Slashdot Mirror
Ultracapacitors Soon to Replace Many Batteries?
einhverfr writes "According to an article in the IEEE Spectrun, the synergy between batteries and capacitors — two of the sturdiest and oldest components of electrical engineering — has been growing, to the point where ultracapacitors may soon be almost as indispensable to portable electricity as batteries are now. Some researchers expect to soon create capacitors capable of storing 50% as much energy as a lithium ion battery of the same size. Such capacitors could revolutionize many areas possibly from mobile computing (no worries about battery memory), electricity-powered vehicles, and more."
...your fingers may become part of the capacitor.
Obligatory blog plug: http://www.caseybanner.ca/
Do they burst and leak ballast (the fluid between the plates of a capacitor) like the capacitors commonly used in cheap motherboards today? I've heard that this ballast can be a serious health and environmental hazard. Of course, we all know that it often destroys motherboards by causing them to short circuit.
This news post excited me at first. Using ultracapacitors currently on the market you would something like 3Kg of big fat high quality ultra capacitors (3 or 4 at about $250US a piece) and a high-efficiency voltage boosting circuit to power your notebook computer for a time period comperable to a standard 2.5 to 3hr LiIon battery. Ultracapacitors, Supercapacitors, and other high-density high-capacity over physical space capacitors have a very delicate construction of internal plates (usually in the form of ribbons in a very tight roll with some sort of gel in between). Because of the special gels used and the tight and fine construction within them they usually have a tolerance somewhere between 2.5 and 3 volts or so. Your notebook computer probably runs off of 12V internally.
One thing to note is that capacitors can charge almost instantly. So if their claims are true going from a 3hr battery to a 1.5hr capacitor of the same size would have the benefit that you could charge up very quickly. For me I'd take the 1.5hr capacitor simply for this, as I'm usually in transit less than an hour when using my notebook on battery power. For people who need more extended periods there are always external batter packs (which I use when I go on international flights or other long trips).
a. You are climbing up and down ladders all day and don't want to trip over power cords
b. You work in a space with limited or no continuous power supply
c. You have 2 or 3 fully charged batteries and a quick charger
d. Not all tools work with compressed air
e. You kept slamming the cord to your old tool in the tailgate of your F350.
f. all of the above and a lot more.
If a car powered by this technology wrecks or impacts with another car, would it not be feasible that a significant amount charge would be depleted during an impact because the energy could not be fully recovered?
If I'm reading your post correctly you're worrying about a loss of kinetic energy not being recoverable for recharging the capacitor. That's not more of a problem here than with any car. Air friction already produces similar energy losses without any crash. My Prius suffers from the problem you describe, but it's no big deal. It has ordinary mechanical brakes in case the regenerative braking cannot recharge the battery fast enough to slow down the car, but they rarely engage and the car has never needed a brake job because the battery (plus friction) is already pretty good at absorbing the energy.
With capacitors, the danger with a crash is an explosion. This could in theory release much more energy than the cars had in kinetic energy upon impact (like when an ordinary car's gas tank ruptures and ignites). While people like to worry about 911 workers with can openers unwittingly shorting out the NiMH batteries in a Prius, a short-circuited battery can only discharge energy as fast as the chemical reactions inside will allow. You don't necessarily get this protection with a cap. Basically the pulse width you can get from a capacitor is mediated only by its internal resistance and its magnetic induction.
That can still be considerable. I used to have a 100000 uF cap (they were just coming out in the early 90s, and this one was the size of a small stack of dimes). When I charged it to 5V and discharged it, I had to wait a few minutes for the thing to drain. It had electrical characteristics similar to those of a worn out rechargeable. But when one of those big HV paper-and-oil caps shorts out, wow. A friend of mine made a can crusher for the Rutgers physics department out of a car-battery-sized HV capacitor. It was the size of a car battery not because of its capacitance (it had an unimpressive 100 uF in that regard) but because of the high voltage rating (at least a few kV). Most caps can only handle 35 or 50 volts. The stored energy in a capacitor rises only linearly with capacitance, but quadratically with respect to voltage. This thing discharged through a coil of copper piping (6-7 turns) wrapped around a plexiglass tube with a soda can inside. When it discharged through the coil, it induced a circular countercurrent in the can. Then the magnetic repulsion between the coil current and the can current crushed the can into the shape of a pencil in an instant- BANG! It woke up all the engineering students, that's for sure. I think they still use it.
While Li-Ion/Li-Polymer batteries don't have "memory", as per se, they do have load cycles with highly uneven wear. The more you discharge the battery, the more you wear your battery down per ampere used. Discharging from 33% full to zero (in reality when the protection circuitry cuts in) a single time cuts down your battery life more than discharging from full to 66% five times over.
This is the main reason why it's recommended that you charge Li-Ion batteries as often as possible, and even "top them off" when used regularly[1]. If you use a quarter of a charge per day, your battery will last much longer if you charge it daily or every other day than if you charge it every three or four days, even though the "cycles" used are the same.
I recommend keeping anything below 1/3 full for "emergency use" -- there when you really need it, but avoided otherwise.
If you frequently use a laptop (or cell phone) until it runs out of power, or even gets very low, it's better to go with a NiCd or other battery, cause Li-Ions will have a seriously short life span if used that way.
[1]: If a Li-Ion/Li-Polymer battery is stored, half charged is better -- the self-discharge and chemical damage done from this is lowest at around 40% charge, which due to the protection circuitry equates to about 50% on the meter.
No, it really isn't. There's this marvelous technology, instantiated in these crazy devices we call "fuses", see...
Seriously, all you have to do is fuse the array internally on a per-block basis, and any shorted module will blow the fuse(s) to its neighbors, and that's the end of it. No explosion. No nothing. Just pffft and some new fuses (which might take a service call, but heck, you just ran into someone else, that's the least of your problems.)
One of the many benefits of capacitor systems is that you can arrange them many ways for many varied benefits. Paralleled caps simply add, so there's no reason not to break a high energy system up into blocks, and many reasons to do so. Not the least of which is the above issue, but it also makes replacement and service less expensive, less complicated, and allows use of smaller, easier to manufacture parts. And of course it allows various kinds of charging models.
I'm inclined to trust the engineers. If I can think of it (and I am an engineer, but not that kind) then they've probably though of it a hundred times over. The main issue here is energy per unit volume, and to a lesser extent, per unit weight. When and if those issues are really solved, we're golden.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
That's why you have a household capacitor bank that sips juice from the grid, then discharges quickly for just these sort of applications.
These two processes are essentially the same thing - invert the current inside the electric machine and it will brake the vehicle. The only problem is how to do this. If you want to do that in a manner that every single joule finds it way to the battery, breaking torque will decrease as the speed decreases and you will have to apply mechanical brakes in one moment.
If you do this by forcing the same braking torque all the time strictly by the engine, which is quite simple to do, in one moment energy flow will not be toward the battery, but from the battery. This is due to internal resistance of the electric motor.
In general, electric vehicle must have mechanical brakes simply as a safety measure. But electric vehicles are essentially more safe that IC-based ones, as they always have two truly independent braking systems.
No sig today.
If what you say is true, then who do the makers of NiCd batteries say instruct you to fully deplete batteries on the instructions that ship with the products? They don't know the properties of their own products?
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.