero reading on the CO detector. They must have still been giving off hydrogen from chargeing them the first time I brought them in.
 
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