EEStor Issued a Patent For Its Supercapacitor

An anonymous reader sends us to GM-volt.com, an electric vehicle enthusiast blog, for the news that last week EEStor was granted a US patent for their electric-energy storage unit, of which no one outside the company (no one who is talking, anyway) has seen so much as a working prototype. We've discussed the company on a number of occasions. The patent (PDF) is a highly information-rich document that offers remarkable insight into the device. EEStor notes "the present invention provides a unique lightweight electric-energy storage unit that has the capability to store ultrahigh amounts of energy." "The core ingredient is an aluminum coated barium titanate powder immersed in a polyethylene terephthalate plastic matrix. The EESU is composed of 31,353 of these components arranged in parallel. It is said to have a total capacitance of 30.693 F and can hold 52.220 kWh of energy. The device is said to have a weight of 281.56 pound including the box and all hardware. Unlike lithium-ion cells, the technology is said not to degrade with cycling and thus has a functionally unlimited lifetime. It is mentioned the device cannot explode when being charge or impacted and is thus safe for vehicles."

Comments

It must be real

[Arancaytar]

What's the benefit of a patent for something that doesn't exist yet? At most, they're issued for things that are obvious or have existed for decades. ;)

Re:It must be real

[Thanshin]

Don't lose hope. Maybe there's a natural occurrence of an aluminum coated barium titanate powder immersed in a polyethylene terephthalate plastic matrix.

For all we know, that could be the composition of the droppings of a rare butterfly.

Re:It must be real

[Anonymous Coward]

To prevent it from existing unless you pay a ransom.

Re:It must be real

[Nefarious Wheel]

You're thinking of one of the stereoisomers of Thiotimoline, I believe. One of them is endochronic.

Re:It must be real

[aliquis]

Now if only you could get the fucking butterflies to do their droppings at the same spot 31,353 times in a row.

Re:It must be real

[nobodylocalhost]

Anyone wondered what kind of health hazard this thing really is? powdered metal can getting into your lungs, skin, and digestive track during production. I wonder if that is partly the reason why they don't have a prototype yet.

Re:It must be real

[Simonetta]

Goodness, yes, it must be real. I always trust announcements of science-fiction-like devices that have grammar errors in the press releases.

    Where can I invest the what remains of my life savings in this wonderful invention?

Re:It must be real

[Arancaytar]

rare butterfly.

Or unicorns.

Re:It must be real

[Aphoxema]

You worry too much, it's not like those asian workers who made batteries got exposed to cadmium or lithium or mercury or lead dust or anything.

It's people like you that really drive down the economy with your fear mongering.

But it's not like we need supercapacitors, our environment is perfectly fine with all the batteries we throw into it.

Re:It must be real

[Qatz]

Yes, but only forward.

Re:It must be real

[cdpage]

"What's the benefit of a patent for something that doesn't exist yet?" So that no one will make it... that includes the holder of said patent.

Re:It must be real

[smilindog2000]

Here's the skinny on EEStor, so far as I can read.

Their new patent is a clean-up version of their old patent. Unfortunately, it's still a piece of marketing BS. Look at claim 1. It has 15 steps! If you avoid any one of them, you do not infringe. The rest of the patent is similar - not designed to protect, but designed to market an idea.

The physics of EEStor seems to have been replicated by half a dozen other companies, so we can probably begin to believe that the EEStore ultra-capacitors are possible in principle. However, a fully charged EEStor capacitor will explode on impact with about the force of 100 sticks of dynamite. I've thought about this problem for two years, without any solution. Hopefully the guys at EEStor are wiser, but no one else on the Internet has a solution either.

In short, don't bother believing this until you see it.

Re:It must be real

[lysergic.acid]

asking a valid question isn't fear mongering. it wasn't that long ago that match manufacturers were still using white/yellow phosphorous despite its known health hazards and red phosphorous being known to be just as effective while not being lethally toxic to factory workers.

while i'm sure this technology can probably be employed without significant health risks to human beings, it's rather foolish to speak as if worker exploitation and endangerment never happens. heck, i think there was a story on /. just a few months ago about a chemical powder use for adding butter-flavor to microwave popcorn causing lung-disease in factory workers (it's only hazardous when inhaled, not when eaten).

i'm the first person to support the need for the U.S. to switch to an electric-powered transportation infrastructure, but that's no reason to be reckless and accept new and untested technologies unquestioningly. after all, a lot of American companies specifically open overseas factories in places like China to capitalize on their lax environmental and work place safety regulations. the days of corporate irresponsibility are not yet in the past.

Re:It must be real

[Aphoxema]

I agree completely, and I think you're cool, but you wouldn't happen to be demented would you?

Re:It must be real

[davester666]

It still needs to be perfected before it can be put into a car.

Namely, this problem needs to be fixed: "functionally unlimited lifetime".

The auto makers depend on parts sales, and these batteries are the new 'engine'...

Re:It must be real

[peragrin]

Where did you hear about the explode on impact part? I have been wondering what happens under such things but I haven't seen a good answer yet.

Re:It must be real

[robbak]

I suppose it is the result of multiplying 52 kW by 3600 seconds and coming up with 187 megajoules.

Release all that energy in an uncontrolled way and things go boom.

One hopes that the devices will have internal fuses, so that if a short happens in one section, will only dump a little of the energy. Even so, preventing a runaway occurring in an extreme situation (capacitor in a compactor with many sharp pieces of solid steel?) would be very difficult.

Re:It must be real

[mrmeval]

Isn't that about two gallons of gasoline? And two gallons of gasoline weights how much?

Re:It must be real

[budgenator]

Inhalation:
Causes irritation to the respiratory tract. Symptoms may include coughing, shortness of breath.
Ingestion:
Not considered toxic although aluminum chloride may form slowly in the digestive tract with nausea, vomiting, other gastrointestinal effects in extreme cases.
Skin Contact:
May cause irritation with redness and pain.
Eye Contact:
Causes irritation, redness, and pain.
Chronic Exposure:
Pulmonary fibrosis from chronic inhalation has been reported. Chronic exposure has also produced numbness in fingers and (in one case) brain effects.
Aggravation of Pre-existing Conditions:
Persons with pre-existing skin disorders or eye problems or impaired respiratory function may be more susceptible to the effects of the substance. Aluminum pwoder

not too outrageous for an industrial chemical.

Re:It must be real

[Behrooz]

a chemical powder use for adding butter-flavor to microwave popcorn causing lung-disease in factory workers [osha.gov] (it's only hazardous when inhaled, not when eaten).

Microwaving the oils of that popcorny goodness sure doesn't volatilize them into a miasma of oily-popcorn-smell which is inhaled by everyone in the vicinity.

Personally, I can't stand the smell of manufactured popcorn. :P

Re:It must be real

[jcr]

Depending on the formulation, two gallons of gasoline would way around 12 pounds.

-jcr

Re:It must be real

[Phoghat]

Does So Exist. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flux_capacitor#Flux_capacitor]

Re:It must be real

[xtronics]

In other words, it is useless as a way to power a car. Energy density matters.

Re:It must be real

[mrmeval]

Thanks. I did finally find the wide range of densities. I suppose to be fair I should choose the one with the most energy.

Re:It must be real

[peragrin]

That doesn't explain what happens when you break it though. Density is part of the design. I would expect that only the actual damaged parts would release energy, as it is no longer being stored. So while breaking it in half would release some energy, the two halves should hold on to the bulk of it.

Hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder what they will charge for this?

Re:Hmmm

[mevets]

I think the parent was employing a pun on the word charge. Like a frog, a joke cannot survive dissection.

Re:Hmmm

[Ihmhi]

Be positive, it won't be much at all.

Cannot explode but can be used in cars?

[MosesJones]

Since when couldn't Gasoline be used in Cars? Isn't the whole principle of it to make it explode to drive the pistons? Now its good that this thing allegedly won't explode while being charged but with all technologies its about minimising risks through sensible practice rather than their complete elimination.

For instance I'd be willing to bet that applying 10MV at 10MA across this thing would cause some pretty funky changes that would look like an explosion.

Personally I'd like to see some sort of Darwin device in the next generation of cars, "cannot explode unless user should be removed from the human race".

Re:Cannot explode but can be used in cars?

[Khenke]

It's only in Hollywood gasoline make cars explode with impact (or rather just before). In real world gasoline will burn yes but rarely explode as it need pretty exact amount of gasoline and oxygen to explode. Stop using Hollywood movies for education.

Re:Cannot explode but can be used in cars?

[AuMatar]

It's actually difficult to make gasoline explode- it needs just the right amount of air. Too little and it won't combust, too much and it burns instead of exploding. That's why you rarely see car explosions outside of movies- they may catch fire, but they won't explode.

By the way, you don't really want gas to explode in the engine either- that damages it. In fact, gasolines have a rating called knock which measures it's likelihood of explosion. That's whats measured by the octane of the fuel. Modern cars want very low knock.

Re:Cannot explode but can be used in cars?

[Beltonius]

Um, not really.

A combustion event, aka 'explosion' occurs at the beginning of every power stroke in a reciprocating internal combustion engine. When an engine 'knocks' there is a combustion event as well. What makes it a 'knock' instead of a normal part of the power cycle is that it occurs at the wrong time. Knocking indicates perhaps a spark timing issue or the use of a fuel with an improper octane rating (which indicates resistance to knock). Octane ratings describe the resistance of the fuel to spontaneous ignition relative to a mixture of iso-octane (by definition Octane rating of 100) and n-heptane (by definition an octane rating of 0). Extrapolation is what allows for an octane rating of greater than 100. Diesel fuel has a similar concept, a Cetane number which indicates susceptibility to "spontaneous" combustion, since diesels use compression to ignite combustion events rather than an electrical spark.

Modern cars do depend on a much higher octane rating than historical vehicles. This allows for running on a much higher compression ratio and/or the use of turbo-chargers which allow for an engine that is thermodynamically more efficient (as compression ratio approaches infinity, thermodynamic efficiency approaches unity). This is one reason why diesels (compression ratios in the 20's rather than 5-10 for gasoline vehicles) get better mileage for a comparable vehicle/power output.

You are, however, entirely correct about the relative difficulty of causing a gasoline burn or explode. Only the vapor state is flammable and only at a narrow range of particle size.

Re:Cannot explode but can be used in cars?

[Firethorn]

Modern cars do depend on a much higher octane rating than historical vehicles.

It's actually the opposite - Our cars are normally built to run on pretty low octane ratings today. We have to take a huge swath of the stack for gasoline to satisfy our demand for it, and the result is that our gas, knock wise, is pretty low.

From what I can find, the Model T ran on 93 octane. Not exactly what I'd call a low octane.

Early gas was actually pretty high octane(but tolerances weren't as tight); we didn't actually need all that much of it and it was still competing against Ethanol*, among other fuels. It was only later that gasoline demand started getting high enough that they started running short on the higher octanes, and needed to mix in lesser octane hydrocarbons.

One interesting fact i came across was that the Model T was Ford's original dual fuel vehicle - it featured manual spark advance control and could run on anything from 100% gasoline to 100% ethanol.

*During this time period, everything was competing. There were dozens of electric car companies; steam, ethanol, diesel, gasoline were all competing.

Re:Cannot explode but can be used in cars?

[Lumpy]

I get a kick out of that as well. I know capacitors. and they can explode.

Gimmie one and a way to significantly exceed it's specifications.

I'm guessing 72,000V at and inrush current of 20 amps would make this thing explode.

Re:Cannot explode but can be used in cars?

[vlm]

Now its good that this thing allegedly won't explode while being charged

Welcome to the wonderful world of internal resistance.

Wikipedia files it under output impedance, although no one outside of maybe textbooks refers to it that way.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_resistance

In summary, no perfect current or voltage sources exist. All power supplies can be modeled as a "perfect" supply with a series resistance.

In practice the difference can be huge. Short out an old fashioned 10 aH zinc copper gravity cell and nothing particularly interesting occurs due to its high internal resistance. Short out a 10 aH nicad, and good luck dodging the shrapnel.

Another amusing comparison, when NiMH batteries were very new, like in the late 80s, RC car racers like myself were impressed that they held around twice the charge of the old NiCd technology. However, the internal resistance was so high, that they didn't go so fast. I guess in the intervening decades NiMH now has a low enough resistance to use in RC cars, but that sure wasn't always the case.

Internal resistance has always been the problem for supercapacitors. I remember being quite disappointed when, as a kid a few decades ago, I bought one of those newfangled carbon based super caps, like 0.1 farad at 5.5 volts, and expected if a couple thousand uF made a shower of sparks when shorted out, 0.1 farad should make like an atomic explosion when shorted, however the internal resistance of the cap was like multiple ohms so it didn't even spark. I vaguely remember that once charged it ran a LED a long time though.

The problems super caps always had (until now?) is you need a ultra high conductivity for the plates to get a low internal resistance and a ultra low conductivity for the dielectric (not dialectic, that's another story) to get low leakage currents, and both have to be compatible with each other (from an electrical standpoint, sodium metal foil and ultra purified water sounds like a good capacitor design, but from a chemical standpoint, maybe not so good. Chlorine is probably an even better insulator than water in this application). Finally it would be nice if it were made without toxic waste like PCBs or beryllium oxide insulators (both of which have been used in electronics applications in the past). And then there's minor little things like mechanical stability, manufacturing problems, and material sources like tantalum. Their claim to have worked around all those problems is what makes this patent very impressive, if true.

Re:Cannot explode but can be used in cars?

[Lumpy]

Typically turbo and supercharged engine NEED lower compression engines to perform best. also you are using the higher octane to mostly overcome the fact that your air charge went from 80DegF to 210degF. By running a properly designed turbo system and ECM with correctly sized intercoolers you dont need the insane high octane gas and can easily get away with midgrade.

BUT, your ECM, if it's properly programmed will take advantage of the high octane gas.

They have ran turbos on cars for decades. MY dad had a old chevy that had a turbo and a pressure fuel modulator that as the boost increased, it increased the fuel by cranking up the fuel pressure so the carberuator would dump more in. They ran turbos on 87 octane.... Pig rich, but they ran them without high octane gas.

Re:Cannot explode but can be used in cars?

[timeOday]

In real world gasoline will burn yes but rarely explode as it need pretty exact amount of gasoline and oxygen to explode.

Perhaps the overriding point is that car fires are deadly, even without an explosion. (Granted, the huge inferno in my link was also fueled by cargo and tires, as well as gasoline and diesel).

Re:Cannot explode but can be used in cars?

[mcgrew]

Isn't the whole principle of it to make it explode to drive the pistons?

No. Gasoline doesn't explode in your pistons unless you're using too low an octane or your ignition timing is off.

The gasoline burns steadily, albeit quickly. The piston moves not from an explosion, but from the expansion of the combusting gasoline/air mixture.

When your engine knocks or pings, that is explosion. It's not good for your engine at all.

Re:Cannot explode but can be used in cars?

[hardburn]

The gas back then often got high octane ratings by using a lead additive. Increased environmental regulations for leaded gas are one reason why engine efficiency dropped so badly in the '70s (most because lead doesn't work with catalytic converters rather than regulating lead directly).

Blending in some kind of alchol may get us 120 octane pump gas once again. Another problem solved by booze!

Re:Cannot explode but can be used in cars?

[HateBreeder]

You can't apply 10MV at 10MA on the device, unless it has exactly 1 Ohms of resistance.

Re:Cannot explode but can be used in cars?

[maz2331]

If we really want to split hairs, we should note that "explode" and "detonate" are two different concepts. Some explosions are detonations, and others are simple deflagration where the fuel burns rapidly but evenly over some period of time.

The physics of the two is vastly different. A detonation denotes an event where the material burns at a rate that is supersonic, and a deflagration is subsonic.

In a detonation, an instantaneous pressure jump moves through the material faster than the material's normal speed of sound. This produces instantaneous pressures that can go into the millions of PSI. A strong enough shock will shatter any material.

Occasionally, the fuel/air mixture in an automobile cylinder will partially detonate. These cause weak shocks that we notice as "knocks" and "pings" - and which over time will destroy the pistons in the engine. High compression, low octane fuel, and local hotspots in the cylinders are the usual reason for this.

As a side note, even smokeless gunpowder doesn't detonate, it just deflagrates on a time scale of 0.5 - 3 milliseconds. If it did detonate, the gun would quite spectacularly imitate a fragmentation grenade.

From the perspective of an observer outside the combustion both can produce similar effects, though detonations are much more spectacular.

Re:Cannot explode but can be used in cars?

[Thelasko]

It was only later that gasoline demand started getting high enough that they started running short on the higher octanes, and needed to mix in lesser octane hydrocarbons.

Nope, it was the EPA making the refiners stop using lead. Otherwise you are correct, gasoline used to have a much higher octane rating.

Re:Cannot explode but can be used in cars?

[0100010001010011]

Next July 4th, get 1 gallon of gasoline and pour it on some yard scrap. Wait 10 minutes. Walk right up to where you pored and strike a match...

Gasoline tanks won't explode Hollywood style, but if you leak a large amount of gas on a large day, it will vaporize. Any sparks or other ignition sources in the area and you're proper fucked.

Re:Cannot explode but can be used in cars?

[evanbd]

The EEStor device isn't really a supercap, in that it's not like normal supercaps in either construction or operation. It's "merely" a ceramic cap with a very high dielectric constant and very high breakdown voltage. The model they discuss is 30F in 280lb -- hardly competitive with the little tiny 1F supercaps you can buy cheap. Except that it runs at 3.5kV rather then 5.5V.

Also, you can buy more conventional supercaps with very low ESR these days. For example, Cooper Bussman makes a supercap that's 100F at 2.5V, with a 20mOhm ESR. Available at Digikey for $26.

Re:Cannot explode but can be used in cars?

[mcgrew]

Welcome to the wonderful world of internal resistance.

Wikipedia files it under output impedance, although no one outside of maybe textbooks refers to it that way

Impedance acts exactly like resistance, except it's only for alternating currents. Run 5v DC through a coil and it will still be 5v. Run 5v AC through a coil and your output voltage will go down. That's called impedance; impedance impeded AC while letting DC pass. The higher current's frequency the more it is impeded.

Wikipedia is correct; DC current cannot pass through a capacitor, so it is indeed impedance rather than resistance.

Re:Cannot explode but can be used in cars?

[bavid]

Not sure what you consider to be "high" internal resistance, but one supercap example has a rated internal resistance of 0.29 mOhm. On the model I worked with (since discontinued) the rated current was about 4000 A. Not sure if that was just the rated voltage divided by the internal resistance, or if it was something lower to take heating into account.

Re:Cannot explode but can be used in cars?

[Firethorn]

Actually, they weren't putting lead in the gas yet in the model t days. It was after that - when demand was rising and octanes falling that they started putting lead in.
By that very wiki article - TEL(Tetra-ethyl lead)'s antiknock properties were discovered in 1921.
The Model T ford was produced 1908 to 1927. So almost the entire run of Model T's would have had been designed to run on unleaded gas. Unleaded gas that - up to the '20s or so was actually pretty high octane because they could pick the part of the refinery stack with higher octanes for the gasoline(more t-butanol than n-pentane, for example). Later Model T's were built with lower compression engines due to the falling average octane ratings.
On a sidenote - man, talk about making a difference, they say that lead levels in blood have dropped by 75% since they banned TEL.

Re:Cannot explode but can be used in cars?

[pcairic]

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octane_rating

Re:Cannot explode but can be used in cars?

[sjames]

Note that in Hollywood, contact with the ground is essential to a car's well being. The moment it goes off a cliff it will explode while still in free-fall. They must have a lot of static electricity out there...

Re:Cannot explode but can be used in cars?

[fnj]

A combustion event, aka 'explosion' occurs at the beginning of every power stroke

It's not an explosion. It's rapid, but controlled, combustion (burning).

When an engine 'knocks' there is a combustion event as well.

Nope. Knocking is preignition or detonation (explosion).

Re:Cannot explode but can be used in cars?

[Thelasko]

So that means everyone in the thread is right and for once on /. we can all sing in perfect harmony, right? I really hope that's the case.

I think so, a little from column A and a little from column B FTW.

Re:Cannot explode but can be used in cars?

[vlm]

Wikipedia is correct; DC current cannot pass through a capacitor, so it is indeed impedance rather than resistance.

You, ah, reading the same wikipedia page I am? We agree about impedance and AC current etc, but the wikipedia page is a totally different topic.

Output impedance
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
    (Redirected from Internal resistance)

and then a whole bunch of talk about internal resistances of batteries and such.

What I was getting at is that in a sense an output impedance is a complex measurement with a real an imaginary component, and an internal resistance of a battery (or a big super cap in a DC application) is basically an output impedance with a zero "j" or reactive component. But any one in the industry would laugh if you called it an output impedance instead of an internal resistance.

The whole internal resistance thing is relevant to this super duper capacitor in that if it's low enough, a short circuit makes a big bang. If it's too high then it dissipates alot of energy as heat when you try to draw too much power out of it. If the internal resistance is way too high, you don't get to pull energy out of it fast enough to heat up or blow up anything including itself. The original post was just the usual fear of technology, what I don't understand must be evil, etc, and I'm thinking that a super duper capacitor like this would be inherently safe if it's internal resistance is high enough. I saw talk of micron scale conductors, so I don't envision directly driving a photoflash with this thing...

Re:Cannot explode but can be used in cars?

[SydShamino]

Consider the plane that just crashed in Denver, for example. Jet fuel leaked for hours, and the plane burnt badly, but I don't think anything exploded...

Re:Cannot explode but can be used in cars?

[Phanatic1a]

A combustion event, aka 'explosion' occurs at the beginning of every power stroke in a reciprocating internal combustion engine. When an engine 'knocks' there is a combustion event as well. What makes it a 'knock' instead of a normal part of the power cycle is that it occurs at the wrong time

This is incorrect. When things are functioning normally, the fuel burns by deflagration, the reaction front is propagated subsonically by conductive heating of adjacent material. If you have knocking, what's going on is detonation, where the reaction front is propagated supersonically by compressive heating of adjacent material. Both deflagration and detonation are combustion reactions, but the latter is more powerful, less efficient, and far more destructive to your pistons. It's not just the same reaction occurring too early.

Re:Cannot explode but can be used in cars?

[mcgrew]

Actually I didn't look at the wiki article, I was going by your quote. You're quite right that if you short the leads to a big capacitor (or as I found once, give it too much voltage) it will explode, as I found when I hooked a 9v transistor radio to a 12v car battery. Three of its electrolytics went "bang".

Also, since we're talking about a big capacitor being charged by DC current and releasing DC current, come to think of it its impedance wouldn't matter; it would be the device's resistance that would matter.

Re:Cannot explode but can be used in cars?

[TooMuchToDo]

To this day, lead is still used in Avgas (100LL aka low lead). The GA community is in the process of phasing it out, as only so much 100LL is made every year and it's not in high demand, so it could disappear pretty quickly (most newer aircraft run on either Jet A, regular vehicle gas, or diesel).

Re:Cannot explode but can be used in cars?

[bigdanmoody]

Perhaps this is just arguing semantics, but it is not correct to refer the the combustion event ignited by the spark plug as an explosion. It is a controlled burn of the fuel/air mixture. An engine's combustion chambers are carefully designed to burn the fuel/air mixture in a controlled fashion to extract maximum power from combustion. In a modern engine, the spark plug will fire before the piston is at TDC (top dead center) of the compression stroke, so that the relatively slow-burning fuel/air mixture has a chance to fully ignite before it's required to force the piston back down.

Detonation, or "knocking" is an uncontrolled burn, which as the name "detonation" implies, could be described as an explosion. It usually occurs due to a "hot spot" inside the cylinder which ignites the fuel/air mixture prior to the spark plug firing. Hot spots can be caused by many things, but from what I have seen carbon buildup is the most common. Running a higher-octane fuel will help, since the fuel is more resistant to being ignited, but it's only masking the underlying problem.

IAAFCAM (I Am An FAA Certificated A&P Mechanic).

Re:Cannot explode but can be used in cars?

[tekrat]

The Model T and Model A were dual-fuel vehicles. The distributor, which sent a spark to each cylinder, was "digital": You used the five digits of your left hand to pull the lever on the steering column to advance the spark timing as you drove. When running on alcohol you would advance the spark timing a great deal more than for gasoline, to accommodate alcohol's cooler-burning, high-octane qualities. The dual-fuel vehicles also had a carburetor that could be adjusted from the inside of the automobile by turning a knob (incorrectly termed the choke) on the dashboard.

Remember that when the Model T was built, gas stations were few and far between. Most farmers ran their cars off pure alcohol because that's all they had access to. The Model T will run off pretty much anything that can burn. It was engineered for a time when there was no infrastructure for cars, i.e., no gas stations, no roads, no highways. If anything, it's a better vehicle than most coming off the line today (as long as we're not counting safety features and comfort).

Re:Cannot explode but can be used in cars?

[alva_edison]

It must be a California Thing, I remember that the Blues Brothers managed to jump their car 160 miles with it being damaged (they started the chase in Illinois, ended up going off of a bridge in Milwaukee, passed part of the milwaukee skyline, passed part of the chicago skyline, somehow U-turned in midair, landed back in Milwaukee, and continued the chase in Chicago).

Re:Cannot explode but can be used in cars?

[ivan256]

A combustion event, aka 'explosion'

Explosion doesn't imply combustion. Combustion doesn't imply explosion.

Dictionary definitions include "a sudden and rapid increase", and "a bursting with violence and loud noise, because of internal pressure".

The parent to your comment made other petty, pedantic, but incorrect distinctions too. One of the OED definitions of "detonation" is "the explosion of gunpowder". Gunpowder *does* detonate. It's the definition of a detonation.

If the device in this article can store as much power as it claims with a low internal resistance, it may not be able to explode, but it can certainly *cause* a large explosion. No combustion necessary.

Re:Cannot explode but can be used in cars?

[flibbajobber]

Wikipedia is correct; DC current cannot pass through a capacitor, so it is indeed impedance rather than resistance.

Then by that argument, strictly it should be called reactance, not impedance. Impedance is the "sum" of AC reactance and DC resistance. Besides, DC current can still flow through a capacitor (during charge and discharge) so resistance is a perfectly acceptable - and accurate - term, especially regarding the waste heat generated by charge and discharge.

Secondly I support GP's assertion that output impedance and internal resistance are not at all the same - Look up Norton's equivalence theorem (remembering that an ideal current source has infinite impedance). Then there's the concept of negative feedback in an amplifier, which affects output impedance but not the internal resistance of any device.

Re:Cannot explode but can be used in cars?

[hardburn]

Model T didn't have a distributor (Jay Leno mentioned this offhand in the video on Garage 419). I believe you can convert them to run a distributor, and there is a distributor-like timing system, but otherwise it's just magnetos.

Re:Cannot explode but can be used in cars?

[sjames]

It could just be that they were on a mission from God. Not exploding was one of many miracles along their journey.

Re:Cannot explode but can be used in cars?

[flipk]

As the piston goes up and down, the piston's angle with respect to the piston rod is changing. Before the piston reaches top-dead-center (on the upswing) the piston is pressing mostly against one side of the cylinder. After top-dead-center, it rocks over on the wrist pin so on the down-swing it is now pressing mostly on the other side of the cylinder. I always thought knocking was because this transition was more violent due to the early combustion increasing the amount of pressure on the piston too early.

Re:Cannot explode but can be used in cars?

[brettper]

Short out a 10 aH nicad

What the hell has an atto-Henry of inductance? You'd probably get worse out of a straight peice of wire

Re:Cannot explode but can be used in cars?

[jbengt]

A combustion event, aka 'controlled burn' occurs at the beginning of every power stroke in a reciprocating internal combustion engine

Fixed that for you (more or less)
Technically, an explosion is not the same.

Re:Cannot explode but can be used in cars?

[badkarmadayaccount]

Hey, would you mind me running a server farm or two from one of your home sockets?

Re:Cannot explode but can be used in cars?

[badkarmadayaccount]

The gasoline burns steadily, albeit quickly. The piston moves not from an explosion, but from the expansion of the combusted gasoline/air mixture.

The traditional Otto cycle operates by rapid, near instantaneous combustion, but not explosion, at Top Dead Center. The Diesel cycle works by starting injection of the fuel at TDC, and injecting it down to some point in the stroke, depending on at what power the engine is running on, all the while of which combusting during the expansion, giving Diesel engines their characteristic torque. It is similar to the Brayton cycle, met mostly in gas turbines.

Cheers!

Good enough for a couple days at home.

[Khyber]

Let's see. 50kwh. That would run my computer for...two days no problem with monitor and broadband modem included.

Gimme two of these and some high-efficiency photovoltaics and good-bye power grid. I don't care if my house is ugly, cover the entire thing with HEPV.

Re:Good enough for a couple days at home.

[erayd]

That's a bloody inefficient computer!

Re:Good enough for a couple days at home.

[polar red]

Ah, so that 'couple days' is also the lifetime of the CPU ?

Re:Good enough for a couple days at home.

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

You could of course power a laptop with a wireless 3g connection (60W) for 50000/60 hour = 1.5 months. Given occasional microwave use, say 1 month.

Re:Good enough for a couple days at home.

[timeOday]

Yeah, energy isn't just for cars. A small version of this could be great for power tools. I currently avoid rechargeable tools since the batteries lose the ability to hold a charge after a few years, and you're up a creek if they go dead in the middle of a job (and you don't have extras).

Re:Good enough for a couple days at home.

[mr_mischief]

And after a few years, they want to sell you an entirely new set of tools. You buy if you want cordless tools, because the bastards have arbitrarily changed the battery connector layout yet again.

Re:Good enough for a couple days at home.

[ivan256]

My entire household consumes 400kWh in a given month. That includes three computers and two DVRs running 24/7, the radon system, the dryer and stove for at least an hour a day, the furnace, refrigerator, chest freezer, lights, etc...

Your computer uses almost twice as much electricity as my whole household? What do you have in that thing?

Re:Good enough for a couple days at home.

[Khyber]

No, that's a powerhouse, as I designed it to be.

700w Rocketfish PSU
9800GTX+ Nvidia
2.6 GHz AMD Athlon64x2 5200+
Dual 1TB SATA-II and one 80GB ATA133, 16x Dual-Layer DVD+/-RW
32-INCH Samsung 1080p LCD
Mackie 802-VLZ3 Mixer
160 Watt Kinyo Sound System

Don't tell me you assumed some all-in-one crap computer. This is Slashdot, FFS.

Re:Good enough for a couple days at home.

[Khyber]

It's not what's in the computer more than also what's attached to the computer.

32-inch LCD for a monitor. 160 watt sound system. A mixer board that draws another 100w alone. Guitar Pedal. Webcam eats up power, and there's two of those. Transmitter for a wireless headset, more power from USB. Oh, and a 9800GTX+ takes more power than any piddly processor you can point at it, not even a P4 with shit NetBurst ate nearly the amount of power this thing does.

So everyone that's going "That's an inefficient computer" needs to realize that your concept of a computer and MY concpet of a computer are likely entirely different.

I'll be upgradig to quad SLI soon. I'll need at least a 1500W PSU to handle that plus another barrage of SATA-II drives I'm about to install.

I also have ten ULTRA320 SCSI drives I'll be hooking to the computer, as soon as I find a damned cable for it all. I have the card adapters already installed, both internal and external.

Re:Good enough for a couple days at home.

[iamdrscience]

Having a 700W PSU does not mean that your computer is using that much power or really anywhere even close to it, because it's a maximum power rating. Get a kill-a-watt or a multi-meter (be careful) and measure the actual power your computer consumes. Even the most pimped, power-hungry gaming PC will struggle to get much past 400W with everything blazing, and most of the time will be much much less (usually under 300W). Plus, when it's idle or near-idle (most of the time) it will use much less, probably not more than 150 watts for a gaming PC and possibly much less (normal desktops will usually use 100W @ idle). 50KWh should be enough to keep your PC running for like a week (maybe even two).

Re:Good enough for a couple days at home.

[WindBourne]

Go to battery plus. THey can rebuild the batteries.

Yeah, that whole rechargeable is a TOTAL crock since they quit building the battery. But I saw recently a capacitor based system for tools. Just do not recall who had it. Quick to charge and no issues with battery replacement.

I'm skeptical

[Anonymous Coward]

"It is mentioned the device cannot explode when being charge or impacted and is thus safe for vehicles."

Anything that stores that much energy in that small a space can do something unfortunate if it is released quickly.

Re:I'm skeptical

[Chrisq]

Thats true. I am assuming that because it is a capacitance device it hasn't got a very high internal resistance, which would mean you couldn't discharge quickly. Maybe the device can't explode but a cable shorting it across probably would.

52 kilowatt Hours?

[MichaelSmith]

TFA:

52.220 kWh of energy

A single car battery is about 200 watt hours. The batteries in the Tesla Roadster holds 53 kWÂh according to Wikipedia.

Now thats an interesting coincidence. I wonder if they just worked out how much capacitor would be needed for the power plant of the Tesla.

Re:52 kilowatt Hours?

[RedWizzard]

TFA:

52.220 kWh of energy

A single car battery is about 200 watt hours. The batteries in the Tesla Roadster holds 53 kWÂh according to Wikipedia.

Now thats an interesting coincidence. I wonder if they just worked out how much capacitor would be needed for the power plant of the Tesla.

If they can bring it to market at the stated weight (130kg) it'll makes things very interesting. The Tesla's current battery pack weighs 450kg so you could triple its range. Or cut the vehicles weight by 25% (current weight is about 1200kg).

Re:52 kilowatt Hours?

[knarf]

That is an anemic car battery you have there... Take a car battery rated 12 V, capacity 60 Ah. This battery can keep up a current of 60A for about one hour (actual capacity depends on discharge rate, lower rate equals higher capacity - up to a point). 60A * 12V DC = 720W. It can do that for about an hour -> capacity 720Wh or about 0.72 KWh. The 12V battery in my tractor has a capacity of 180 Ah which roughly translates to (12 * 180 =) 2.16 KWh. It weighs some 60kg. This EEStor maybe-real-soon-now device has a claimed weight of 128 kg. You'd get about 5 KWh worth of Lead-Acid capacity for that weight, meaning this device - if it ever sees the light of day - has about 10 times more capacity per kg.

Re:52 kilowatt Hours?

[zigziggityzoo]

You can't triple its range if the *size* of the capacitor is the same as the battery. Just because it weighs less doesn't mean it has the same density.

Re:52 kilowatt Hours?

[jpyeck]

Exactly zigziggityzoo... FTFPDF:

EESU (286.56 lb) / Li-Ion (752 lb) = 38%

but...

EESU (4541 in^3) / Li-Ion (5697 in^3) = 80%

The EESU is obviously less mass-dense, but the energy density (kWh/in^3) is not much better than Li-Ion. You still may not be able to add more range to the car without taking away from cabin space.

Re:52 kilowatt Hours?

[Doc Ruby]

Except they just cited the fact that the two storage devices do hold about exactly the same energy, but the ultracap at under 1/3 the weight. Which means it has more than 3x the density.

Re:52 kilowatt Hours?

[Chris Mattern]

The Tesla's current battery pack weighs 450kg so you could triple its range.

Better than that, especially in city driving. As others have pointed out, regenerative braking works *much* better when you're feeding back to a capacitor instead of a battery.

Re:52 kilowatt Hours?

[Anonymous Conrad]

No, not electrical storage density but physical density. As in mass / volume.

We're talking about replacing the Tesla car's battery with some number of these to increase it's range. Whereas we know you could install three for the same weight we don't know that three will fit inside the Tesla battery compartment.

Re:52 kilowatt Hours?

[citizenr]

>The batteries in the Tesla Roadster holds 53
>kWÃh according to Wikipedia.

and according to Top Gear test they last ~50 miles, NOT 200 miles declared by Tesla. That is _if_ the car doesnt die before those 50 miles (it did in Top Gear test).

Re:52 kilowatt Hours?

[aproposofwhat]

More interestingly, cutting the weight would improve the handling of the Tesla - and given that the current Tesla matched a 911 GT3 on Top Gear's test track, I'd expect to see a capacitor powered version up there in Corvette Z06 territory.

Bring it on!

Re:52 kilowatt Hours?

[Firethorn]

As others have pointed out, regenerative braking works *much* better when you're feeding back to a capacitor instead of a battery

The difference is much smaller with the Tesla's EV sized batteries compared to the 'just big enough' NiMH cells in most hybrids today though. I'm seeing figures of 99.9% efficiency for charging LiIon, 66% for NiMH. Given the increase in circuit complexity to charge an EEStore capacitor, I don't see it being any more efficient than LiIon. You just need a large pack to abosrb that many amps - and being an electric sports car, the Tesla has the amp capacity available in it's 6,800 cell battery pack.

The lighter weight helps, but I figure the best way for EEStor to win is on the basis of cost - everything else LiIon is competitive on, even if it ends up weighing 3 times as much. Heck, battery pack cost is the #1 killer of electronic vehicles today.

Hmmm... EEStore might be better off targeting the hybrid market for now than the EV market. Smaller, lighter, cheaper electric energy storage.

Re:52 kilowatt Hours?

[jeffcsu]

50 kWh is a good, useful capacity for EVs in general. So it's probably not targeted specifically at the Tesla Roadster but for EVs in general. Should give about a 200 mile range depending on vehicle efficiencies. Given that most people commute less than about 40 miles per day, 200 miles of range is more than enough for most daily driving.

Re:52 kilowatt Hours?

[mikeee]

Maybe, maybe not. It's also the case that a battery (like in the current Tesla) has mostly constant power and voltage output over its whole discharge range, whereas a capacitor outputs power more and more slowly as it runs down. I'm not sure that would be acceptable in a sportscar... or maybe the discharge rate in the capacitor is plenty high to begin with? In either event you have to deal with variable voltage output from the capacitor system, which may make the electronics a lot nastier...

Re:52 kilowatt Hours?

[Wonko the Sane]

In either event you have to deal with variable voltage output from the capacitor system, which may make the electronics a lot nastier...

The semiconductors and control circuitry used in power electronics these days are good enough that it really isn't a problem any more.

Re:52 kilowatt Hours?

[MichaelSmith]

That is _if_ the car doesnt die before those 50 miles (it did in Top Gear test).

It didn't. The car never ran out of charge.

Re:52 kilowatt Hours?

[Agripa]

The semiconductors and control circuitry used in power electronics these days are good enough that it really isn't a problem any more.

It is always a problem. If the input stage has to handle both high voltage and high current at different points of the discharge curve, then the power density of the converter will suffer. Wide input voltage range trades off with other desirable characteristics.

Re:52 kilowatt Hours?

[Doc Ruby]

These batteries or supercaps can fit into arbitrary shapes. So unless the Tesla is a fully solid volume already, there's going to be plenty of extra volume into which to fit even a larger volume supercap. Even if the Tesla had to scale its volume up the small percentage that a larger supercap might take over a battery, that's not going to increase its drag very much, and therefore its efficiency. Besides, this supercap's materials aren't orders of magnitude heavier or lighter than battery material - they're probably fairly close in spatial density.

Re:52 kilowatt Hours?

[citizenr]

both cars died on the track, first one ran out of joice after 50 miles, second one lost power due to engine overheating.

Re:52 kilowatt Hours?

[MichaelSmith]

both cars died on the track, first one ran out of joice after 50 miles, second one lost power due to engine overheating.

Not according to the register.

Re:52 kilowatt Hours?

[WindBourne]

it is by no means certain that eestor will fit an arbitrary shape. It has plates in there akin to a lead acid. My guess is that this will look much more like a regular car battery, rather than the free flow of a li-ion.

Re:52 kilowatt Hours?

[citizenr]

sure, it didnt die altogether, it crawled back to the shed on its own with leftovers in batteries. I will believe Jeremy over some spokeswoman any day thankyouverymuch.

Re:52 kilowatt Hours?

[badkarmadayaccount]

Watt x Amper x Second = Joule x Coulomb / Second = (Coulomb x Volt) x Coulomb / Second = Coulomb^2 x Volt / Second;

IOW, please clean up your measurements before they cause a quantum singularity. vThank you.

Re:52 kilowatt Hours?

[badkarmadayaccount]

This is kind of redundant, but the "nasty electronics" you mention are called "switched power supplies".

No, it's killowatt-hours.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually the watt-hour is a measure of (electrical, in this case) energy. It's an awkward convention, but it makes sense when you realize that Watts are equal to Joules over time and that multiplying time back in leaves you with Joules.

Re:No, it's killowatt-hours.

[TeXMaster]

Actually the watt-hour is a measure of (electrical, in this case) energy. It's an awkward convention, but it makes sense when you realize that Watts are equal to Joules over time and that multiplying time back in leaves you with Joules.

It's not so awkward if you consider typical domestic usages: since most appliances have power consumption in the order of watts and kilowatts, and typical usages are in the hour (not second) timescale, it's much more comfortable to use: after all, 1 J = 1 W*s, so you'd need 3.6 MJ to describe the energy consumed by a 1 kW boiler functioning for 1 hour ... much more comfortable to just say it's 1 kWh

Re:No, it's killowatt-hours.

[Maury Markowitz]

My average power consumption is about 30 kWh per day. This varies dramatically from summer to winter, with winter loads being much higher due to an electrically heated kitchen floor, a low-efficiency fan motor on the gas furnace, and heavier use of lighting (although this appears to be a minor consideration).

One of these units would fit nicely into my utility room, and give me about 1/2 a day of power in the winter and several days during the summer. Power reliability in Toronto is excellent in any case, but this would eliminate every blackout Toronto has seen, including 2003.

Maury

Re:No, it's killowatt-hours.

[sirkha]

And beyond that, who wants to measure energy in Michael Jacksons?

Re:No, it's killowatt-hours.

[TeXMaster]

And beyond that, who wants to measure energy in Michael Jacksons?

Anyone who's ok with measuring power with Snaps

Re: can hold 52.220 kWh

[erayd]

Epic correctional fail. kWh was correct.

Re: can hold 52.220 kWh

[Umuri]

How do you figure?

The patent specifically mentions kW*H in reference to the 52.220 number.

I assume you were just trying to be smart and correct the summary thinking it was a typo. However, a kW*H is a valid unit of measurement.

In fact you could use them interchangably but it would give the very wrong idea as they measure different things.

A watt is one joule of energy flow over a second. so a KW would be 1000 joules of energy flow over 1 second.
A KW*H is a flow of a kilowatt continuously over an hour, therefore it would be a flow of 1000 joules over 3600 seconds.

So to recap:
1 kw = 1000 joules/sec
1 kw*h = 1000 joules/sec * 3600 seconds

If you were just going to measure the total energy usage, you'd have to keep it just in joules, in which case 52.220 KWH would be 187,992,000.

So yeah, big difference caused by little changes in notation. Of course i haven't done electricity in ages so i probably oversimplified somewhere and fubar'd up.

Use standard units, damnit!

[dangitman]

the present invention provides a unique lightweight electric-energy storage unit that has the capability to store ultrahigh amounts of energy

Can't you express these things in units we all all understand, like jigawatts per nanofornight?

Re:Use standard units, damnit!

[edman007]

gigawatt is correctly pronounced, "jigawatt", the "giga" pronunciation only became popular when computers became common
Anyways, if you want it in those units, well:
52220 kWh = 155,416.667 GWnFn (gigawatt-nanoFortnights)

Re:Use standard units, damnit!

[iammani]

Glad to help. Its 17545920 gigawatt-nanofortnights (Obtained from the TFA/TFS as 52.220 kWh)

Re:Use standard units, damnit!

[aaron alderman]

Jigawatts(sic) per nanofornight(sic) would be a measure of energy transfer not total energy.
If you are looking for Gigawatt Nanofortnights then the answer is 1.74x10^-11.

Re:Use standard units, damnit!

[iammani]

Er, From the TFS, its 52.220 kWh

1 kW = 10^-6 gigawatts
1 hour = 0.0416666667 days = 0.00297619048 fortnights

So 52.220 kWH= 52.220 * 10^-6 * 0.00297619048 = 1.55416667 * 10^-7 gigawatt-nanoFortnights

Re:Use standard units, damnit!

[chrb]

Or Energon Cubes?

Re:Use standard units, damnit!

[TheThiefMaster]

You missed the nano.
52.22000 (kW hour) = 1.55416667 x 10^-7 GW fortnights (same as your answer)
Converted into nanofortnights (not recognised by google :( ) gives 155.416667 GW nano-fortnights.

Incidentally that's a different number to everyone else who's tried to do the conversion so far.
We've had:
155,416.667 GWnFn (used 52220 instead of 52.220 kWh)
1.55416667 * 10^-7 GWnFn (actually GWFn, forgot to nano)
17545920 GWnFn (actually GW/nFn)
1.74x10^-11 GWnFn (actually nGW/Fn)

Re:Use standard units, damnit!

[aaron alderman]

Thats far too large of a number to be sensible.
A nanofortnight is only 1.2 ms whereas a fortnight is 1.2 Ms (megaseconds).
I calculated the answer to be 1.74x10^-11 gigawatt-nanofortnights.

Re:Use standard units, damnit!

[aaron alderman]

52.2 kW hr = 187 MJ
1 nanofortnight = 1.2 milliseconds
So 155 GW nFn = 187 GW ms = 187 MJ

So I agree with you :)
155.416667 GW nano-fortnights

Re:Use standard units, damnit!

[aaron alderman]

On second thoughts I'm going to go with 155.416667 GW nano-fortnights = 187 MJ.

Re:Use standard units, damnit!

[OrangeTide]

killing satire since 1985.

Re:Use standard units, damnit!

[AxeTheMax]

gigawatt is correctly pronounced, "jigawatt",

No it isn't.

Giga is from the Greek gigas, with two instances of the standard or 'hard' g. The common pronounciation has always been the standard, and it is correct.

Re:Use standard units, damnit!

[edman007]

some dictionaries disagree

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/giga
http://www.reference.com/search?q=Giga

BTW, it does come from the greek word gigas, which like the word giant, is pronounced with a soft g

http://www.backyardgardener.com/gardendictionary/gigas.html

Re:Use standard units, damnit!

[oracleofbargth]

What does the Oxford English Dictionary say? OED is the standard reference for legal and government matters, and should be the first point of reference for English Language questions.

Re:Use standard units, damnit!

[edman007]

They cite both a hard or soft g

"giga- combining form" The Oxford Dictionary of English (revised edition). Ed. Catherine Soanes and Angus Stevenson. Oxford University Press, 2005. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. New York Institute of Technology. 23 December 2008 <http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t140.e31296>

Only a couple of days?

[ciroknight]

The worst, most inefficient computer in my house uses roughly 250Wh in continuous draw (less if the monitor is off, which it usually is). Relatively modern machine too (Pentium 4, lots of disks, etc).

Unless you have some seriously fucked up computer with hairdryers instead of heatsinks or a g'damned Cray as your desktop I can't see how you'd use that cell up in a 'couple of days'.

Re:Only a couple of days?

[TheThiefMaster]

I hate to tell you but a P4 isn't modern any more. Not even "relatively" modern.

But your point is valid, especially as the P4s were some of the most power-hungry desktop CPUs ever made.
I've measured my pc at 200 W draw under normal use, most of which will be the graphics card. It probably goes up to 300 W when gaming.

That cell would last me about 10 days of continuous use at 200W if I used it as a UPS. That's crazy.

Now for the important bit. For a car:
Wikipedia says cars use between 0.17 to 0.37 kWÂh/mi
Cell is 52.220 kWh
Therefore a car would have a 141 to 307 mile range, depending on the efficiency of the car.

That's pretty impressive, especially if it can be charged rapidly.

Re:Only a couple of days?

[LordKazan]

it is a capacitor... so it can charge rapidly.. so rapidly in fact that they would probably put a high L inductor "ahead" of it in the charging mechanism to prevent current going from 0 to a-buttload-of-amps on contact and causing dangerous side effects.

the limiting factor on charge rate would be how fast the charging station can deliver current to the charging mechanism - once current is stable an inductor doesn't inhibit it, it just inhibits dI/dt.

Re:Only a couple of days?

[compro01]

The range would depend mostly on how fast you're going. The relationship between power use and speed is (generally) cubic, due to the equation for energy loss to drag.

IIRC, when I was running numbers in a previous discussion here about the smart fourtwo car, I came up with something like 37.5HP (~28KW) needed to maintain 80MPH (Highest speed limit in the US, AFAIK). That would give you a bit less than 160 miles on that thing. Slow that down some and the range significantly increases though.

Re:Only a couple of days?

[mr_mischief]

Luckily, we're used to the same phenomenon with gasoline engines. So it should make sense even to people who don't understand the science behind it.

Re:Only a couple of days?

[lifejunkie]

The average EV-1 size electric vehicle consumes around 400 watt-hours per mile. Somewhere around 140 miles is a good estimate. This site has a lot of home conversions: http://www.evalbum.com/

Re:Only a couple of days?

[Khyber]

My 9800GTX+ eats more power alone than your entire computer.

Let me guess, you're not a gamer. Nor a mass-video encoder.

Re:Only a couple of days?

[ciroknight]

I hate to tell you but a P4 isn't modern any more. Not even "relatively" modern.

Relative to my car and house, the Pentium 4 is brand spanking new. It is relatively modern, in that it's only a couple of CPU generations old (literally; two generations, three years). Unless, of course, you think of "modern" in terms of what came out 5 minutes ago and can't possibly imagine the possibility of using a one month old computer.

Re:Only a couple of days?

[TheThiefMaster]

The first Pentium 4s are 8 years old. Intel wanted to replace it in 2005, but couldn't because their replacement design drew far too much power and generated far too much heat (Even compared to the Pentium 4, believe it or not). The P4 was finally replaced when the "Core 2" line was released, 2 years ago, though P4s continued being sold until this year.

The Pentium 4 was beaten to a pulp by the cheaper AMD Athlon XP line its entire life, I'm surprised it hung on so long.

A computer only lasts a few years, my parents have a 5-year-old Athlon XP -powered pc which has had to have the hard-disk and ram replaced. That's about P4 age. If you've got a P4 that still works you're pretty lucky.
A car and a house last much longer, it's not comparable. An incandescent lightbulb is probably a better comparison (they produce as much heat, use as much power, and are on about as long). Do you have any 4-year-old lightbulbs in your house?

Re:Only a couple of days?

[badkarmadayaccount]

Do you live in a quantum singularity or something? Like missing time and/or entropy? I think the term you are looking for is 250W. Correct?

Re:Only a couple of days?

[badkarmadayaccount]

There's this new invention I'd like to tell you about - it's called a switched power supply. Try it sometime.

Re:Only a couple of days?

[LordKazan]

a switch can still arc - and even if it didn't it would still lead to an initial surge without an inductor

why do you think the lights in your house momentarily dim when your AC turns on

Re:Only a couple of days?

[badkarmadayaccount]

Never happened to me. Sorry.

Re:Only a couple of days?

[ciroknight]

And the last Pentium 4s are, as I said, two generations, three years. I guess you like to forget that there are still computers being built with Pentium 4s. Intel's plans to replace it, not replacing it, and your mom's Athlon XP machine are completely irrelevant to the fact that the computer was built in December 2005, and that the chip is, as I said, 3 years old.

And your comparison is as silly as mine; the point is that the chip is not old, unless, of course, you think of "modern" in terms of what came out 5 minutes ago and can't possibly imagine the possibility of using a one month old computer. And for the record, I do have 4 year old bulbs in my house (probably much, much older than 4 years in my basement and attic).

Re:Only a couple of days?

[TheThiefMaster]

The AC post just before this one was me, not sure why it's AC as I didn't tick the anon box and was logged in...

Bass

[Anonymous Coward]

Would two these across the inputs of my amplifier boost bass response?

Re:Bass

[MadMidnightBomber]

Yes, briefly.

Check out the patent

[shadester]

A lot of cool data in the patent filing.

3-6 minutes charge time for 52 kWh. 286 lbs for that compared to 752 for a Li-Ion battery. And the Li-Ion takes 6h to charge.

Might be a good patent?

[Chris_Jefferson]

It's things like this that convince me that while patents need some serious fixing, they shouldn't be abolished. While we haven't seen all the details, it looks like genuinely interesting and original to me and a step beyond the currently available state-of-the-art. Of course, only time will tell if this is really a good patent, and if the product is really any good in practice. It's easy to make things that look good in the lab but don't do so well in real usage.

Re:Might be a good patent?

[Asic Eng]

I see your point - I wonder about software patents though - is anyone aware of a case where a software patent has advanced software design methodology?

Re:Might be a good patent?

[rolfwind]

I see your point - I wonder about software patents though - is anyone aware of a case where a software patent has advanced software design methodology?

Not likely. The original intent of patents was to abolish secretive guilds, and open up knowledge to advance society further and faster in exchange for a protected and guaranteed temporary monopoly.

From everyone I heard in corporate, they are all disuaded from looking into patents by the corporate lawyers for various reasons. This defeats the purpose in the first place. Also, 17 years (with potential renewal of another 17 years) is too long in many areas these days. It's not the 19th Century anymore.

Re:Might be a good patent?

[RingDev]

Why is this a bad example of patents? If anything, this is an excellent example of good patenting.

The patent contains the technical knowledge require to reproduce their device. Any Joe Schmoe with the technical knowledge and tools to do so can look at their patent documentation and have a good idea on how to build the device.

That same Joe could then make improvements on the device and file for a new patent.

Mean while, the original patent owner, who has likely sunk a huge amount of money into research and development, has a temporary monopoly that all-but guarantees them enough profits to pay off their debts and fund future research.

The only thing wrong in this case is that the patent lasts for almost 20 years. 20 years was great 80 years ago. 20 years is fine for drug formulas that can take a decade to get through testing and FDA approval. 20 years is way too long for technological advancements though.

Drop it down to a 5 to 10 year window, and push inventors to get their products to the market, or open them up to competition.

-Rick

Re:Might be a good patent?

[booch]

To my mind, it seems weird that software can be both patented and copyrighted. So that's where I think the problem lies. I can't think of anything else that would fall under both (excluding design patents).

Much better than a battery for cars.

[Joce640k]

A capacitor has the ability for almost all braking energy to be fed back into it.

In stop-go traffic this could make a massive difference in mileage compared to a conventional battery.

Re:Much better than a battery for cars.

[MichaelSmith]

A capacitor has the ability for almost all braking energy to be fed back into it.

Maybe, but don't assume that this device works exactly like a 1000uF electrolytic cap.

Re:Much better than a battery for cars.

[LordKazan]

for it to be considered a capacitor it has to follow the general laws of a capacitor i would assume, especially since capacitence is being given in both Farad and total Joules capable of storing (F * max E before the E-resistivity of the medium between charge plates begins to fail)

Re:Much better than a battery for cars.

[evanbd]

You can do that with a good battery pack, too. The Tesla does so, in fact (as do most hybrids). The only real requirement is that the power converter be capable of running backwards, which isn't all that hard if it's a design requirement. Some extra power capacity in the batteries helps, since most cars can brake faster than they can accelerate, and you don't want to charge the batteries too fast. Fortunately, in this application the batteries are designed around capacity, and have lots of extra power capability available.

Re:Much better than a battery for cars.

[MichaelSmith]

Yes but I wondered about resistance. A big capacitor with a high internal resistance would effectively be a battery.

Re:Much better than a battery for cars.

[tcgroat]

Batteries would have higher loss than that giant ceramic capacitor in regenerative braking systems. Even at very slow charge and discharge rates, the best you can expect from a battery is about 90% efficiency. At the high rates needed for braking and acceleration, it's considerably lower. Charge voltage is higher than the discharge voltage in a storage battery, and by more just than the IxR resistive losses. If you trace the terminal voltage vs. charge (Coulombs) for charge/discharge cycle, the path traces a hysteresis loop. The area enclosed by that loop is the energy loss.

On the other hand, a big drawback for this giant capacitor is the high operating voltage (3.5kV, per the patent). Power electronic systems for that voltage are expensive and difficult to build. The voltage drops considerably during discharge: getting 75% of the energy out of the cap means operating to half the peak voltage, and at twice the current required at full bus voltage. That, too, makes electronics more expensive for the same power output.

The 375V battery in the Tesla Roadster allows use of parts marketed for 240Vac line applications, which are sold in high volumes and therefore competitively priced. The question is whether the benefits of the capacitor (reduced size and weight) justify the more expensive electronics.

Wow, cool

[Lord Byron II]

From the numbers in the summary, a fully-charged one of these would supply enough energy to propel a 3300lbs (1500kg) car from 0 to 1100mph (500m/s).

Put another way, my laptop battery is 65Wh. This ultracapacitor holds 800 times as much energy as my battery. If the technology could be scaled down, an equivalent ultracapacitor would only need to weigh 281.5lbs/800 = .35lbs. (My battery clocks in at just under a pound.)

Re:Wow, cool

[MosesJones]

From the numbers in the summary, a fully-charged one of these would supply enough energy to propel a 3300lbs (1500kg) car from 0 to 1100mph (500m/s)

Ahhh you must be from the Theoretical Physics Department, over here in Engineering we have wind resistance, friction and efficiency to worry about.

Re:Wow, cool

[vlm]

From the numbers in the summary, a fully-charged one of these would supply enough energy to propel a 3300lbs (1500kg) car from 0 to 1100mph (500m/s)

Ahhh you must be from the Theoretical Physics Department, over here in Engineering we have wind resistance, friction and efficiency to worry about.

Not much wind resistance in space. This might be useful for satellite power. Certainly the lifespan of small earth orbiting satellites seems limited by nicad battery life. Capacitors would have no age limit, other than maybe leaking electrolyte all over. (Geosynch satellites eventually run out of station keeping fuel, this wouldn't help them much)

I could list quite a few amsats with burned out batteries, heres the most famous, that came back to life a couple decades after the shorted nicads failed open.
http://www.amsat.org/amsat/sats/n7hpr/ao7.html

Here's an interesting site and quote about satellite batteries.

http://www.qarc.on.ca/minoct02.htm

There are 5 battery systems that are fed through a Battery Current Regulator (BCR) at 28v. To-date they have used NICADs. AMSAT is looking at other newer types, like Metal Hydride and Lithium Ion to get more capacity at lower rate, plus the number of times a battery can be charged. They still favor the NICADs because they can be charged more often then the newer ones before they have to be replaced. Robin used slides to show the details of the satellite inside and out.

Re:Wow, cool

[jank1887]

we like massless frictionless spherical monkeys hanging from massless ropes attached to frictionless pullies, thankyouverymuch.

Re:Wow, cool

[Lumpy]

Ahhh you must be from the Theoretical Physics Department, over here in Engineering we have wind resistance, friction and efficiency to worry about.
--

Ahh you're from the Engineering department... Over here in the Manufacturing department we have to worry about cost ,liability ,feasibility ,and marketability to worry about.

and don't you dare talk to marketing, both of you will confuse them and those idiots will go out telling everyone we can go 10,000 miles and charge in 6 seconds for -$10.00.. "Why you'll make money!" they will market this very wrong.

So when marketing comes by, look sad and say it kills puppies.

Re:Wow, cool

[lilomar]

I'm from the Legal Department, and I just got off the phone with $ANIMAL_RIGHTS_GROUP.

Apparently someone has been telling marketing that we kill puppies for fun, and they spun it as a feature.

Anyone want to explain to the R&D Department why their funding is getting cut?

Re:Wow, cool

[Lost Race]

Ahh you're from the Engineering department... Over here in the Manufacturing department we have to worry about cost ,liability ,feasibility ,and marketability to worry about.

Ahh, Manufacturing. Over here in the department of of Redundancy department we mainly worry about doing what everybody else does, but much more thoroughly to worry about.

Re:Wow, cool

[windsurfer619]

I'm from management. Get off of Slashdot and get back to work.

Highly unlilkely

[pdxdada]

Ok, I have not read tfa (in this case tfp), but I do know a bit about capacitors. Follow along with me here: You can calculate the energy stored in a capacitor (in Joules) by E = .5*CV^2 where C = capacitance (in Farads) and V = voltage, or
--> V = sqrt((2E)/C)
--> 3500 = sqrt((2*187992000)/52.22)
3500v is a lot. Up until now most comercially available supercapacitors do 5.5v or less and tend to leak energy over time. It's possilbe these guys have really made a stunning break through (the fact they filed for a patent is sure something), but the numbers set off my bullshit detector.

Re:Highly unlilkely

[Anonymous Coward]

they would also need a breakthrough in matirials as the force exerted by the electric feild in such a small capacitor would rip it apart.

Re:Highly unlilkely

[Anonymous Coward]

well, your calculations match the numbers that they show in the patent application.

they specificity are claiming a breakthrough in high voltage capability

Re:Highly unlilkely

[RedWizzard]

Ok, I have not read tfa (in this case tfp), but I do know a bit about capacitors. Follow along with me here: You can calculate the energy stored in a capacitor (in Joules) by E = .5*CV^2 where C = capacitance (in Farads) and V = voltage, or

--> V = sqrt((2E)/C)

--> 3500 = sqrt((2*187992000)/30.7)

3500v is a lot. Up until now most comercially available supercapacitors do 5.5v or less and tend to leak energy over time. It's possilbe these guys have really made a stunning break through (the fact they filed for a patent is sure something), but the numbers set off my bullshit detector.

TFA (or TFP if you prefer) does indeed state 3500v. The patent also claims leakage of only 0.1% per 30 days. So, big claims. Hopefully they're for real. We'll just have to wait and see.

Re:Highly unlilkely

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, they claim to have a version that uses 5000V for military applications (think direct energy weapons).

Re:Highly unlilkely

[jank1887]

shush now. no need to spread that all over the nets.

Re:Highly unlilkely

[Cassini2]

Traditionally, you launch a technology like this into a sector willing to pay a heavy premium for the parts. If they were really able to produce capacitors with these specifications, one would think they would go after the ultra-exotic small volume applications first. These applications often provide huge amounts of funding, allowing you to debug your product and manufacturing techniques. Thus, initial commercialization is often to DARPA, or some other defense, military, electronic or specialized power conversion application. After you get your production processes down, then you go after the high-volume low-cost marketplace. Batteries are a fairly established, low cost market. Even if your product is good, it may be difficult to make enough product to meet demand.

For me, this patent begs the question: if you had capacitors this good, why are you selling them to compete against batteries?

Re:Highly unlilkely

[evanbd]

As others have mentioned, it is indeed a 3.5kV part. The patent discusses some very high dielectric constant materials, and a way to get them to actually perform near the lab performance numbers of a single crystal. The PET matrix is there to help with the voltage rating. This isn't a normal supercap in construction; calling it such is a little odd technically. It's really just a very high breakdown voltage, very high dielectric constant ceramic cap.

Also, modern supercaps don't leak all that much. They'll happily keep a backup clock running for a month or more, with lifetime well approximated by voltage change = current drawn * time / capacitance. At least, that's my experience; I've never had a need to directly measure the leakage rates.

Re:Highly unlilkely

[Zerth]

For me, this patent begs the question: if you had capacitors this good, why are you selling them to compete against batteries?

Serously, can you imagine the coilgun that could be made with one of these?

Something like 3500volts*sqrt(.01 efficient*30.7F/10 grams) = 613 meters/second?

Or was that in microfarads... hell, now I'll have to look it up.

Regardless, it'd make a neat vehicle mounted weapon.

Re:Highly unlilkely

[D_Blackthorne]

What I'm seeing here indicates that it's an array consisting of banks of capacitors in series to get the working voltage, and then connected in parallel to get the overall capacity.

Re:Highly unlilkely

[hamster3null]

That's precisely how they manage to achieve these energy capacity numbers. Energy density scales as the square of maximum voltage.

Re:Highly unlilkely

[Agripa]

It is not an easy task to have a power supply that regulates over such a large range to use the full amount of energy stored in these capacitors. You are lucky to use a big fraction of the storage capacity.

I have had much the same thought every time the substitution of capacitors for batteries comes up. Switching power supplies designed for large input voltage ranges often are limited to a 1:2 or 1:4 ratio of input voltage. Wide input ranges have significant costs in efficiency and power density. The semiconductor switches have to support both high voltage and high current where in a more limited input voltage design, they could deliver far more power.

The good news is that for a capacitor, the available energy is the square of the voltage so discharge down to 1/4 of the voltage returns most of the energy anyway. It is still however a much larger range than a battery would require.

State of the art in available IGBTs is 3500 to 4000 volts peak but the switching converter is still going to be much more complicated and expensive than one for supporting the relatively modest 340 volts or so associated with a battery pack. The higher voltage will not require just a change in scale.

Re:Highly unlilkely

[Agripa]

The capacitor design may not support the high rate of discharge required to make full use of its capacity in that type of application.

Re:Highly unlilkely

[RedWizzard]

FYI: The 5.5V capacitors are actually made up of 2 individual cells in series each of which rated for ~ 2.5V nominal each. That is dictated by the dielectric material properties.

>The EESU is composed of 31,353 of these components arranged in parallel.

I think it is more than likely to have capacitors in series and parallel combination to get to these high voltages.

The patent says they are all in parallel.

Re:Highly unlilkely

[WindBourne]

So the fact that l-mart seccured all rights to this for DOD purposes means nothing?

Cannot explode but can be used in Fords?

[Ostracus]

It's only in Hollywood gasoline make cars explode with impact (or rather just before).

Sure they don't.

Re:Cannot explode but can be used in Fords?

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

And this is *totally* safe right ? Inside the box is a 52,000 kwh magnetic field. Around that box we have metal (a car) and magnets (an electrical motor).

Does anyone really need convincing of exactly what will happen when the box is pierced by metal ?

Yes it's electrical energy, so the driver might get thoroughly cooked instead of thrown out of the car.

Re:Cannot explode but can be used in Fords?

[Anonymous Coward]

I assume this is the argument the politicians will use when their oil lobbyists get this thing banned.

Re:Cannot explode but can be used in Fords?

[jank1887]

and despite the complete lack of anything scientifically valid, it will stick. that's the sad state of politics in which we live.

Re:Cannot explode but can be used in Fords?

[Anonymous Coward]

Inside the box is a 52,000 kwh magnetic field

Inside the box is a 52,000 kwh electric charge. Huge difference there. The correct unit for magnetic field strength is Telsa btw.

Re:Cannot explode but can be used in Fords?

[ByOhTek]

But couldn't the stored charge be released quickly if the thing were impacted? Capacitors are supposed to be fast-charge/fast-release. I'd still be worried about having all that energy pulsing through me.

Re:Cannot explode but can be used in Fords?

[Kjellander]

Are you sure it is 52,000 kWh (kwh is not the right unit btw) and not 52.000 kWh, as it actually says in the summary.

There is a huuuuge, difference. One would be able to run a car at full throttle for an hour, roughly, and the other would be able to run at full throttle for 40 days. (52 kW is an ok size engine).

Now, the summary is bad, cause it distorts the patent application. The summary says 52.220 kWh but the patent says 52.22 kWh.

So the question is now where you got that silly 52 MWh figure from....

Re:Cannot explode but can be used in Fords?

[MightyYar]

IIRC, Pintos didn't actually "explode" (except in the movie "Top Secret"). Instead, they poured the entire contents of their tank onto the ground in the case of a rear collision. The big gasoline puddle could then catch fire.

There's a video here. Lots of flames, no flying shrapnel :)

Re:Cannot explode but can be used in Fords?

[germansausage]

Nope, an _electric_ field.

Re:Cannot explode but can be used in Fords?

[limaxray]

You're thinking of an inductor - ideally, capacitors store their energy in an electric field while inductors store their energy in a magnetic field

Re:Cannot explode but can be used in Fords?

[Khenke]

If you search in google news about "Exploding car" you get 5 hits, and all is about games, movies or a staged death.

Eg. exploding cars never hit the news, either it's because it never happens or it's too ordinary to report about. Pick what you think is most likely...

Oh, and Myth Busters made an episode about shooting a gasoline tank with bullets, even incenerary, and it didn't explode.

Re:Cannot explode but can be used in Fords?

[0100010001010011]

News flash, Europe and US use different 'thousands' separator.

Re:Cannot explode but can be used in Fords?

[mr_mischief]

A full tank wouldn't. A mostly empty tank might, but it's not as common as movie directors might hope. It's not gasoline that explodes. It's gasoline vapor or fumes that explode. Gasoline as a liquid just burns, although it does burn rapidly and at a high temperature.

Re:Cannot explode but can be used in Fords?

[Kjellander]

News flash, Europe and US use different 'thousands' separator.

News flash, I'm a Swede, I know.

That's why the summary shouldn't have changed 52.22 kWh to 52.220 kWh.

If someone writes 52,000, they must mean 52000 since they clearly have rounded off to 2 significant numbers.

What would be the point in saying that it's now exact to 5 digits, but the last 3 are wrong? (they should be .22 and not .000)

Re:Cannot explode but can be used in Fords?

[fnj]

News flash, Europe and US use different 'thousands' separator.

Correct, but news flash: who knows who proofread what. The simple fact is that 52 kWh is about enough to power a car for a fairly reasonable range. 52 MWh would be enough to run an 18 wheeler from coast to coast.

Re:Cannot explode but can be used in Fords?

[JCSoRocks]

That can't be right... everyone knows that Tesla is a car.

Re:Cannot explode but can be used in Fords?

[cobaltnova]

This exchange is truly pathetic. First, we have someone claiming that a capacitor, a purely electrostatic phenomenon, is a magnetic phenomenon. The next poster retorts that kWh, a measure of energy, is a measure of electric charge. That's it, turn in your geek cards. Back to Griffith's Introduction to Electrodynamics for both of you.

Re:Cannot explode but can be used in Fords?

[couchslug]

"The big gasoline puddle could then catch fire."

Which was complemented by the tendency of the doors to jam shut when the car crumpled from being ass-ended.

Re:Cannot explode but can be used in Fords?

[immcintosh]

I'm inclined to read it favorably and say he was using "charge" in the vernacular sense, as in, an amount of stored energy, rather than a claim about electromagnetic properties.

Re:Cannot explode but can be used in Fords?

[Domini]

Well, in this one it does!

Movies have taught me that all cars explode (sometime even before impact), cars can lose up to 5 hubcaps in chase scenes (perhaps they stopped somewhere to install some extras during a leisurely part of the chase?), explosions go BOOM in space (I always thought it was the magnetic resonance against the outer hull of other ships that cause the 'sound'!).

Oh, yea, and lemmings jump off cliffs to their deaths...

Re:Cannot explode but can be used in Fords?

[Eivind]

52Kwh is not that good actually. It's the same energy you get from about 10 pounds of petrol, or 1.3 gallons. Most cars have gas-tanks sligthly larger than 2 gallons, for a reason. And to get that amount of energy, you need 280 pounds of this, and extra weight invariably means -lower- range for the same energy.

Oh, you can drive a while with 1.3 gallons worth of energy, sure. But it's not a good range for a modern car. (most cars have tanks about 10 times this size, though this range isn't really needed, just practical. A car with a 300 mile range is perfectly fine, especially if it charges quickly (minutes). But a car with a 50-mile range is going to be limiting even if it can recharge in a few minutes. (which is frankly unlikely, consider the amps needed, try to spec the needed cables....)

Re:Cannot explode but can be used in Fords?

[Wonko the Sane]

Your engine can convert about 1/5 of the energy in that 1.3 gallons of gasoline into forward motion.

An electric propulsion system can convert 9/10 of the energy in the capacitor into forward motion.

So a better comparison would be about 6 gallons.

Re:Cannot explode but can be used in Fords?

[quenda]

Inside the box is a 52,000 kwh electric charge. Huge difference there. The correct unit for magnetic field strength is Telsa btw.

Pot. Kettle. Try 52kWhr of energy. The correct unit for charge is the coulomb.

Re:Cannot explode but can be used in Fords?

[bwcbwc]

Actually, it's a static electric field that is net neutral outside the device, so there is no magnetic field even if you move it around. And whether this charge is dangerous when punctured depends on the voltage differential between the plates, the current carrying capacity of each plate and how many plates you actually touch with the metal implement. Put a power transistor on each plate so that reverse current flow is only allowed when the charger is plugged in, and you can prevent people from getting hit by anything more than charge from the directly affected plates. In fact they need the transistors anyway or a failure in a single plate could cause the whole (expensive) device to fail.

Re:Cannot explode but can be used in Fords?

[badkarmadayaccount]

It WILL release that energy as heat, and fast, because it will be an ideal short circuit. That shouldn't worry you, though. An explosion is the rapid expansion of gas, it doesn't say anything about large amounts of heat dissipated rapidly, though that is the usual way. Liquid nitrogen could explode when mixed with ignited thermite, though the heat isn't released rapidly. In this case, there will be a quick release of heat, but it can't be transferred fast enough to a large enough volume of gas, so the capacitor pack won't explode upon crushing, it will merely turn into a molten lava-like substance, quite probably some distance from the passengers. And there is no way this side of reality that the electrical energy will get out of it at this point, that's why it's called a short circuit, because the electricity takes the absolute shortest path.

Cheers!

Interesting specifications

[Anonymous Coward]

No one has noted yet that these caps also have insane *individual* unit specs! They're rated for 3500 V, have about 1 milli Farad and weight about *5 grams* each. This is absolutely unheard of. Normally you have to choose two from: small size, high voltage and high capacitance.

The energy that a cap contains is written as E = U^2*C, so it's obvious that scaling up the voltage gives you high rewards very rapidly. The problem has been that the insulating layers inside caps cannot handle high voltages without being made very thick. This means less capacitance since ideally the plates should be as large as possible and as close as possible.

The bill of materials looks nice too: Aluminum, Barium, Titanium, simple plastic. If they can actually produce the goods, this could be very cheap to mass produce.

If they can commercialise this, it *will* revolutionarise portable power (3500 V inside your iPod?;). But until they show a working prototype I'd hold my horses and not bet on this to solve our energy storage problems.

Re:Interesting specifications

[networkconsultant]

Well I've been following EEStor For a while; Zen Motors (a canadian company) has a vested interest in this company; to the tune of 2.5 Million. Lockheed Martin already has the military rights to sales.
The key to this breakthrough is built upon work done by Phillips; Barium Titanate & Strontium have permittivity of up to 15,000 (permittivity determines the breakdown voltage of your dielectric which determines leakage current and maximum voltage).
As it stands now If we can get these and the HI-PA drive working together you'll see the Volovo Recharge do 0 - 60 in 4 seconds.

Re:Interesting specifications

[aaarrrgggh]

Please, no 3.5kV electronics in any of my "consumer electronics." Especially an iPod; how the heck do you step up 5V USB power to 3.5kV effectively? For everything else, I just don't want a short if I drop it...

Re:Interesting specifications

[ivan256]

You step up the voltage with a ladder circuit. The same way they do it in televisions, defibrillator, and portable Stun Guns.

It doesn't matter what the voltage is. It matters how much power is stored, and what the internal resistance is. If maximum output current is the same, you wouldn't care if it was 12v or 1200v when it shorted out. All you care about is energy released per unit time.

Re:Interesting specifications

[Agripa]

Please, no 3.5kV electronics in any of my "consumer electronics." Especially an iPod; how the heck do you step up 5V USB power to 3.5kV effectively? For everything else, I just don't want a short if I drop it...

Cold cathode fluorescent tubes can run in that range but they usually use a capacitor ballast and the impedance level is very high which also makes the lead wiring tricky. Insulation breakdown in the transformer secondary or associated wiring is a common failure mode but the high impedance limits the destructiveness.

My suspicion is that component failure mode for the power converter used with these batteries if they work as advertised will include "disappearance".

Oh, this is clever.

[jcr]

At first I wasn't getting why this would have better capacitance than conventional materials. Then around page 6, I realized that they're laying down a lot of layers. Like, a micron of conductor and nine microns of dielectric in each pass.

This is what patents are really for.

-jcr

Re:Oh, this is clever.

[jcr]

Well, the material is basically a laminate where a majority of the volume is teflon, and the conductors are sintered metal powders. I haven't heard of teflon getting brittle at low temperatures, and I wouldn't expect the conductors to be prone to breaking, either.

I think that you'd probably have to worry about the copper in the motor windings of an electric car shattering at low temperatures before you'd have to worry about the capacitors.

-jcr

Re:Oh, this is clever.

[powerlord]

But how will it perform in a post-apocalyptic future?

Quite fine until you reach the critical point in the plotline where the device needs to function, at which point you will have to either:

A) sacrifice one of your hard-earned gadgets to repair the it.
or
B) go on a side-quest to a far flung destination to replace it.

Re:Oh, this is clever.

[Frisson]

Errr, polyethylene terephthalate = PET. The stuff they make Coke bottles out of. Should be ok in most environments and it's cheap.

Teflon is poly(tetrafluoroethylene) which is very chemically stable and has excellent temperature resistance. However, even if it offered the same resistance to the high voltages in the system as the PET, it would probably make these things prohibitively expensive.

Re:Oh, this is clever.

[TooMuchToDo]

You could always take a trickle of power from the EEstor cap to keep it warm if you really needed to.

Re:Oh, this is clever.

[jcr]

Ah, thanks for the correction. I assumed it was Teflon because I've seen conventional capacitors that use teflon for the dielectric.

At any rate, the materials described don't sound like they're going to have any trouble with temperature extremes from inclement weather.

-jcr

Re:Check out the patent

[TapeCutter]

3-6 minutes charge time for 52 kWh.

Better use the heavy duty extention cord.

Re:Check out the patent

[iammani]

3-6 minutes charge time for 52 kWh.

Can a typical household handle such a load, or may be we may have to visit an electricity pumps to recharge. Either way does not seem bad at all.

Patent doesn't prove anything.

[Anonymous Coward]

Taken from http://www.theeestory.com/topics/934?page=2
"I have been following this blog for time. I, like most have been very hopeful that EESTOR will be successful. I was very encouraged when they were able to show some third party verification last summer. Then something recently happened that corrected my vision. That something was Gary Madoff. The experts have stated Gary Madoff could not do what he claimed for more than a decade. But peopled believed anyway. Some wanted to believe so much they threw away their entire fortunes. There were two clear signs Gary Madoff was conning people. One, secrecy is a must. Cons must always have a secret process because their process cannot stand independent review. "If I tell you how I do it others will steal my work " is the main stay of any con. Two, A goal everybody wants to believe badly. A con cannot succeed unless the people to be conned are desperate to achieve the goal the con man claims to be achieving. Gary Madoff had secrecy. Gary Madoff had returns everyone wanted to believe were possible. Sound familiar?"

Re:Comparison with gasoline

[femto]

In their favour, an electric motor is much more energy efficient than an internal combustion engine. 20% seems to be the maximum for a practical internal combustion engine. Electric motors should easily be able to reach 90% efficiency, with the record being 98% efficiency. Thus that 4.5 litres of petrol (1.2 US gallons of gas) becomes 20 litres. Not too bad for a first attempt, given that a small car (eg. Toyoto Echo/Yaris) typically takes 30-35 litres of petrol on a fill.

Yaris and their ilk aren't the model of efficiency in their design. Surely it wouldn't be too hard to make a Yaris type car use 35% less energy, resulting in a capacitor powered electric car with similar range to a petrol equivalent?

Re: can hold 52.220 kWh

[Kjellander]

It's NOT KW*H! It isn't kw either, nor is it kw*h.

It is however kWh, meaning kilowatt hour, and it is a unit of energy.

Start getting you units right, and capitalization DOES matter. M = mega, m = milli.

At one time it got so bad...

[PingXao]

In years past it got so bad the USPTO had to institute a policy that certain types of inventions had to submit a working model along with the application. My guess is that there was funny business invloved with this patent application. Follow the money, as they say.

Re: can hold 52.220 kWh

[BlackPignouf]

k, not kw.

Enablement

[Wolfbone]

The patent (PDF) is a highly information-rich document that offers remarkable insight into the device.

Well of course it is. If you can't actually build a working device from the information disclosed in the patent, the patent isn't valid:

http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/documents/2100_2164.htm

Re:Enablement

[Extremus]

"But it works in this simulation software that I have just coded! How this cannot count as an 'working device'?!"

Re:Enablement

[networkconsultant]

Lockheed Martin has verified the permittivity and quality of the Barium Titanate blended powder.

Introducing : the iTaser

[Mathinker]

> 3500 V inside your iPod

When you popped that one, it became clear to me what the next step would be: a combination iPod / self-defense device....

Re:Introducing : the iTaser

[jcr]

Heh.. An iPod that serves as its own security system. I like it.

Not to mention, that if the cops are going to carry tasers, maybe we should, too.

-jcr

Re:Check out the patent

[MichaelSmith]

Electric vehicle charge times seem to be limited by the capacity of household wiring at the moment.

That's incredible.

[jcr]

I just had a look at the videos on that Silverbrook Research page you linked to. I haven't been so impressed with any printing technology since the first time I saw a laser printer. It's the kind of thing that makes me wish I had a couple hundred million bucks in venture money so I could back it.

-jcr

Re:That's incredible.

[YttriumOxide]

The speed is very impressive for inkjet style technology (but doesn't hold a candle to laser). The quality, if comparable to a high quality inkjet (no way to tell by looking at a website, I'd need to see real output), then it definitely could do well in some markets (especially home "photo printers"), but it's definitely not revolutionary. Especially as the quality of colour laser improves, there is less and less need for this by "most people" (some people will always want the advantage that inkjet offers in quality, but considering that the "perfectly standard" office laser equipment I work with can do 65ppm in full colour with quality good enough to stick on my wall at home, it's definitely not "take over the printing industry" kind of tech)

Re:Comparison with gasoline

[RedWizzard]

The capacitor described apparently stores ~180MJ.

Gasoline contains 39MJ/litre, so the capacitor contains the same energy density as 1 gallon of fuel (or 1.2 US gallons for leftpondians).

If we new the efficiency of converting energy in the capacitor into kinetic energy, we could compare the usefulness of this technology.

According to Wikipedia the Tesla has battery-to-wheel efficiency of about 90%. Internal combustion engines are about 20% (the thermodynamic limit is 37%).

Re:Check out the patent

[MichaelSmith]

1. Park EV under power cables
2. Throw a rope over the Neutral and use it to pull up a steel cable
3. Throw the rope over the Active. Attach a second cable
4. ???
5. Profit! (assuming you are still alive after step 4).

Re:Seems you are a factor ten wrong on the capacit

[Anonymous Coward]

But when you're using Kelvin-wh's, what does it matter?

More details.

[Spaceball_3000]

For more details on this, and people who have analyzed all the current data on in check out --> http://www.theeestory.com/
I've checked it out about once a week, for updates on it, but over the past year, it's heading towards vaporware.

kWh is a confusing unit for energy...

[neonux]

"It is said to have a total capacitance of 30.693 F and can hold 52.220 kWh of energy."

Wait! How many Library of Congress could that battery power by hour?

Re:kWh is a confusing unit for energy...

[pm_rat_poison]

Oh, yeah. kWh are confusing. I guess it's only natural to ignore the fact that 1 kWh is simply the energy spent by using a device that has a power of 1kW for an hour.
On the other end, 1 foot = 12 inches, 1 yard = 3 feet, 1 furlong = 220 yards and 1 mile = 8 furlongs. Sure. That makes TOTAL sense

Re:kWh is a confusing unit for energy...

[jank1887]

I had assumed by his comment that he would just prefer Joules.

Re:Seems you are a factor ten wrong on the capacit

[owlstead]

Page 4 line 10 says differently.

Battery backup for my house?

[DoofusOfDeath]

52.220 kWh

My house = 100 amps (max) * 110V = 11 kW.

So could this thing power my house for about five hours when a power line gets cut? If so, that might not be a bad investment for the house, depending on cost, of course.

Re:Battery backup for my house?

[tomtomtom777]

My house = 100 amps (max) * 110V = 11 kW.

I would recheck that. If you really use 11kW, I would throw a way some of those electrical heaters, turn of all your jacuzi's when you leave the house, and look at the efficiency of your greenhouses.

Otherwise Al Gore and I will hold you personally responsable for the global warming...

Re:Battery backup for my house?

[Lumpy]

For $5800.00 I can get a natural gas generator installed that will run my house for 600 days. I guarantee that this device will cost more than that, plus the controller as you dont want an 1,000,000 amp inrush charge to happen when the power comes back on. plus the whole AC to DC thing.... I'm betting that even if they did offer such a device it would be well over $10,000 without installation for your 5 hour backup system. and that price would stay that high for a long time.

Home automatic generators took 2 decades to come down to their really cheap price they have today. The one we got from homedepot is as quiet as my wife's buick.

Re:Battery backup for my house?

[ekimminau]

Current state of the art natural gas generator to power my home (about the same draw as yours) would be about $15K. I don't know how many of these I could buy for $15K and what the loss would be converting the DC back to 110V AC but to pay $9.00US to charge them to supply ~5hours power each Id buy 10 of them to have 4 days stand by power. I would think my 1400W gas powered generator could keep it charged indefinately.

Sign me up.

Re:Battery backup for my house?

[michael_cain]

The typical suburban household consumes about 30 kWh per day, and could easily be reduced to 25 with more efficient devices. Call it two days worth. It would be interesting to price out a system that keeps your house running for two days if the commercial power goes out, or if you live in a state with time-of-day pricing, to time-shift your consumption of grid electricity into the cheap hours.

So where is it?

[Anonymous Coward]

The patent implies they had built at least 10 of these things (they have a table of test results), years ago when they submitted the patent. If it is real, there is no reason they can't demonstrate it publicly now. So where is it?

Re:Check out the patent

[Macka]

Though if you're parking at home it's likely to be for long periods of time, so a trickle charge would do just as well. Where you'd want a big hit fast is when you're out and about, and it'd be a lot easier to make commercial charge points available that can deliver when needed.

Ultimately this spells the end end for gas stations, when you could potentially plug in to charge up in a supermarket car park when shopping, or at the local cinema, or at work, or anywhere else you can think of where you park the car and leave it for a few hours to do something else.

Re:I dunno...

[BiggerIsBetter]

This sounds more like a "Holy shit, we can make millions! Got to watch our ass..."

Billions. Billions, son.

Alternativelyb- lightning?

[cheros]

If it can really handle that sort of charge speed we're heading towards a way to store lightning.

Now THAT would be cool (figuratively speaking, of course :-)

Re:Alternativelyb- lightning?

[Dun Malg]

If it can really handle that sort of charge speed we're heading towards a way to store lightning.

Now THAT would be cool (figuratively speaking, of course :-)

Hey, the EEstore patent says they're 30.693 farads at 3500v...

Re:Check out the patent

[Hecatonchires]

Not necessarily. Electricity isn't free, and those petrol stations that are smart will retool pretty quickly as electrical distribution stations - after all, they're already distributed pretty well all over the country. A danger is having a whopping huge spark occur near those petrol vapour remnants. Also, just imagine plugging your car in at the mall, forgetting to set a max out, and coming back to find you've downloaded 32 gigajoules, and that'll be 1000$ please sir.

Re: can hold 52.220 kWh

[Hognoxious]

Well whatever unit it is, 640k of them ought to be enough for anyone.

Instant stats

[Twinbee]

The stats are awesome for this if it's true. Here's a quick lowdown. Full stats are below (taken from PDF doc).

The weight is more than twice as light as Lithium Ion
The volume is 20% smaller than Lithium Ion
The charging time is 60x faster than Li-ion (15x faster than NiMH)

-----, EESU, NiMH, LA (Gel), Ni-Z, Li-Ion
Weight (pounds), 286.56, 1716, 3646, 1920, 752
Volume (inch^3), 4541, 17881, 43045, 34780, 5697
Discharge rate/30 days, 0.1%, 5%, 1%, 1%, 1%
Charging time, 3-6 min, 1.5h, 8h, 1.5h, 6h
Life reduced with deep cycle use, none, moderate, high, moderate, high
Hazardous materials, none, yes, yes, yes, yes

Re: can hold 52.220 kWh

[xaxa]

It's NOT KW*H! It isn't kw either, nor is it kw*h.

It is however kWh, meaning kilowatt hour, and it is a unit of energy.

Start getting you units right, and capitalization DOES matter. M = mega, m = milli.

kW*h would be acceptable, so would kW.h (with the dot in the middle, not at the bottom, but /. is so stone-age it won't let me write that).

I'm more concerned with the "281.56 pound", which is not only in the summary but in the patent (I clicked the patent link hoping to see a measurement in kilograms, but it was in pounds there too).

Maybe someone has already asked...

[y2imm]

Is the Volt coming with a free copy of DNF?

It's a lot better than that

[Kupfernigk]

Lead acid batteries start to degrade quickly once taken below 60% of nominal capacity, and car batteries may only stand 30-40 cycles of discharge below 50%. My marine batteries weigh a total of about the same as the EEStor claimed device, and have a real-world capacity of 1.5kW/hour, if I don't want to replace them every 3 years. This is a ratio more like 30 to 1.

Re:It's a lot better than that

[markov_chain]

In order to achieve a large surface area needed for large currents, some lead acids have electrodes made of lead in spongy form. Since lead gets dissolved when a battery is discharged, such batteries can withstand less discharge compared to those with more sturdy electrodes. The electrodes simply fall apart.

Re:It's a lot better than that

[rcw-home]

Lead acid batteries start to degrade quickly once taken below 60% of nominal capacity

Well, this is a capacitor. It *can* be discharged to 0%, but its voltage drops steadily as it discharges, to 0 as well (batteries have a much flatter discharge curve). In theory, it'll store the power indicated. In practice, your 100kW switching power supply may only be able to accommodate 1000-3500V input voltages, instead of 0-3500V (yes - 3500V according to the patent).

Re:It's a lot better than that

[Your Pal Dave]

Well, this is a capacitor. It *can* be discharged to 0%, but its voltage drops steadily as it discharges, to 0 as well (batteries have a much flatter discharge curve). In theory, it'll store the power indicated. In practice, your 100kW switching power supply may only be able to accommodate 1000-3500V input voltages, instead of 0-3500V (yes - 3500V according to the patent).

This could be mitigated by using banks of capacitors. When fully charged, the banks would be run in parallel. After discharging to half voltage half of the capacitors would be placed in series with the other half, returning to the original voltage. Repeat until all of the capacitors are in series.

Each new configuration would drop to half-voltage in half of the time as the previous configuration, so you'd hit a point of diminishing returns pretty quickly, but you'd still do better than the 30% capacity loss from your example.

As an aside, because a cap's voltage is proportional to charge a 'fuel gauge' would be a lot more accurate than the battery indicators we are used to on our portable devices.

Re:It's a lot better than that

[rcw-home]

This could be mitigated by using banks of capacitors. When fully charged, the banks would be run in parallel. After discharging to half voltage half of the capacitors would be placed in series with the other half, returning to the original voltage. Repeat until all of the capacitors are in series.

Ordinarily, this would work, but they are producing this as a monolithic unit - a single 281lb capacitor. You can also do it at the motor windings (similar to what they're starting to do with wind turbines), but you'd still need to design the rest of the electronics to cope with the wide voltage range (and size the wires to cope with the wide amperage range).

You'd have to be really careful with the switching circuitry too - if you make a positive-positive connection before you break a positive-negative connection, you're shorting out one of the capacitors. The patent notably omits any Equivalent Series Resistance specs, but given that this thing is internally wired as 31351 capacitors in parallel, I figure it could be on the scary side of one ohm (which makes it a lot worse than, say, a failed H-bridge stepper motor control hooked to traditional batteries). Hopefully the protection circuitry will be designed to interrupt at least 10000A.

Energy density

[mseeger]

Hi,

usually you calculate the energy density in MJ (megajoule) per kg (Kilogramm). Why someone uses obsolete units like pounds escapes me, but if i calculate (the use of "." and "," is a little bit inconsistent, i'm using "," to designate fractional decimals) correctly:

281.56 pounds are 127 kg
52,2 kwh are about 188 MJ

The result are 1,5 MJ per kg. Though better than normal still a long way (by a factor of 30) from fuel gas.

Sincerely yours, Martin

Re:Energy density

[GrahamCox]

The result are 1,5 MJ per kg. Though better than normal still a long way (by a factor of 30) from fuel gas.

True, but you can't turn kinetic energy into fuel-gas (i.e. regenerative braking), and your I/C engine is wasting >65% of the energy anyway, so as part of an overall system, energy density isn't the whole story.

Re:Energy density

[mseeger]

True, but you can't turn kinetic energy into fuel-gas (i.e. regenerative braking), and your I/C engine is wasting >65% of the energy anyway, so as part of an overall system, energy density isn't the whole story.

Correct, but factor 30 is hard to offset by the better efficency.

Yours, Martin

Re:Energy density

[PIBM]

Factor in the price of gas, the environmental effect, distribution ineffectiveness (yes, people are driving those petroleum vans around, while those 600kV lines are doing a fine job of carying electricity around with minimal losses over thousands of kilometers), 20% or so effectiveness of the gas motor vs 90%+ of the electrical vehicule, effective torque of the electrical motor... and keep going. Yes, you'll want one too!

Re:Energy density

[Big_Breaker]

Electric motors are also much more powerful per kilo than piston engines and use a much simpler transmission. High voltage electric motors, the type that a 3500V supercap could power, would be even lighter than the 375V motor used in the Tesla roadster or other typical traction duty.

You need to look at the whole power train, from engine to axle.

Re:Energy density

[IvyKing]

usually you calculate the energy density in MJ (megajoule) per kg (Kilogramm).

Depends, burnup specs for nuclear fuel are usually given as MWdays/tonne. For electric energy systems, kWh per given unit of weight is a more natural form than MJ.

So, where's my nuclear car?

[PolygamousRanchKid]

*During this time period, everything was competing. There were dozens of electric car companies; steam, ethanol, diesel, gasoline were all competing.

I'm waiting for one that is fueled by weapons-grade plutonium.

When that baby knocks, it's going to *KNOCK*, big-time.

Re:So, where's my nuclear car?

[jank1887]

88mph baby!

Re:So, where's my nuclear car?

[I cant believe its n]

When the plutonium fueled car is rockin'
don't come knockin'!

Re:So, where's my nuclear car?

[TooMuchToDo]

So the piston only does one stroke, but that stroke will take you to the moon? =)

Re:So, where's my nuclear car?

[mechsoph]

They sort of tried that, way back in the Atomic Age. Maybe one of these small-scale fusion guys will eventually get something energy positive, though.

that's *nothing* compared to a tank of petrol

[petes_PoV]

Petrol contains about 34Mega-Joules of energy per litre. For a standard 60 litre tank, that's pretty close to 2GJ of energy.

Now, using 1 Joule == 1 Watt for 1 Second, that comes out to 566kWh, roughly 10 times what this (and other) electrically powered vehicles can manage.

Looks like they have a long way to go before they have enough juice for mainstream use.

Re:that's *nothing* compared to a tank of petrol

[mevets]

According to the great wiki god, ic engines average 18-20% efficiency, and peak at 37%; so a tank is between 100..210 kWh usable. Presuming the 18% is around city, and the more direct applicability of regenerative braking, the difference shrinks considerably.

Re:that's *nothing* compared to a tank of petrol

[fprintf]

How many times do you go through a 60 litre tank in one go? I live in the suburbs, which means driving to practically everything, and in both of my current cars there may be one or two times per year that we go on a road trip and have to refill along the way or at our turnaround point. That means the 95% of the rest of the time we do small trips where the capacity of this capacitor would be fine.

So to say there is *no* market simply because it doesn't have a 250 mile range is stupid. To say the market is somewhat more limited, and might require different purchase requirements is fine. For example, in my family we might keep one petrol car for the occasional road trips, and then buy one capacitor car for sporty/commuting/grocery-getting etc.

Re:that's *nothing* compared to a tank of petrol

[bishiraver]

And because it is a capacitor, charging it is extremely fast. Maybe, even, faster than it takes for you to fuel your car.

Re:that's *nothing* compared to a tank of petrol

[Doc Ruby]

Actually, since gasoline weighs about .75Kg:l, a 60l tank weighs 45Kg, and this supercap weighs 127Kg, while the gasoline's 566KWh compares to the supercap's 52.22KWh, the gasoline's energy density is 2.82222222 * 10.8387591 = 30.5893868x the supercap's.

However, that's comparing to just the gasoline. The supercap isn't just the capacitive powder/plastic, it's the entire device. So include the gas tank's weight with the gas for comparison.

And then, since the gasoline must be combusted into power, include the engine and the entire fuel system all the way to the transmission. Then you've got to add the electric motor to the supercap for the comparisons to be equal. The electric motor can weigh very little, like the motors mounted in-wheel by Michelin at just 7Kg per wheel (*2 for 41hp = 14Kg). Electric vs gasoline energy density probably comes in at parity, or electric superior.

Plus regen braking delivers a huge advantage to the electric system (especially in traffic, where it can exceed a return of 50% to storage). And since the electric system weighs so much less than the gasoline, it spends less of its power moving itself, in a lighter car. Which is a nonlinear efficiency favoring the lighter vehicle.

So in fact this supercap should outperform gasoline cars. Just like current electric ones do, in the most important metric: acceleration. VVVvvvvvooooommMMMMMMM!!!!

Re:that's *nothing* compared to a tank of petrol

[marcansoft]

Not unless you have a small power plant just for that purpose.

Using 20A at 220V (typical maximum draw for a household) it'll take you 11 hours to charge.

Even if you somehow have infinite power available, you still have to account for the "interesting" requirements of high power densities. To charge in 1 hour, you'd need 200A. 6 minutes, 2000A. Doubt that's going to happen with any sort of manageable cabling. Switching to increasing volts (let's assume you can actually get such a supply from somewhere) you start having to deal with the interesting issues of high voltage feeds, such as arcing and proper insulation, not to mention safety.

Electric cars will never charge faster than their hydrocarbon-consuming buddies. Replacing the entire battery pack with a charged one sounds like a much more viable option.

Re:that's *nothing* compared to a tank of petrol

[timeOday]

Being able to "refuel" at home (albeit at a slower rate) would also be a valuable convenience.

Re:that's *nothing* compared to a tank of petrol

[jasonlfunk]

Especially if they ever get wireless power working.

Re:that's *nothing* compared to a tank of petrol

[PIBM]

20A at 220V ? That means that running maybe 4 computers and a home cinema and nothing else works ? It's not even half of what my oven can use..

Actually, here at least, most house have a 200A 240V distribution panel. With the voltage losses in the lines from the transformator, and a buffer not to trigger the breaker, we are supposed to be able to use up to 44kW. So, if we were to use all of the power to charge this capacitor, it would take an hour and 11 minutes to charge up.

What would be the best thing is just to have a straight 10kV entry point for charging at a reduced rate rather than reducing it to 240V, or even a 600V/500A which is common here for farms or home enterprises (even garages), or, just fill it up at the gas/electricity station !

Re:that's *nothing* compared to a tank of petrol

[TheLink]

Actually I wouldn't mind having a car with both.

A car with an efficient and light hydrocarbon fuel cell with a smaller supercapacitor for regen braking (a supercapacitor that can do repeated regenerative braking of 110kph to 0 in 5 seconds would be more than good enough for me - which works out to storing 465kJ(0.13kWh) at a rate of 93kW).

Then I'd be able to use hydrocarbon fuels (which have better storage and transportation properties than hydrogen), have good acceleration, regenerative braking, no (or less) need for gears, and very good "mpg".

If you can create hydrogen fuel using nuclear power, it might not be so difficult to create hydrocarbon fuels using nuclear power.

Re:that's *nothing* compared to a tank of petrol

[mr_mischief]

20A at 220V is the maximum for some household circuits. It certainly isn't the limit for a household. My incoming service is 200 amps, broken down into 50, 30, and 15 amp circuits at 220V and 110V (actually, 230V and 115V average, 220V and 110V minimum, and 240V and 120V maximum).

Re:that's *nothing* compared to a tank of petrol

[fnj]

20A at 220V is the maximum for some household circuits. It certainly isn't the limit for a household. My incoming service is 200 amps, broken down into 50, 30, and 15 amp circuits at 220V and 110V (actually, 230V and 115V average, 220V and 110V minimum, and 240V and 120V maximum).

"Honey, would you unplug the electric stove, furnace, refrigerator, and toaster, please? I need to use almost the entire electric service for 1.1 hours to recharge the car. Thank you."

Re:that's *nothing* compared to a tank of petrol

[jabuzz]

That must be in the USA, cause here in the UK a typical fuse for a domestic property is 80A, with a 240V AC supply.

There will be millions of properties in the UK with a 40A or higher rated shower circuit, and all cooker circuits are rated at 32A.

A commercial property will most likely have a three phase 415V supply, that can deliver a lot more juice. Note that domestic properties are feed from a three phase supply, with each property getting it's supply from across two phases, changing in sequence as you go down the street. It would not be beyond the bounds of possibility to bring three phase into homes for charging up your car.

Re:that's *nothing* compared to a tank of petrol

[mr_mischief]

You have somewhat of a point, but you're using a slippery slope argument to get to it. Of course you don't want your heat and refrigeration turned off to charge the car. There's a big difference between using the whole 200 amps and only using 20 amps, though.

I would imagine those with the means and who are hooked up to a local utility with the capacity would have a second 200 amp service or 400 amp service installed just to charge the car. Many farms, garages, machine shops, and more have 480v 400 amp service or dual 200 amp services. I know people who have a second 200-amp service in their homes already to power welders, sandblasters, and more out in the workshop.

A local electrical coop will even hook up a separate service with a separate meter for an electric heat pump that's billed at half the regular rate. That's a good portion of your home's rated service that is no longer being used right there.

Re:that's *nothing* compared to a tank of petrol

[fnj]

Or you could take your time charging a second supercapacitor. Then, when you need to recharge the car, zap current into it from the second supercapacitor.

Re:that's *nothing* compared to a tank of petrol

[Facetious]

That's a truly insightful post, but I think you are actually overestimating the usable energy in gasoline. Depending on who you ask, one gallon of gasoline produces 33 to 37 kWh of heat energy (giving 555 kWh for 15 gallons, which is close to your figure). However, gasoline engines can only utilize perhaps 10 kWh per gallon since the rest is consumed in engine/transmission friction. This means that to truly compare the two, 15 gallons of gasoline only has the equivalent of 150 kWh of motive energy. This means that the electric/supercap vehicle potentially has more range than a typical gasoline fueled car. Let's just hope the technology meets the claim.

Re:that's *nothing* compared to a tank of petrol

[mr_mischief]

That's one of the best ideas I've heard for charging one of these things rapidly, and it's so simple everyone on /. should have thought of it. You get big points for that observation from me.

Re:that's *nothing* compared to a tank of petrol

[otis wildflower]

Plus regen braking delivers a huge advantage to the electric system (especially in traffic, where it can exceed a return of 50% to storage).

Isn't regenerative braking limited by speed of recharge? That is, braking from high speeds can generate so much power over so little time that it overloads the (traditional) battery's charging speed, so at high speeds very little power is regenerated..

Presumably this capacitor can take all the power regenerative braking can create, at any speed?

Re:that's *nothing* compared to a tank of petrol

[anonymousmeatbag]

Having one supercapacitor at home tricklecharged looks like good solution to me. I know that charging one capacitor using another is not just simply connecting them, but proper high voltage regulator might be able to recharge empty one in the car form another in reasonable time.
I do not expect an miracle, charging in one hour is good, in 30 minutes might be excellent, that is if super-capacitor could be charged and discharged at high current rates and if high voltage regulator is capable.
Supercapacitor with capacity of 50kWh could be an excelent home power backup solution too.

Re:that's *nothing* compared to a tank of petrol

[ivan256]

Most homes with 200 amp service use far less than that at any point in time. The vast majority of people with 200 amp service never exceed 100 amps, even under surge conditions.

Using 50 amps and having a longer charge cycle would be acceptable in most cases, since most people park for a dozen or more hours in the evening. The grid can probably even handle the additional load, since it would occur in off-peak hours.

The point is moot, however, if the device is yet more snake oil.

Re:that's *nothing* compared to a tank of petrol

[MichaelSmith]

There will be millions of properties in the UK with a 40A or higher rated shower circuit.

Coming from Australia I have to say that those electric shower heaters in the UK give me the creeping horrors.

Re:that's *nothing* compared to a tank of petrol

[Doc Ruby]

Capacitors are notable for their re/discharge efficiency and speed. They are commonly used as in effect a time delay for the arrival of electrons through a circuit after them, but the delay can be zero. They are the remedy to the main problem with electric power: storage, or any time delay at all, and have suffered mainly from charge density per kilogram, which this supercap solves quite substantially.

There will be quite a lot of problems, that we've taken for granted accepting because we didn't have deep enough capacitors, that we will see solved with supercaps if they're cheap, including the energy to make and recycle them.

Re:that's *nothing* compared to a tank of petrol

[AgentGibbled]

This comment also made me wonder about the cold-weather usefulness of this sort of device. As I write this, it's -20C outside in the middle of the day. Granted, this sort of weather isn't a problem for much of the world but it's quite common here and affects a nontrivial number of people.

The "inefficiency" of a IC engine gets put to some use in that some the "waste" heat is used to heat the inside of the car, and you don't really get that benefit in an electric car (and any hybrid I've been in ran the combustion engine constantly while the heater was on). This problem has existed in the past with air-cooled engines (old Volkswagens come to mind). At the time, it was common to have a separate heater that burned whatever fuel the vehicle ran on. I'm thinking that the same wouldn't work too well on an electric car -- running an electric heater would probably put a really big dent in your range, and it would be a real bummer to freeze to death on the side of the highway because your car's heater killed the "battery". This would be a problem with any sort of electric car, but probably not an insurmountable one.

Probably more serious than that, though, might be the impact on the function of the engine itself. Most IC engines will run fine in cold weather assuming you can get them started. A common problem is that the car's battery (particularly older ones) can't deliver enough power at low temperature to turn the engine. I am a long way from an expert in the effects of temperature on various battery chemistries, and even less of one on how low temperature would impact the capacitor-like devices described in the article. I do know that it would be a fairly serious end-user problem if your car just wouldn't work on a cold day.

Does anyone have any insight into the temperature sensitivity of this kind of scheme, and how it would stack up versus comparable battery-based technologies?

It sounds like a promising idea, but it would be a non-starter in many places if it doesn't perform well in very cold (or very hot) weather.

Re:that's *nothing* compared to a tank of petrol

[Doc Ruby]

Yours is another significant insight. Gasoline engines get an average of 20% efficiency of their energy contents, really only 18% to the wheel on the road, as shown in this fabulous primary energy source to mechanical energy flowchart. Except that flowchart shows "Combi", presumably Combined Cycle Gas Turbine at 55% efficiency, when tri-cycle plants can produce between 85-89%, if their heat output is directly consumed in buildings, displacing the fuel that would otherwise have to heat those buildings - which is how we do it, so 87% CCGT is the number to use.

The path from natural gas to wheel replaces that flowchart's "battery 80%" with "supercap 99.9%". So natural gas to wheel is 91% (refine/transport) * 87% (CCGT) * 94% (grid) * 99.9% (supercap) * 90% (motor) = 67% well-to-wheel through natural gas. Gasoline is 86% (refine/transport) * 18% (combustion/transmission) = 15.48% well-to-wheel through gasoline (90% * 22% = 19.8% diesel). Diesel power plants to electric wheels deliver 90% * 48% * 94% * 99.9% * 90% = 36.5%, which has got to be higher than if we used gasoline in electric power plants (which we don't, but comparing efficiencies burning them in cars would say that diesel's 36.5% is 19.8:15.48 gasoline's 28.5%). So the overal efficiency comparison is something like 67:28.5, or 2.35x as good for cars consuming oil as gasoline through a power plant to electric wheels, vs oil as gasoline through a car's gasoline engine.

But that's all irrelevant to the supercap (except I included the supercap's 0.01% efficiency loss in those comparative figures), until the different weights are also considered. That supercap + in-wheel electric might replace 205Kg drivetrain + 45Kg gasoline = 250Kg with 14Kg motors + 127Kg supercap = 141Kg, or 56.4% the weight. So this supercap doesn't just get in the game, it probably reduces a small car with 2 average American passengers (probably about 300Kg total) from 1200Kg down to about 1100Kg, or 8.5% the weight lost.

If energy performance is proportional to weight, all other things considered equal, 2.35x efficiency on 92.5% weight is 2.54x the overall efficiency.

But wait, there's still more! If you could recharge this car at home (or office), the extra mileage you spend driving to refuel is also extra efficiency (besides your time not spent at a gas station or driving to/from it, but rather doing something at home/office). Solar can directly charge the supercap without rectifier or grid losses, probably another 10% gained. Hinting that the entire gasoline refueling infrastructure could be replaced by electric grid and minimal recharging infrastructure, and the lighterweight factories for (presumably) supercaps and electric motors. And of course that electric is generable from natural gas or directly from oil/diesel, at even higher efficiencies.

All of which means that if a real supercap in practice is even half as performant per kg as is this EEStor supercap, it's better than gasoline in every way. Which, when considering the consequences of consuming gasoline beyond the physics (as in geopolitics and climate), makes an extremely compelling case. If $10B would make this happen in 5 years, it would be well spent. Hell, probably $100B would be well spent, because that's about 40B gallons of gas, while the US consumed about 107B gallons in 2008. If the US really could improve efficiency by 2.5x, that would be worth over $100B a year. And since natural gas costs less per joule than gasoline does, perhaps only half, that $266B reduced by 2.5x by efficiency and then by 2 by price could cost only $67B, a $200B savings each year.

Let's hope it meets the claim. And if not, let's make something that does.

Re:that's *nothing* compared to a tank of petrol

[Doc Ruby]

Hydrogen is interesting only as a storage medium in the car for electricity. The whole point of this supercap is that it's much more efficient than hydrogen in storing the electricity that drives the wheels than is cracking water or even conversion from petrofuels. H2 from electric replaces a 99.9% efficient dis/charge supercap with 76% hydrolysis * 94% compression * 35% fuelcell = 25% efficiency (or, with 75% liquefaction, more common and probably safer, 19.95%). Fuelcells aren't ever going to be close to 99.9% (maybe high 80%s), and generating/storing the hydrogen isn't going to get much better than 90%, even with an efficiency breakthru). The supercap probably weighs less than a 20-30KW fuelcell and the hydrogen storage/delivery system, so there's extra efficiency pushing a lighter car.

Nukes don't even break even compared to natural gas CCGTs, even when ignoring the high costs of producing the fuel, building the plants, and dealing with the old plants (cleaning and demolition) and of course the waste. And with efficiencies jumping perhaps 2.5-4x, we have plenty of relatively much cleaner energy sources in natural gas, solar/wind, and even oil and coal - spending some of that efficiency scrubbing the pollution at the plant, perhaps into plastics or biomass.

But slapping 4 of those electric wheels onto a gasoline Ferrari, adding only 140Kg to do it, could be quite a blast.

Re:that's *nothing* compared to a tank of petrol

[marcansoft]

My house has a 20A limit for the entire 3-story plus basement house, including an electric induction stove, an oven, dishwasher, laundry machine, etc. Quite often we have 4 computers running at once (HTPC + 3 room desktops, and that's not counting 2 possible laptops). The 20A limit switch never trips (unless something is wrong). We use gas heating though.

4 computers and a home cinema is quite typical for me. I can imagine we've had one stove heater plus the oven at the same time as that quite often, and things still work. So either Spanish amps are larger, or 20A isn't necessarily too low. I'm sure it'll trip if I turn on EVERYTHING at once, but that doesn't happen very often, considering I don't recall ever seeing it trip due to a non-fault condition more than once or twice.

Still, we're comparing battery/capacitor charging to gas refueling. To even get close to the refueling time, you'd have to draw half a megawatt. Chances are battery/cap charging is never going to be as fast as refueling, even if the battery or capacitor itself can take it.

Re:that's *nothing* compared to a tank of petrol

[hasdikarlsam]

IANAEE, but IIRC, so long as the temperatures don't actually destroy the capacitors - eg. if they contain liquids - the discharge curve should be basically independent of temperature. There is some change, but it's likely closer to 0% than 10%.

Re:that's *nothing* compared to a tank of petrol

[PIBM]

I think your 20A is referring to the limit per outlet. How many breakers and at which strenght do you have in your distribution panel ?

Life imitates sci-fi

[LaminatorX]

With a few of these, you could power a tuly Fabulous Riverboat.

Entropy be damned

[Drakkenmensch]

Unlike lithium-ion cells, the technology is said not to degrade with cycling and thus has a functionally unlimited lifetime.

"Lisa! In this house, we respect the laws of thermodynamics!!!"

Re:Entropy be damned

[TooMuchToDo]

How many times you can charge/discharge a storage medium without it degrading is no way related to thermodynamics. Now if they claimed %100 efficiency, you'd have something to complain about.

Re:Entropy be damned

[Drakkenmensch]

The ability to work forever with no loss of efficiency as energy is converted back and forth between usable and stored form is in itself a claim at 100% efficiency, as all systems suffer material degradation over time, a manifestation of entropy.

Re:Check out the patent

[LordKazan]

An inductor in series with the EEStor capacitor will prevent sparking. Inductors resist dI/dt - but also store energy, and as dI/dt -> 0 their R approaches that simply of the wire the current is running through (ie additional R due to L -> 0).

Re:I dunno...

[j-cloth]

Billions for whom?
These guys claim to have a perpetual worldwide rights to the thing for 4 wheeled passenger vehicles

Re:Comparison with gasoline

[jank1887]

makes for a toasty interior in the winter though. Can't wait to see how surprised people get in the winter when they turn on the (electric) heater and run out of juice half way to work.

Re:Check out the patent

[William Ager]

52 kWh in 5 minutes is 624 kW, and in 3 minutes is around 1 MW. This is completely beyond the capacity of any household that I've ever seen; even most major power plants would only have the capacity to charge a few thousand of these simultaneously.

Re: can hold 52.220 kWh

[Kjellander]

You misunderstood my flame. * is ok. But the letters are wrong.

k = kilo, not K
W = Watt, not w
h = hour, not H

Re:Check out the patent

[wvmarle]

3-6 minutes to charge that thing, that would mean a power use of about 520-1040 kW. Not too much for a gasoline engine, but huge for the power net. No home has that much electricity available. At 380V, 3 phase power supply it would take like 450-900 Amps to charge it that fast. This is a huge draw, and of course a serious peak for the power company.

Now to the real world. In my home we have an instant-on water heater, this is rated 21 kW. My father who used to work for an electricity company could barely believe me, so much power. This thing is rated 31 Amp at three-phase power (380V). Our home has a hefty 64 Amp, 380Vx3 available. That is because of this water heater, and all the aircos we have.

Compare this to a more moderate climate, like where my parents live: The Netherlands. They have like 32 Amp, single phase available. That's it. Fine for washing machine, dryer, lights, computers, etc, not for charging an electrical car.

Electrical cars are nice and all but the recharging is an issue. We have as yet no way to produce peaks of electricity like that. It is not something that you can produce in bulk, store it, distribute it, and tap a burst when you need it. Charging a car like this at home may work, but it will have to slow down to a couple of hours to prevent melting the supply cables.

Charge times unrealistic

[mikeselectricstuff]

They claim that they can charge 50-odd KWH in 3-6 minutes - at 100% efficiency this corresponds to 1 to 0.5 megawatts of charge power, which would be pretty much impractical in any real-world application. I'd sure like to see that charging connector......

Re:Charge times unrealistic

[John Hasler]

Less than 600A at 600V three-phase. Routine in heavy industry. Not practical for your garage but a ten-minute charge at a commercial charging station would be feasible.

Re:Comparison with gasoline

[wvmarle]

The 4.5 gallons becomes no more than 9 gallons as you still have to produce that electricity. And as far as I know modern power plants are still stuck at around 40% efficiency. There rest is wasted as heat.

Re: can hold 52.220 kWh

[Anonymous Coward]

What's your problem with Kelvin*Watt*Henry? I have to admit that I have no Idea what that could possibly measure, but it's still valid.

weight vs. density/mass

[way2trivial]

1/3rd the weight does not automatically mean you can stick 3 of them in there-- what if it happens to be VERY VERY LARGE???

Re:weight vs. density/mass

[timeOday]

IMHO the Tesla already has an excessive range of 250 miles. Most days 50 miles would be ample for me. Since the battery pack / capacitor is fairly expensive, large and heavy, it would be nice if it were broken into 50 lb modules so I could buy just buy however many I need.

Re:weight vs. density/mass

[Aphoxema]

Or just swap out and leave home to charge!

Re:weight vs. density/mass

[artson]

And welcome to my friend's list timeOday!

This is one of the most succinct and brilliant comments I've read in a few months on slashdot.

I don't know if you are in the habit of making brilliant observations, but on the off-chance that you do, now I'll see them during my casual reads.

Thanks.

Re:weight vs. density/mass

[Agripa]

IMHO the Tesla already has an excessive range of 250 miles. Most days 50 miles would be ample for me. Since the battery pack / capacitor is fairly expensive, large and heavy, it would be nice if it were broken into 50 lb modules so I could buy just buy however many I need.

50 pounds might be a little light for each module. Last time I ran through the calculations, it came out to about 7 pounds per mile for lithium chemistry batteries although the Tesla should do better.

I am a little fuzzy on lithium cell characteristics but aging could preclude simple modular configuration without battery equalization on the power converter side. That may not actually be bad if having modular converters is economical which it may very well be and it would be a good way to increase the available surface area for heat dissipation.

Re:Check out the patent

[Dun Malg]

just imagine plugging your car in at the mall, forgetting to set a max out, and coming back to find you've downloaded 32 gigajoules, and that'll be 1000$ please sir.

A full capacitor, like a full gas tank, won't accept additional charge. Plus, you can't spill electricity, so no, you're scenario is dumb.

Re: can hold 52.220 kWh

[lilomar]

, not k.

Re:Check out the patent

[squidfood]

52 kWh in 5 minutes is 624 kW, and in 3 minutes is around 1 MW.

To put it another way, a 240V at 20A supply outputs 4.8kW and would take ~10 hours to charge it. Halving that to five hours (40A) would be beyond ratings for almost all household wiring.

Re:Check out the patent

[Amphetam1ne]

Handily enough my local plant is a PWR with ~1.1GW net output. 2 additional nuclear plants are planned for the same location as well, so I should be fine by the time these supercaps make it to the main-stream.

Re:Check out the patent

[s_p_oneil]

Most house circuits have a 20Amp breaker or fuse, but your house is not limited to that. It's not that hard to install a bigger breaker and run a thicker cable from your breaker box to your carport/garage (like the cable running to your central AC unit). Although if you have an open carport, I wouldn't recommend having an accessible outlet outside, or people will charge their cars at your house while you're at work, and you probably won't know until you get the $1000+ electric bill.

May not explode, but....

[Pedrito]

It is mentioned the device cannot explode when being charge or impacted and is thus safe for vehicles.

It may not explode when you hit it, and I'm not genius with electricity, but can't capacitors discharge their energy pretty quickly? Wouldn't 52kWh discharged through a pile of metal with people trapped inside be somewhat less than safe?

Re:May not explode, but....

[Ancient_Hacker]

All they'd have to do is build a fuse right into the capacitor, as in using thin wires for the connections. A no-brainer.

Re:May not explode, but....

[Heddahenrik]

There are some good comments about that above. This capacitor can't be (dis)charged that quickly, but it takes some minutes. It might melt stuff, but not explosively. So it's quite much saver than putting fuses onto a faster capacitor as the fuse naturally risk being replaced by metal if the capacitor is smashed into pieces.

Re:May not explode, but....

[jabuzz]

As long as they don't try and get out they will be fine. You can pass a million volts through my car whilst I am inside for all I care.

Re:May not explode, but....

[sjames]

That strongly depends on the internal resistance of the cells. If it discharged instantly it would be deadly. If discharged over a few hours, it would keep you warm while awaiting rescue.

Re:May not explode, but....

[rew]

The amount of energy in the device is comparable to the amount of gas you normally take along on a trip in a car. Would you like to be in your car while all the gas releases it's stored energy (burns) in 3-6 minutes? Think not. (apparently the device is capable of absorbing this amount of energy in such a short time, then it will also be able to release it in a similar short time. As noted below, it will heat up, and start uncontrolled reactions and then acutally blow up.)

Re: the current calculations, they are talking 3500V. So charging might be done at around 180A, which is not an absurd number. The voltage is however quite dangerous, and care should be taken to separate it from children's fingers. It's still 600kW charging power, so that's not a normal home outlet....

Re:May not explode, but....

[rossz]

Not a big deal. Back when I used to work on high powered lasers I accidentally used myself to discharge a bank of 30kv capacitors and it didn' t affect affect affect affect me one little b-b-b-b-b-bit.

Kidding aside, every single muscle in my body hurt like hell. Muscles I didn't know I had hurt.

Re:May not explode, but....

[Agripa]

I had much the same experience with a home built 1200 volt DC strobe supply. The valuable lesson learned was not to use a power supply output capacitance larger than necessary. I accidentally discharged it from the tip of my index finger to my elbow while knocking myself off of a ladder leading to a new appreciation of forearm musculature. Picking up a big energized neon sign transformer by the insulators was not as painful.

Re:May not explode, but....

[Heddahenrik]

You're totally right, but even some hundred kilos of burning thermite is safer than a kilo of something that can explode. If the supercapacitors just heat up to some thousands K and melts through the bottom of the car, it's pretty safe, unless you happen to be there.

It would be way worse if the center of the supercapacitors suddenly could turn into vapor and therefore cause a huge explosion that causes death all across the block instead of using its energy to melt metal and road.

Re:I dunno...

[m.ducharme]

My impression was that EEStor was also working on improving lithium-ion tech, and that was the technology that Zenn Cars has licensed. Note that Zenn Cars does not have any license agreement for uses in any other type of vehicle or any other application. For this, if it's real and feasible, there will be a huge market.

Re:Check out the patent

[tscola]

Presumably, a charging station would have a bunch of their own EEStor units on premises, and wouldn't need to charge cars directly from the grid.

Re:The real issue

[lilomar]

The two big issues with capacitors for storage have always been they tend to want to discharge all at once and left for several days they tend to loose power.

s/loose/lose/ or else you're being redundant.

Re:Check out the patent

[ZeroExistenZ]

so no, you're scenario is dumb.

Basically you wanted to conclude with an adressing to the parent poster as "dumb" ("you're dumb") but nuanced and limited it to his scenario only but forgot to change the verb?

Re:I dunno...

[WindBourne]

IFF this is real, it will not be billions. It will be many trillions and more. This one company would within a year be top 10 in the nation. Why? Because it solves the carbon issue overnight. It allows all countries that currently import large oil and energy (read USA, EU, and Japan) to stop importing. It allows us to stop running peak power generators. All power generators would move to base, rather than peak loads. Households would no longer use plug-in power for vacs and many other devices. This company will be MUCH larger than Google IFF IT IS TRUE

Re:Comparison with gasoline

[sunking2]

Obviously small gas engines for heating is the answer.

Re:Check out the patent

[eth1]

3-6 minutes charge time for 52 kWh.

Can a typical household handle such a load, or may be we may have to visit an electricity pumps to recharge. Either way does not seem bad at all.

Why not have a charging station in the garage with one of these units inside? It can be charging at a rate the house wiring can handle all the time, with the capability to quickly dump that juice into the car. Hell, integrate it into the house electrical system as a whole-house UPS while you're at it.

Re:Check out the patent

[timeOday]

If the capacitor is cheap enough, you could have a second one at home, either on trickle ready to quickly charge the first, or remove the dead one and put in the other.

But How To Charge It?

[AtomicSnarl]

OK -- 52.220 kWh and you can charge it in 5 minutes or so. How?

Even if you have a dedicated 220 vac connection, how many amps do you need to draw to feed this beast in only 5 minutes?? Or are we going to need 460 vac connections at home?

Re:But How To Charge It?

[Wonko the Sane]

Even if you have a dedicated 220 vac connection, how many amps do you need to draw to feed this beast in only 5 minutes??

Approximately 3000 amps. 460 volt/ 3 phase: about 830 amps.

Re:But How To Charge It?

[MeepMeep]

From the Wikipedia's EEStor article, you CAN fast charge at home without a ridiculous electrical system -- IF you have a second EESU that slowcharges overnight:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EEStor

"Overnight charging at home should still be practical,[6] as is using a second EESU for the home which could be charged overnight using cheap, off-peak electricity to then charge the EEStor unit in the car in 5-10 minutes on demand - and deliver cheap electric power to the house too, making expensive peak power plants obsolete.[7]"

Re:But How To Charge It?

[Heddahenrik]

What about connecting your brain? Oh, sorry, old habit. I mean: What about connection a superconductor in your house? So you charge it for hours and then that can charge your car's superconductor in a few minutes.

Simple!

Re:But How To Charge It?

[afidel]

You would need a really freaking big plug! My numbers:

52.22kWh=187,992kWs
187,992kWs=18,799,200Ws
18,799,200Ws=18,799,200VAs
18,799,200VAs=220V*xA*300s
x=2,8484.73

As you can see even going to 440 isn't going to get you anywhere. Oh and then you have to multiply times ~1.1 for PF correction as I'm sure it doesn't look like a resistive load.

Re:But How To Charge It?

[sjames]

Presumably, charging at home will be considerably slower overnight. The rapid charge would be used at a charging station.

Re:Check out the patent

[blincoln]

It is not something that you can produce in bulk, store it, distribute it, and tap a burst when you need it.

Could you not build the electric equivalent of a gas station, which used a bank of ultracapacitors as a buffer between the power grid and the ultracapacitors in the end-users' cars?

Or for remote locations, use the same permanently-installed bank of ultracapacitors, but charging from one of those multi-decade no-maintenance fission power modules the Japanese are developing.

Re:Check out the patent

[jelle]

Not along the interstate for people who are on trips longer than the range though...

Re: can hold 52.220 kWh

[Stile 65]

This conversation has just taken a turn for the absurd... ...LY DELICIOUS!

Re: can hold 52.220 kWh

[Kjellander]

I think, in the context of a slashdot forum, anything is okay so long as a reasonable person can discern meaning. mW vs MW is indeed a problem, but kw vs kW??? What exactly did YOU think the 'w' stood for?

Never, in any context is it ok to write incorrect information. And the problem comes when people start writing mw, Mw, mW and MW respectively, and then mixing 1,000 with 1.000. The numbers get way way way off, so it is _never ever_ ok to start messing with units and hoping the reader "gets what you mean" just because you are lazy.

And people correcting other people, they just have to get things correct or it's an epic fail. What is the point if being a smart ass, if you are just another dumb ass who gets it wrong again?

The correct figure is: 52.22 kWh

 

Fast recharge of supercaps is not hard

[Morgaine]

The home recharge rate difficulties you outline don't really exist.

If mobile supercaps become affordable, then fixed home supercaps will be even cheaper, probably by a large factor because they can be much larger and heavier and less energy-dense. (You could even use lead acid batteries in the home charging station if that turns out cheaper.)

This means that your home AC supply can charge your home supercap station at whatever rate the mains wiring can stand (in particular, overnight when the electricity rates are cheaper), and then when the car comes home the home station just slams its stored power into the car's supercap at a huge rate and in a short time.

Transferring high power a very short distance is not a problem: just think very fat copper busbars and motorized conical high-area connections.

Re:Fast recharge of supercaps is not hard

[TheLink]

Yeah and when cheap home supercaps are widely available, watch out for more crazy people building railguns and other stuff (focused EMP, lightning guns, pulse lasers...).

I just hope nobody invents something cheap that can be abused to "nuke everybody in the city" soon, since I think people aren't quite civilized/domesticated enough yet.

It's all good till the neighbourhood idiot/asshole gets demigod-like powers ;).

Re:Fast recharge of supercaps is not hard

[TooMuchToDo]

Too bad you can't get modded above +5.

Re:Comparison with gasoline

[PIBM]

Wind turbine -- the efficiency of the turbine is not something as important since we are not running out of wind, what is of importance is the total cost for the lenght of time it can be used at a specific power output.

Solar panel ?

Hydroelectric power ?

Nuclear power ?

Geothermal power ?

That cover all the power plant types we have here, so we have no need to worry about the efficiency of the power plant in a fuel comparison :)

Lick the terminals on this baby

[BlueParrot]

Just imagine if you short it... ouch ...

Re:Lick the terminals on this baby

[Bloater]

Depending on the internal resistance perhaps your wire just melts really quickly, breaking the circuit.

Re: can hold 52.220 kWh

[YttriumOxide]

I agree completely, but I think you should reconsider your usage of "." and ","... when writing scientifically or mathematically, I NEVER put punctuation in the number except to indicate the decimal place. The main reason for this is that people from different countries use different symbols (1000 = 1,000 in UK/US = 1.000 in many European countries / "exactly 1 to three places" = 1.00 in UK/US = 1,00 in many European countries). So, to avoid confusion, I prefer to just write 1000 rather than 1,000 or 1.000. (as a note, I prefer to use a "." for the decimal place when writing English, because it matches the style used by the native English speaking countries, just as I use "," if writing German)

Re:Check out the patent

[Hecatonchires]

Thankyou, sometimes I forget how dumb I am.

A full petrol tank will leak petrol down the side of your car if you attempt to keep filling it. The meter will keep ticking over and you will be charged for all that petrol you spilt.

I don't know enough about capacitors to comment on that. I'm sure they'll find a way to charge you extra if they can tho.

Re:I dunno...

[afidel]

Right because we have enough non-fossil plants today to meet transportation demands. Oh and there's that problem with distribution, we already have a blackout about once a decade in the NE, can you imagine if everyone decides to recharge their cars before their summer vacation?

Fueling stations

[slipangle]

Couldn't the fueling stations have there own banks of these supercaps to buffer the power? Most stations aren't used continuously, so they could be supplied with more conventional power feeds.

how many capacitors are there?

[vrmlguy]

Iâ(TM)m intrigued that the article's illustration (presumably from the patent application) states that there are 31,351 capacitors, while the text of the article states that there are 31,353. Which is it? The first number is prime, which means that there isnâ(TM)t a simple rectangular grid containing all of the capacitors (although a staggered arrangement, such as the stars in the current US flag might be possible). 31,353, on the other hand, is 3*7*1493, however it also doesnâ(TM)t easily form a rectangular array. I have to wonder how either of these numbers came to be involved in the design of this a device.

Re:I dunno...

[mr_mischief]

It's very difficult to sell perpetual rights to something that is only patented for a couple of decades.

Re:Comparison with gasoline

[bigpat]

Wind turbine -- the efficiency of the turbine is not something as important since we are not running out of wind, what is of importance is the total cost for the lenght of time it can be used at a specific power output.

Your point is taken, but as a practical matter we do in fact run out of wind quite often

Re:Comparison with gasoline

[wvmarle]

Hydro and nuclear: depending on where you live those two are significant. Nuclear is probably worldwide even pretty significant for power supplies.

Wind is gaining traction, solar is a niche and geothermal experimental at best. Their overall contributions are nowadays still not significant.

The vast majority of electricity in most countries is still produced with conventional fuel: coal, oil and gas. It's cheap, reliable, and well developed.

Re: can hold 52.220 kWh

[mr_mischief]

Was, Not Was?

Re:Check out the patent

[Wonko the Sane]

Most power lines are three-phase (no neutral)

Re: can hold 52.220 kWh

[afidel]

Never, in any context is it ok to write incorrect information

WRONG, language is about communications and so long as the point was conveyed correctly and the meaning non-ambiguous there is no problem messing up the case. This is especially true when a bunch of lay-people are discussing a technical area. People like you need to adjust their attitude to realize that human languages are NOT the same as programming languages or scientific equations, some of the time getting it close enough really is ok.

may have been asked but....

[flyingpastor]

How small can they make these? something like this could pretty much take over the Remote control vehicle market if they were comparably priced. Also, making one to fit the general size of the engine bay on a bike would yield some niche marketing.

Re:Check out the patent

[YttriumOxide]

It is not something that you can produce in bulk, store it, distribute it, and tap a burst when you need it.

Ummm... yes it is... that's exactly what it is... You simply have one or two of these in your garage at home, "trickling" their charge from the grid at whatever speed is reasonable for your supply/wiring, and when you want to recharge your car, you connect your car to these, not to the grid. It charges at "full speed" at then you drive off. That's assuming you actually cared about fast charge of course - at home, I'd just charge slow since once I park my car in the evening, it doesn't come out again until the next morning. I'd want "public charging stations" to give me a fast charge of course for those VERY occasional trips I take in the car that'll go beyond my "there and back" range, but they'd just have the same concept on a bigger/more distributed scale.

Re: can hold 52.220 kWh

[Iffie]

Kwh is just more meaningfull as it allows you to apply it to the load. An electric motor doesn't say 1200 Joules/second, it says 1500 Watt, or 1,5 Kw so you know you can run it for one hour on one Kwh.

Re:Comparison with gasoline

[YttriumOxide]

All true, but irrelevant for what the comparisons were in aid of. I don't think anyone was pushing the green angle necessarily and directly, simply that if you can make it go as far as an equivalent petrol car, it's more likely to be saleable. The power plant could waste 99% of the energy, and it wouldn't change the comparison until you start looking at "total amount of energy used" which is mostly a green argument (which I am in favour of, but it's another topic).

Re:Check out the patent

[mr_mischief]

The taste left in your mouth from unplugging Joe's car and plugging yours in to his meter is a lot better than sucking on the siphon to get the gas out of Joe's tank.

Re:Check out the patent

[mr_mischief]

There are locking outlet covers that require a key. They make them even for 110V outlets.

Re:Comparison with gasoline

[YttriumOxide]

I don't expect ANY electric car to be so bad it can't handle 4km with the heater on (that's halfway to work for me - I live 8km from my office). Remember that while it may not be suitable for you, or for many other people, there are still many people that it is suitable for...

Re:I dunno...

[WindBourne]

Actually, there is PLENTY of power. The problem is that the demands does not match the palants. And a number of studies have already been done concerning the car charging. It was determined that there is PLENTY of power assuming that most charge at night. That is why we are moving towards time based power (more expensive in the day vs. night).

And if EESTOR is real, or even if the other ultracaps come down in costs, what will happen is that ppl will charge at night, and either us it during the daytime OR sell it back to the power companies during the day. IOW, they will buy the power at say .01 and sell it back at .05.

Finally, you ppl in the east have an issue because your grid is one big one. Enough of the systems go out and it brings down a number of them. Internet tech needs to be applied here.

Re:Check out the patent

[Zerth]

So buy 2 of them, leave one in your house to trickle charge all day. When you get home, plug your car into the home one.

Or swap them, if you've got a crane handy.

Re: can hold 52.220 kWh

[Kjellander]

Never, in any context is it ok to write incorrect information.

Says who? As long as the proper information has been conveyed then what's the harm?

The proper information has not been conveyed at all, look at all the mistakes made in comments below.

I say the harm is when some jack ass tries to correct someone and then isn't correct himself.

Re:Comparison with gasoline

[kromozone]

Gasoline contains 39MJ/litre, so the capacitor contains the same energy density as 1 gallon of fuel (or 1.2 US gallons for leftpondians).

The capacitor stores 188MJ and weighs 127.7kg. So that's an energy density of 1.47MJ/kg. One litre of gasoline weighs 0.76kg and gasoline has an energy density of 46.4MJ/kg. Of course they don't say how dense it is, so maybe it has a density of 31.5kg/L, which is what it would take for them to be equal in terms of volume. The capacitor would have to be more than twice as dense as lead to compete on a volume basis. As it is, the energy density of this supercapacitor is comparable to a large number of other advanced batteries and fuel-cell storage systems.

Re:The real issue

[YttriumOxide]

I was wondering more about the "it'd be great accept...." bit. Is he trying to say, "it'll be great, so accept it!"?

Re:Comparison with gasoline

[mr_mischief]

Crude oil needs to be transported, refined, and transported again before it's at your filling station. Electricity only has the grid losses.

Re: can hold 52.220 kWh

[networkBoy]

based on your sig I would think that the 'w' would stand for wash(es|ing) thus thousands of washes per hour?
-nB

Detonate vs Deflagrate

[drerwk]

You may want to use precision words in the discussion. I think there is a little confusion with the use of explosion and combustion between you and the GP. I think the GP is referring to detonation, which is characterized by supersonic combustion. I think you are referring to deflagration, which occurs subsonically.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detonation
What should be happening in your engine is deflagration. I am not positive, but I think knocking is detonation not deflagration.

Re: can hold 52.220 kWh

[Kjellander]

You are clearly thinking about spoken language when what we have been discussing written language about facts of how good a battery is.

A 52,220 kWh battery is 1000 times better than a 52.22 kWh battery.

And when I say I'm using 1.000 mW or 1,000 MW of power, how much am I actually using.

These figures are clear when you _say_ "fifty two kilowatt-hours", but they are totally useless if you get it wrong when you are writing it wrong.

So be exact when it comes to numbers and figures.

I'm gonna go and call my mom and use 20,000 MW while I'm doing it.

Re: can hold 52.220 kWh

[david@ecsd.com]

Or when some jackass feels the pathological need to correct total strangers on a semi-anonymous web forum.

Re: can hold 52.220 kWh

[Orange Crush]

15 gallons of gasoline weighs about 90lbs by itself. The tank's probably a good 20lbs at least. A typical car battery (to start the gas engine) is around 40 lbs. Electric motors are much lighter than gas engines and don't need transmissions, so you can easily save 281.56lbs (and then some!) by getting rid of the gasoline engine.

Re:Comparison with gasoline

[BobTheLawyer]

OK, but bear in mind the electricity may have been generated from fossil fuels at efficiency of 50-60%, and then transmitted across the distribution system at efficiency of 90ish%, and then used to charge the capacitor (which will have an efficiency of less than 100%, but I've no idea what it will be)

All of which will likely end up better than 20% efficiency, but some way short of 90%.

Batteries are bombs

[debrain]

As the eminent scientist Geoffery Ballard (inventor of the hydrogen fuel cell) once said to an audience I was in attendance at, if I may paraphrase: batteries are different from bombs only in the amount of time it takes to release their energy.

Storing lots of energy is only as useful as it is safe.

Energy Density = twice a lithium ion

[MobyDisk]

Wikipedia says a lithium-ion battery is about 540 to 720 kJ/kg. Based on the article summary, this device has 52 kilowatt hours in 281 lbs which is 1,469 kJ/kg. So this has twice the energy density of a modern battery.

Convert to real-world

[Quila]

You could run a 100 horsepower equivalent car at full power for about 45 minutes. Counting you won't be using full power most of the time you could get a lot of mileage out of one of these.

Re:Convert to real-world

[Retric]

Adjusting for the differences in efficiency between an electric and gas engine it's about the equivalent of 5galons of gas. However, at 300LB's you could have two without much trouble so you could have a good range a decent range including some energy reserves.

PS: (52.220 kWh * 98%) / (36.6 kWh/US gallon * 30%) = 4.7 gallon but you can probably use more efficient regenerative breaks because you can charge faster.

Hype Words

[Nom du Keyboard]

ultrahigh amounts of energy.

I really hate the use and misuse of hype words like ultrahigh. What comes after ultrahigh? Is the next level double dumb-ass amounts of energy?

The one I've always liked least was some artist who used left over metal parts from Los Alamos atomic work for sculptures he said had transformed death into super good energy.

Re:Hype Words

[brettper]

What comes after ultrahigh? Is the next level double dumb-ass amounts of energy?

No, obviously it would be plaid

Re:The real issue

[ThatsLoseNotLoose]

That's lose not loose, looser.

Re:I dunno...

[GeordieMac]

If this is real then I think that one of the big car companies are going to have to buy ZENN Motor, since they have an exclusive deal with eestor worldwide. Either that or some sort of sub-licensing deal will have to be worked out.

That's an incredibly good dielectric plastic

[Animats]

Back to basics. A capacitor is an insulator between two conductors. The key concept here is that their insulator has an insanely high breakdown voltage, which is why they can supposedly make an ultracapacitor that operates around 500V instead of the usual 5V or so.

The patent says "The alumina-coated calcined CMBT powder and the poly(ethylene terephthalate) plastic have exceptional high-voltage breakdown and when used as a composite with the plastic as the matrix the average voltage breakdown was 5.57 * 10^6 V/cm or higher. The voltage breakdown of the poly(ethylene terephthalate) plastic is 580 V/micrometer at 23 degrees C. and the voltage breakdown of the alumina-coated CMBT powders is 610 V/micrometer at 85 degrees C."

Note how many different units they use. Conventionally, dielectric strength is quoted as KV/mm. So we have

• Their new composite: 5.57 * 10^6 V/cm = 5.57 * 10 ^ 3 KV/cm = 5.57 * 10 ^ 2 KV/mm = 557 KV/mm
• PET: 580 V/micrometer = 580 KV/mm
• Alumina-coated CMBT powders: 610 V/micrometer = 610 KV/mm

First, why did they make a composite that's worse than either of its components? This would be obvious if they used the same units for all their breakdown voltages in the patent.

Second, those are unreasonably good numbers. The usual breakdown voltage for PET as used in Mylar capacitors is only 17 KV/mm. Why is their PET 35 times as good as everybody else's?

(Check this, please. Look at the actual patent image. The searchable text version at the USPTO doesn't show math symbols very well.)

Re:That's an incredibly good dielectric plastic

[ivan256]

The thing that's odd to me about the patent is how much marketing data is in there. It talks about potential to revolutionize the EV industry, and compares the technology to batteries... Everything you put in your claims that doesn't need to be there limits the scope. The only reason to put that crap in there is if you're planning on trying to trick somebody into believing it simply because the patent was granted. Any patent attorney with half a brain would have stripped that stuff out of there lest it be used to limit the scope of the patent in the future.

The whole thing screams "investment scam".

(The screen printing process they describe for creating the dielectric layer seems like it would result in a large percentage of the dielectric being made of the nitrocellulose binding resin for the dielectric "ink", rather than their CMBT/PET combo. The "jet milling" process they describe to mill the powders seems like it would introduce significant impurities in the powders. It also seems comical to me that they could achieve a sufficiently uniform dielectric layer through screen printing...)

Re:That's an incredibly good dielectric plastic

[elgol]

The electric field strength of dielectrics is a function of material thickness, with thinner materials generally exhibiting a higher field strength. Thus, a thinner dielectric has a higher breakdown field.

A common rule o' thumb is that to double the voltage breakdown of a given sheet of insulator, one needs to multiply the thickness by a factor of 4. The exact exponent used depends on the material type, quality, etc, but the gist of it is that thinner materials can have much higher breakdown strength than one would expect from testing a thicker material.

Many other factors play an important role, such as field strength enhancement due to small radii, voltage rate of change, material defects, humidity, temperature, and so forth.

Finally, there is evidence to suggest that certain concentrations of nanoparticle fillers may increase dielectric strength.

Disclaimer: IANAMS (I am not a material scientist), but I have done some high-voltage design. Dielectrics are still a black art, if you ask me. If you don't believe me, ask a dielectrics expert a quantitative question sometime, and see how long the answer is.

Is it hot in here?

[Maladius]

The energy storage numbers that they claim are quite impressive. 55kWh for 285 lbs is absolutely remarkable. As someone else pointed out in another comment, a lead-acid battery with a comparable weight would only provide 4-5kWh. Lithium batteries generally have an energy density of about four times that of a lead-acid battery, so this technology still gives a 200-300 percent improvement over Lithium batteries in terms of power to weight ratios. What's really impressive is the stated charge times and self-discharge rates. To be able to pump 55kWh of power into something and store it within 3-6 minutes without creating huge heating issues is an amazing feat. Their leakage current of 4.28 micro-Amps means that it will stay virtually fully charged for years. One thing which I thought was kind of strange though was that many of their measurements were done at an ambient temperature of 85C (185F). Do you think this is to simulate operation near a hot car engine?

Re:Is it hot in here?

[forceman130]

Why would the battery (okay, ultra-cap) storage area of an electric car be at 85C? There's no engine making heat, and the electric motors would likely be at the wheels, separate from the storage area.

Re:Check out the patent

[fnj]

1. Park EV under power cables
2. Throw a rope over the Neutral and use it to pull up a steel cable
3. Throw the rope over the Active. Attach a second cable
4. ???
5. Profit! (assuming you are still alive after step 4).

4. Call undertaker (which will be difficult to do since you'll be dead)

Hybrid battery packs and charging.

[Firethorn]

Of 'production' vehicles, the Tesla is currently the best of the pack for regenerative braking. But then, like you note, it's pack is designed more around capacity than amperage. The LiIon chemistry is also more efficient at taking a charge than NiMH.

For most hybrids, they're actually designed more for amperage - they want to keep the battery pack small and light, after all they still need to shove an engine in there. Also, because of said engine they can afford to be a bit lax on the regenerative braking. So they generally can't pull all the energy from an 'emergency brake', but can do a moderately hard stop from something like 40mph.

At the size needed to get those amperages, you get at least a few miles of capacity, so until we start shifting to plug in hybrids, they're good enough.

Re:Hybrid battery packs and charging.

[TooMuchToDo]

I know my Toyota Camry Hybrid will draw up to 100 amps from the battery pack before the gas engine kicks in to assist. That's a lot of power.

Re:Hybrid battery packs and charging.

[Firethorn]

Yes, but to replace that energy in the same time would take 150 amps in.

Also, how fast are you accellerating with that power? You can't brake much faster than that and still have most of the power show up in the battery.

The Tesla can.

Re:Hybrid battery packs and charging.

[TooMuchToDo]

Also, how fast are you accellerating with that power? You can't brake much faster than that and still have most of the power show up in the battery.

The Tesla can.

I'm aware, hence why I ordered a roadster =)

The Roadster though, unlike the Toyota hybrids, uses Li-Ion chemistry for it's batteries (higher energy density then NiMh). There's a large amount of circuitry onboard the 1,000 pound battery "pack" (or ESS, as Tesla calls it) that's sole purpose is to baby the cells and to allow them to charge and discharge without damage. Hybrids don't have this "problem", as any kinetic energy they don't recover through regenerative braking can simply be pulled from more fuel.

Re:Check out the patent

[Kentari]

So "BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT, wrong!" would have been appropriate? And you totally messed up that chance...

Re:Check out the patent

[Delwin]

That's why you run a new specialized line from the breaker panel to the garage and have it be 160A (leaving just enough while charging to run the basics of the house on). Most houses have 200A coming in.

That's about a 2.2 hour charge.

The better way to do it is just have another of these at home trickle charging and use a busbar style system to charge the car in minutes.

Cabin space in a Volt?

[Firethorn]

Given what I've seen of the Volt, there isn't any space to be taken away in the Cabin, really. There are women's purses that won't fit in what the Volt calls the 'trunk'. Then again, you don't expect to see women who carry those purses in a Volt either...

Shaving off nearly 500 pounds will still increase the range of the volt, though. It's not that heavy of a vehicle to begin with. Though it would need increased/more complex charging/discharge logic and equipment, so the savings might be closer to 400 pounds.

Eh... I'd like to see a PHEV light truck with two of them underneath the bed. No need for sandbags in the winter!

Re: can hold 52.220 kWh

[xaxa]

Thanks! But the reason for my concern was the choice of units. I thought even in the USA that science and engineering used metric units.

Re:Comparison with gasoline

[ChrisMaple]

Thanks for the efficient motor citation. The motor is (thermally?) limited to 1.8 kW (2.4 hp) continuous, 5.4 kW (7.2 hp) for 72 seconds. It weighs 6 kg, or 14.5 kg including wheel and tire. It's very expensive (AU$12000), probably due to low production volume. Multiply numbers by ten for something that might be usable in a production car.

Re:Comparison with gasoline

[fnj]

20% seems to be the maximum for a practical internal combustion engine.

Nope. It might be a decent value (hardly the ultimate limit) for a gasoline engine, but diesels can easily exceed 35%, and the best figure for the VW TDI of MY 2000 vintage is actually closer to 45%, which is not far from the figure for a good stationary power plant.

Re:Check out the patent

[gboss]

Iron takes about 450-500kWh/ton to melt to 2775F. A 1MW supply could easily melt 2 tons of iron an hour. Or charge 20 cars.

pendantry

[Civil_Disobedient]

The weight is more than twice as light as Lithium Ion ...also known as "less than half the weight"

Re:Check out the patent

[Yaur]

in this case I think step 4 is more like !!! than ???.

Re: can hold 52.220 kWh

[cool_arrow]

I like the comma as decimal point simply because it's easier to see - easier on old eyes :)

Re: can hold 52.220 kWh

[sjames]

It is however kWh, meaning kilowatt hour, and it is a unit of energy.

Most don't pay as much attention to K since there is little chance of confusion between kelvin and kilo. M makes a lot of difference. Some prefer to capitalize it since that is more consistent with the other multipliers greater than 1.

Re:Leakage Rate?

[Lord Bitman]

4.28 micro-Amps

281.56 pounds

[HTH NE1]

The device is said to have a weight of 281.56 pound including the box and all hardware.

So, about the weight of an adult American.

(IAAA.)

Re: can hold 52.220 kWh

[Lost Race]

Yeah, I just love those multi-millibit per second Internet connections. Go Comcast!

Re:Check out the patent

[D_Blackthorne]

But, how long will it take to charge with the optional Mr. Fusion unit? How about with the optional lightning-rod emergengy-charging attachment?

Re:Ignorant parent.

[YetAnotherBob]

Speaking as a Professional Engineer, there are capacitors that are not the simple dual plate (ceramic or electrolytic) you seem to think is the norm. Most utilities use capacitors with ratings up to several hundred thousand volts. they use (mostly) similar in concept designs to what you are used to, but spacings and insulators differ. Charge/discharge times differ too. the larger capacity units are physically quite large. Speed of light, internal reactance, etc. will limit how rapidly the charge can go in or out. Utilities use these units to adjust the power factor of a line to limit losses.

The unit under discussion seems to be a mix or matrix of small spheres coated in a conductor, suspended in an insulating matrix. similar designs have been proposed and made in laboratories since the time of Tesla (Nikolai, not the car). Most didn't work. This one is claimed to work in the lab. Each small sphere is a separate charge holder. As long as the insulator is thick enough, the unit should hold. The voltage is probably the highest they could get in the lab. That's to keep the KWH up. There will need to be a high voltage power supply, with a bleed off down to the voltage used by the motor. (Two way I hope). It'll take a lot of electronics to make this thing really work. There will be some power loss in the matrix. Some leakage, as well as some internal impedances to deal with. The car engineers should take care of that. If they can't, then it will just be another unfulfilled promise. The last hundred years is littered with those.

If that voltage could be raised an order of magnitude, I could use a couple of these on a substation I'm working on. If they are suitable for 60 Hz, that is.

It doesn't explode? Yes it does!

[rew]

Everything that can store energy has the option of exploding. If the density of the energy is about that of a normal car battery, it's slighly difficult to get it to explode. Once you get to the energy density of a li-ion battery, you start getting a serious option of explosion. So much that apparently doing something slightly wrong makes the devices explode in the field without much provocation.

If this is to be (much) better than LI-ion, then it certainly has the option of explosion.

If there is some natural barrier that will hold the reaction elements apart, that barrier will break down given enough temperature. Then the chemical reactions will happen without electrical current being produced. In that case more heat will be generated, and the process will "run away" (go faster quickly). Booooom!

In batteries, this happens if you short the terminals. Because the voltage at the terminals becomes zero if you properly short the battery, a large current will flow, and no electrical energy will be delivered to the load (there is none). Lot s of energy will be released as heat in the internal resistance of the battery, and it will heat up. To the point that whatever barriers were present melt and the reaction runs away.

Re:Comparison with gasoline

[hypnagogue]

Crude oil needs to be transported, refined, and transported again... Electricity only has the grid losses.

Because everyone knows that power plants run on Hope.

Not saying this is a hoax, but ...

[slashdotlurker]

... a metallic ball the size of the Earth would have a capacitance of 1 F. If the claim is true, we are truly in for a treat.

Re: can hold 52.220 kWh

[rew]

You have a serious math problem.

1200 Joules/sec is around 1200Watt, not 1500.

1.5kW for an hour uses on or around 1.5 kWh. You can run 1.5kW for about 40 minutes on 1kWh or you can run 1kW for an hour on 1kWh.

Re:Check out the patent

[Dr_Barnowl]

The typical argument here is that you'd install a second one of these cells in your house, trickle charge it, and fast-charge the car from it when you get home.

Domestic use for a cell like this intrigues me just as much as automotive use. 52kWh is enough for at least a few days domestic use, more than enough to compensate for natural variations in the output of your windmill, solar, etc. As long as you have an average generation output high enough, the arguments against local micro-generation based on variability of insolation and wind go away.

As someone who's been watching this particular tech for a while, I still really hope that it works ; it could really help us all.

In fact, if it does really work, Mr Obama could do worse than making the inventors bona-fide American Heroes, giving them a cool billion dollars apiece for their trouble, and then ... freeing the technology.

Let's face it - if they work, the Chinese will be knocking them out by the tonne with no qualms within a year or two. Better to start everyone on a level playing field.

Re: can hold 52.220 kWh

[MemoryAid]

It's a measurement of a property of some (yet unknown) material whose thermal insulation properties are somehow linked to it's inductance: "Crank up the insulator coils; there's a cold front coming soon."

Re: can hold 52.220 kWh

[Iffie]

May have mistyped. But 1.5 kW for one hour is exaclty 1 kWh ;-)

Re:Check out the patent

[mczak]

For the 3-min charge of this thing here though I doubt just installing a new breaker would do. I'm not sure about the US, but I don't think you can actually get that much power delivered to your home with low voltage. To charge such a battery in 3 minutes would require _over 1 MW_ ! Would require something like 3x1600A at 230V, and twice that for 110V. Needless to say, that would require some serious cabling... Of course for industrial use you can get a 20kV connection which should easily do... If you'd be content with 1 hour charge of this battery though, you'd only require about 3x80A at 230V, which electric power companies indeed provide (though most one-family houses here are limited to less).

Re: can hold 52.220 kWh

[MightyYar]

Not one of those mistakes in the comments has anything to do with confusion over the small 'w' meaning anything other than 'watt'. The mistake you were correcting was 'kwh' - the only problem with that is the lower-case 'w', which caused absolutely no confusion whatsoever. In this context the 'w' is completely unambiguous.

Re:Check out the patent

[TooMuchToDo]

All depends on location good sir/mam. My recently built (only 1.5 years old) townhouse in a western suburb of Chicago had a 100amp entrance, which I immediately upgraded to 300amps. I already had an electrician come out and drag a 90amp circuit from my panel to the garage to support the 220V 70A charger my Tesla Roadster will require. The electrification of transportation will be a process that takes about a decade. This is more then enough time for us to work out power distribution to homes, as well as the internal home distribution to the vehicles.

Re: can hold 52.220 kWh

[MightyYar]

Nice red herring there bub. From your original post:

It's NOT KW*H! It isn't kw either, nor is it kw*h.

It is however kWh, meaning kilowatt hour, and it is a unit of energy.

Start getting you units right, and capitalization DOES matter. M = mega, m = milli.

See? The mistake you were correcting was not a comma, and it was not a Mega versus a milla. It Your objection was with the poster using KW or kw to represent kW. All three are unambiguous in this context and thus IT IS NOT NECESSARY TO CORRECT HIM.

400 Wh/kg

[beefubermensch]

That's about 400Wh/kg; compare to 160 for lithium ion:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_ion

-Carl

Re:Comparison with gasoline

[mr_mischief]

Okay, so now we're comparing growing, killing, and placing under pressure for millions of years a bunch of plant and animal matter vs. harvesting the sun, wind, and running water?

20% better Re:Much better than a battery for cars.

[jeffcsu]

It's incorrect to say that capacitor storage will drastically increase the energy recovered from braking in an electric or hybrid vehicle compared to battery storage. The problem is that both the inverter (power transistor) electronics and motor have efficiency losses on the order of 5 to 7% each. Batteries do have additional losses when charging or discharging of about 15% in each direction, which a capacitor largely avoids, but there are still significant losses from the motor and power transistors. Remember those losses get applied twice, both then regenerating (decelerating the vehicle) and when using the energy to accelerate the vehicle again. There are also significant losses in the gears, tires, etc.

There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. If regenerative braking and acceleration in an EV or hybrid were 100% efficient, they would be perpetual motion machines.

That said, capacitors would allow and EV to make use of significantly more regenerative braking energy than a battery electric vehicle. But the overall improvement is going from about 50% efficiency to 70% or about a 20% range improvement. That is very significant, but it's not perpetual motion and can't be due to the other losses.

That also said, practical capacitors would be a major shift in how we use energy for transporation and in general.

Actually it's a serious proposal for free recharge

[mileshigh]

There's a much safer way of charging your EV from overhead power cables for free. People have been doing it to heat their homes (illegally, of course) in outlying areas of Canada for years: place an inductor under a 350kV powerline & run wires to your house. The powerline operators hate it because the inductance messes up their power factor, and the poachers eventually get caught because the powerline operators sporadically use a small plane to patrol their rights of way for inductors. But, a 10 minute recharge-and-flee time would make detection near-impossible!

It can explode

[celtic_hackr]

Anyone who's ever hooked up a capacitor, that has a polarity, backwards knows you can make a capacitor explode. Just reverse the polarity. I'd hate to see this this go up. Wow, 30F! To say it can't explode in a collision assumes much, including that nothing shorts the path or a live wire doesn't come loose and touch the wrong terminal.

Re: can hold 52.220 kWh

[rew]

No, 1.5kW for one hour is exactly 1.5 kWh.
0.12383247 kW for one hour is exactly 0.12383247 kWh. The conversion factor here is exactly 1.0000

Re: can hold 52.220 kWh

[bugs2squash]

being a computer geek page.

Should this not be 51KiWh ? or even 50Ki99Wh ?

Wikipedia seems to indicate that Ki (not ki) is appropriate although to my eyes it looks like some kind of binary temperature

Energy demands charging an EV...

[Firethorn]

I have to agree, 20A@220V is a bit on the low side. Electric Dryer sockets are 30A, and stoves are typically 50A. Though I'd suggest that you'd likely be able to run all four computers and the entertainment system from a single 20A@110V circuit. Assuming the computers are at all normal, and the entertainment is 'home' type.

While 200A is the modern standard, a LOT of homes have 100A or less. So I'd figure 50A being the max practical, for now.

Still, looking at the plug on my stove is a bit on the scary side.

As for the higher power levels - would require extensive rewiring and either transformers in all the houses to provide the lower voltage, or more high voltage lines running in neighborhoods.

Though I have thought on using a transformer to increase the voltage to around 600V, you'd be able to use a dryer sized cord to provide three times the power you'd be able to over the 220V version. That'd still pull 120A at the breaker, but charge quickly enough to give an 80% charge in around a couple of hours max.

As for fast charges outside - I don't want to hang around a station for an hour, better to put them in next to restraunts. Let me 'fuel up' at the same time. ;)

Is it hot in here?

[Maladius]

This technology definitely has the potential to revolutionize the energy storage industry, between the high energy density, the quick charge time, the ultra-low self discharge rate, and the potentially unlimited cycle life. I'm curious though...The patent mentions that a some of the electrical measurements were done at an ambient temperature of 85C (185F). Was this maybe done to simulate operation near a hot car engine? Is this the standard operating temperature of the device? Or were the results just much better when recorded in a warm environment?

big BOOM

[w0mprat]

"It is mentioned the device cannot explode when being charge or impacted and is thus safe for vehicles."

I'm skeptical. I recall reading ultra-ultra-capacitors have so far proven increasingly unstable as you find ways to store more and more charge. Researchers have found that out the hard way too. Once you reach high energy densities of charge you have what effectively is a bomb.

55kwh is a lot of stored energy, that can be unleashed by a simple short. Even if the capacitor material itself is super stable and won't internally short if punctured, you can still have that energy being dumped into an arc or whatever has shorted circuit. That's a hell of a big bang in the worst case scenario.

Too little too late.

[Eivind]

It's sad how pitiful everything-but-hydrocarbons is as energy-storage.

I mean, these are pie-in-the-sky ultracaps, who knows if they'll ever live up to the promised given in the description.

But even if they do. 280 pounds for 50Kwh of energy ? 50Kwh of energy from petrol weighs on the order of 10 pounds, from diesel on the order of 8-9 pounds.

So, even if this turns out to work as well as expected, it's still a factor of 30 or so worse as energy-storage than plain-old-hydrocarbons. It's really amazing the oomph that that liquid holds.

Okay, so in the real world it's somewhat better. An electrical motor is more efficient than a modern combustion-engine, let's be generous and say by a factor of 2. But you're still talking a factor of 15.

Which means you either need to drag around 15 times as many pounds for energy-storage, or you're going to have to accept a lower range, lower performance, or some combination thereof. (in reality, probably the latter)

Oh, get me right, I'd be deligthed to have something like this work out. It's just depresing to look at how far behind electrical storage really is, relative to chemical.

Re:Too little too late.

[Wonko the Sane]

An electrical motor is more efficient than a modern combustion-engine, let's be generous and say by a factor of 2

More like 5-7 depending on the combustion engine

Re:Too little too late.

[Bloater]

Also the ICE weighs an awful lot more than 280lbs while four small in wheel motors weigh very little. then there's the gearbox, the driveshaft, the lead-acid battery (hint, hint "LEAD"). The coolant, the brake fluid (not needed with decent inwheel motors).

The electric version will be /much/ lighter overall.

I think the BS is even higher.

[mbkennel]

The EESTOR stuff has been analyzed---yes buy some random guy on a blog, but somebody who really seems to know what he's talking about.

Only in freshman physics can you say that the energy in a capacitor is simply E=1/2 C*V^2---or more correctly---measure the capacitance at V=approx 0 and then extrapolate.

Barium titanate is definitely a known ferroelectric (this is not misspelled) material with a very high dielectric "constant" k.

But it it is not really constant! At sufficiently high voltages (i.e. interesting for power storage) you get dielectric saturation, meaning that k = k(V) in reality and it declines heavily. You just can't make atoms and electrons do what EEstor wants. There isn't enough place to stably put that much energy in electrons unless you change their energy states--which is otherwise known as chemistry---and gasoline.

And if you have 50 kW-hr or so in a little place, and you get a short thanks to a collision which breaks the circuits, there's no way to NOT have a freaking BIG ASS meltdown and explosion. That potential energy IS going to go somewhere and if it was all in E-fields and capacitance, it will discharge really fast if there is a hint of a dielectric breakdown and this will vaporize.

Only if the 50 kW-hr is experimentally measured, not imputed from a low power separate measurement of capacitance or dielectric constant, will I believe it.

I have the feeling that this patent document may really be used for continuing the funding cycle, not actually protecting a (nearly physically unbelievable) technology.

They probably did create a very good ultracapacitor with good materials processing, but I bet the energy storage is still in the ballpark range of known ultracaps.

Having it be otherwise would be like saying you've refined petroleum into a new chemical fuel which has the energy density of fissile uranium, and no radiation!

There isn't any Moore's law in thermodynamics.

Re:I think the BS is even higher.

[WindBourne]

Actually, a number of ppl have analysed this to death. UnShockingly, a number of ppl say it will work, and another group say it will not. What is interesting, is that numerous other patents HAVE been issued for similar capacitors already. Problem was, they could not bring it to production. Scaling up was the issue for Exxon. Apparently, they could make SMALL ones, just not large ones. Personally, I am not too worried about this.

They also claim to have it safe. Problem is, where are they testing? I do not see that happening. THAT DOES CONCERN ME. You are correct about the explosive part. The good news is that you would NEVER know and would never suffer unlike a gas tank explosion or fire. I suspect that if and when it is brought to market we will see "issues" (think pinto).

What I find interesting is ppl like you claiming that these guys are frauds and that this is about money. The top ppl have a LONG REPUTATION of above ground when they worked at IBM doing harddrives. As it is Kliener is BEGGING to invest more money in them. In the end, we will see what happens.

Safe for vehicles? Yeah right

[hamster3null]

"It is mentioned the device cannot explode when being charge or impacted and is thus safe for vehicles" It's easy to compute that fully charged EEStor contains 1.5 MJ/kg of energy. Assuming that polyethylene terephthalate is the bulk of material by mass (specific heat 1.0 kJ/(kgÂK)), accidental discharge of any single unit (in a car crash, for example) would release enough energy to heat it to 1500 C. Melting point of PETE is only 260 C. At that point, battery components will start burning, bringing temperature even higher, and likely setting a chain reaction. And EEStor is extremely fragile, with enormous potential differences across tiny gaps (3500 V across the 10 micron gap). The likelihood of such catastrophic outcome in even a moderate car collision is high.

Google "Project Orion"... ;)

[PaulBu]

As far as I remember, the piston would do a (nuclear explosion) stoke about every second, but that could take you all over Solar System and beyond!

Paul B.

Re:Google "Project Orion"... ;)

[TooMuchToDo]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion)

Re:Check out the patent

[MtViewGuy]

Actually not. I can imagine about 30 years from now out on the Interstate we'll have big service stations/restaurants/mini-shopping centers right next to a major Interstate highway intersection where drivers can park their cars into a parking space, plug in a commercial-quality charging cable to charge the battery, and after eating a meal or do a little shopping come back to a full-charged ultracapacitor battery pack in around 30 minutes.

For home applications, you'll plug into the same 220V connection used for electric dryers and electric ranges, and the charge takes only a few hours to complete.

Re:Comparison with gasoline

[MtViewGuy]

Actually, one potential problem with a true electric car is that their maximum torque comes when you first turn the motor. That could result in a pretty frightening initial acceleration, causing a lot of rear-end accidents for drivers not used to the strong initial torque of an electric motor. As such, you'll see sophisticated motor regulation systems to prevent over-acceleration from dead stop.

I have read that an all-electric dragster properly designed could out-accelerate conventional sports cars of the same weight and power because of this initial torque advantage. Indeed, I would not be surprised within 15 years the Pike's Peak hill climb record will be held by an electric car, since unlike conventional cars electric cars will have the same power at the top of Pike's Peak as at the bottom without all the complications of turbocharging conventional motors.

Re: can hold 52.220 kWh

[Iffie]

I couldn't correct it (Slashdot timelock). But your passion for accuracy is comendable..

Yeah,,,

[Pope]

But that was the 1970s, people were tougher back then.

Re:Check out the patent

[ivan256]

1. Attach Enormous Coil to Car Roof.
2. Park under high voltage AC lines.
3. Profit.

(No ???. It's stupid for non-nonsensical plans anyway. Save it for things like: 1. Get "First Posts" on Slashdot. 2. ??? 3. Profit.)

(Yes, I know. Three phases. Near Zero magnetic flux, etc..)

Patent Claims...

[Paul Breed]

The basic concept "store ennergy in parallel caps" is not new. The process and construction is new. The level of performance claimed is astonishing. I've read a fair number of patents and this one reads "Funny" The Claims are supposed to be very broad to capture as much area as possible. The claims in this patent are very very narrow.... it almost seems like it was not written by a patent professional, it reads more like a research paper. An example: Claim 2: The electrical energy storage unit of claim 1 wherein the PET plastic powder has an average particle size of 0.64um. Why put any specific number in a patent? So if you use a powder with an average size of 0.63um it will probably still work. Properly written claims should be very broad. My version of Claim 2 would be: The electrical energy storage unit of claim 1 wherein the PET plastic powder has an average particle size of less than 1 um. A lot of things just seem funny with eestor: They publish things like : "an independent company certified EEStor's production line's process as producing 99.9994% purity barium titanate powder " but don't publish things like: "an independent company verified that a prototype unit met the claimed energy density of xxx" Makes me leery of hype, the proof is in the product not the view graph, I don't care how pure your barium titanate is, I only care if your capacitor works.

Re:Stores Twice the Energy of a Lithium-Ion???

[Bloater]

That appears to be the sort of claim they are making, although I think they say the total volume will only be 20% less.

And they claim the practicalities, efficiencies and economies of Li nano-titanate and Li nano-phosphate batteries - which have half the specific energy of Lithium-Ion again. That's four times the specific energy of like-for-like batteries.

We're just going to have to see if it works and see what the price is.

Re:Check out the patent

[oracleofbargth]

It is unlikely that you would survive to complete step 2, since the high voltage will likely be able to travel through the rope.

Re:I dunno...

[WindBourne]

Yes. But Zenn does not have the exclusive deal for all cars. Apparently it is of a set site. Roughly, all sedans of accord size and UNDER. Of course, that accounts for something like 10-25% of all cars.

Re: can hold 52.220 kWh

[Ironica]

People like you need to adjust their attitude to realize that human languages are NOT the same as programming languages or scientific equations, some of the time getting it close enough really is ok.

When you are talking to programmers and engineers, there is no such thing as too much precision. When you're posting on Slashdot, you're inevitably talking to a lot of programmers and engineers.

Sure, using slightly the wrong vocabulary word, or putting an apostrophe in Starbucks, or other such minor mis-usage isn't a Federal crime... but I can totally see why people would get up in arms about incorrect units on this site.

AcreFeet?

[HornWumpus]

Commonly used in Civil Engineering. (1 AcreFoot = the volume one acre in area and one foot deep.)

In reality it's industry specific.

0 guage charge cables?

[HornWumpus]

Maybe bigger.

Of course if this is real they will build a smaller one for cars.

A half hour quick charger for homes could work out with the 10 minute reserved for 'charging stations' along highways.

Once they are cheep I plan on dropping a big hunk of copper across the terminals of a fully charged one. By remote from a safe distance of course. I might have to defeat an internal fuse of some sort, that's a given. Bet they'll 'pop' nicely.

It's silly to let grammar upset you in casual talk

[cromar]

Not that you're white necessarily, but I think this is a good parody of why people think it is silly to get so up in arms about grammar and spelling in casual conversation.

Re:Check out the patent

[MichaelSmith]

It is unlikely that you would survive to complete step 2, since the high voltage will likely be able to travel through the rope.

Well I wouldn't try it in the rain. Better to wear rubber boots too.

Re:Check out the patent

[Agripa]

200 amp 240 volt mid-point neutral service is ubiquitous in the US although higher is possible. I anticipate that the next step up would be to bring the third phase down.

That's because it's a patent on a device

[mbessey]

You know, the application that patents were created for? The only (serious) problem with the patent system is that they've foolishly extended it to cover software, business processes, genes, and prime numbers, none of which are anything like the physical inventions that patents are designed to protect. While it may be true that these other types of "inventions" need some kind of government-guaranteed monopoly, patents are definitely the wrong mechanism.

Patent claims are NOT proof!

[spencertk]

I concluded a year ago that this was a lot of smoke and mirrors, mostly depending on the obvious square function of the formula for energy storage vs. voltage. However, several people who actually have worked with pure barium titanate note it's highly non-linear characteristics, i.e. its dielectric constant drops dramatically as the field gradient increases, an effect also known as dielectric saturation. It gets right down to atomic level physics. The reduction in capacitance at stated voltages is so great that the claims appear to be overstated by a factor of 100 or so! To make this work they are claiming they have overcome the fundamental limitations of this material. The patent spells out part of it but does not prove it actually works. Anatoly Moskalev gave some great analysis in this link: http://www.teslamotors.com/blog2/?p=46 (search for "About EEStore supercapacitor hype") If correct, these guys are still using non-proven hype to attract capital. If any single investor has not had the device actually proven for both energy density and voltage, they are taking a huge, huge risk. Personally, I hope we are all wrong and this thing actually works. It would be a HUGE advance. However, I'm not investing nor holding my breath...

Not just any supercapacitor

[Trogre]

I can buy a 55 Farad supercapacitor that fits in my hand from Jaycar for about $20. They are very cool.

This looks like an altogether different supercapacitor.

Re: can hold 52.220 kWh

[Lije Baley]

Open the door, get on the floor, everybody charge with EEStor.

Re:Check out the patent

[Man Eating Duck]

Fine for washing machine, dryer, lights, computers, etc, not for charging an electrical car.

And therein lies the problem. An extremely large part of the world's transportation relies on fossil fuels. Even if we could find an efficient way of running all that transportation with electricity, we'll need an efficient way of providing that electricity.

That goes for distributing it, but more importantly, for generating it. It's possible, but for now it's a lot more cost-effective to burn dead dinosaurs sucked out of the ground. A ready-made energy soup there for the taking. Sad, but simple.

Still, I'm excited about any invention/discovery that leads us down the path of not burning those dead animals. We need it.

Re:I dunno...

[Trogre]

...for now at least.

Re: can hold 52.220 kWh

[whimmel]

Would it not be most clear to write 52kWh220 ?

Re:Check out the patent

[daem0n1x]

Just leave the car slowly charging at night, while you're sleeping. The electric companies will love you for that.

Re:Check out the patent

[s_p_oneil]

True. Another point to mention is that the current grid wouldn't be able to handle the increased load if too many people bought cars with these in them at once. Of course, it would be easier for the grid to handle people charging them over the course of a few hours at night than to handle people charging them in 3-minute bursts during peak usage times.

In a way non-automobile applications are even more exciting. Imagine replacing all the AA, AAA, C, D, 9V, and Li-Ion batteries you come in contact with these. Higher power storage density combined with quicker recharge and nearly infinite number of recharges would be incredible. The fact that the "battery" will last longer than almost any device it powers is another interesting benefit (one I'm sure marketing departments of several very large companies will fight tooth and nail).

The biggest problem with off-grid wind/water/sun power is the lack of a good way to store surplus energy for later. Put a big one of these under your house, and it would be a lot easier to go without the grid (unless you also need to power your car ;-). I imagine a large array of these could be used on the grid in the same fashion, storing excess energy that is generated "just in case" a bunch of people flip a switch and need that energy to be there. When the capacitors are full, they can shut down additional turbines and save energy while knowing the energy will be available if a bunch of people flip that switch. I'm sure they already have capacitors for this purpose, but not with enough storage capacity.

Wow

[ShooterNeo]

Imagine what a few copper jacketed bullets could do if they were shot into a capacitor bank. I imagine that they would create shorts that would quickly turn into plasma, making a nice satisfying explosion with blue electric arcing throughout.

Man, if this tech really worked, action movies would have a new cliche to replace the "exploding gas tanks" they love. And the best part is : it would be realistic! (well, ok, Hollywood would probably still go overboard, and have a tiny subcompact blow up as if it had the capacitor pack of a Mac truck)

Re:Check out the patent

[justcauseisjustthat]

At that weight and charge time, add two to a car and call it good (if it all works as advertised) !!!

Re:Actually it's a serious proposal for free recha

[MichaelSmith]

This just came up.

Instant Vaporization

[TD-Linux]

Am I the only one who has thought of alternate uses for this capacitor? To name a few:
1. Electric fence upgrade - Why simply stun when you can turn them into a smoldering heap?
2. Coilgun - That is, if you can keep the coil from exploding, maybe superconducting electromagnets are in order.
3. Camera flashes - Just be careful not to turn it up too high - mainly to avoid destroying retinas, igniting clothing, or woodburning an entire wall.

Doesn't exist yet ? Check again

[this great guy]

I heard Tony Stark was able to build one in a cave. With a box of scraps.

Argh!

[jcr]

s/way/weigh/

Hate it when that happens. I need more sleep.

-jcr

Re:Argh!

[mrmeval]

Try having mild aphasia and every damned speck of automation you can scrape up to compensate.

Then add dyslexia to the mix and my world is a joy to behold.

It's all melty.

More important

[WindBourne]

You can charge at night, and then use it to either charge your car during the day (you know that you will be running around), use it yourself, or sell it back to the power company. The advantage is that you buy it at a lower price than what you sell it back at (nighttime vs. daytime). The power company would then contract with ppl to guarentee a certain rate in return for GUARENTEED amount of power during the daytime. IOW, the power company can put in bigger base load power generators or there is Alternative Energy, and contract with a number of homes/businesses to handle peak loads. The big advantage for home owners is that they have a way to smooth the power (no spikes), and they have an emergency generator. Useful for when a transformer or a power line is taken out.

Shelf life?

[bscott]

I never see this mentioned, but I wonder, what's the shelf life of the charge on these things? Once topped off, how long can you leave it until it drains itself? It can't be indefinite, from my memory of physics.

I know NiMH cells drain fairly fast (compared to non-reusable batts) - I think the half life is in the range of a few months. If ultracaps are comparable, that's probably good enough, but if it's hours or days, there may be some adjustment issues...

Those electronics would have to be...

[WindBourne]

DAMNED EXPENSIVE for this to NOT work. At this time, batteries are the hold back. The majority of the costs of the roadster is batteries (something like 70K). Since the EESTOR is to be around 5K in costs, lets assume 10. Do you think that the electronics will costs more than 60K for doing that? Somehow I doubt that it costs more than 10K.

Actually, LOADS of room

[WindBourne]

The reason is that the owners have indicated that they will NOT be selling to any hybrids. EV onlys. Take out the generator/engine/tank and you have PLENTY of room.

Re:Actually, LOADS of room

[Firethorn]

Oops.. I've gotten a brain bug.

I was talking about the Tesla Roadster, not the Chevy Volt. Looks like you realized that as well. Going to be a pain in the butt until I clear it out. Still, the Tesla would be roomy only in comparison to other small two seat vehicles.

You, of course, still need the motor/generator to transfer power to and from the batteries/wheels. And even the 20 gallon tank on my trunk isn't that big, not in comparison to the battery packs mentioned. Generally the big weight savings is the engine and all it's associated equipment like the radiator, emissions, etc...

To put it another way, the Tesla's battery pack is bigger than my truck's fuel tank and far, far, heavier. We're comparing a truck's fuel tank vs a small car.

It's unfortunate fact that even with modern technology, despite not needing cooling and emissions equipment, an EV will still be heavier than a comparable gasoline vehicle, at any decent range.

Re:Actually, LOADS of room

[WindBourne]

Well, I always think of current tradeoffs being the tank/fuel(100-200 lb) for the electric motor(s) (which is ~100lb for tesla) and the batteries for the engine (roughly 500 lbs with everything). Right now, the batteries on the tesla weigh more (something like 700 lb), but if the eestor comes to being, it will be less. In addition, the volume of the li-ion is big. BUT, eestor is small volume wise.

This should be an interesting ride IFF this is true. They are going for DOD first by the sounds of it. But I was thinking about this. An electric snowmobile with this battery would out range current gas snowmobiles. I could see yellowstone forcing these due to quietness and none pollution. That push snowmobiles overnight into evs. I have wonder what about a boat? Not sure that I want to be in water with that voltage/amp around me.

Re:Actually, LOADS of room

[Firethorn]

One site lists the Tesla's motor as weighing in at 70 pounds!!! For any other motor of that horsepower(248 hp), I've been seeing weights of over a thousand pounds - the biggest difference I see is the Tesla motor maxes out at 13k rpms, the ones I was looking at are rated for a mere 2k or less. Found a 70 pound motor - rated at 2 hp@1800 RPM. 230/460Volts. Motor size/weight goes down as voltage goes up, and HP goes up as RPMS go up. The Tesla is rated for 14k RPM. Factor of 7.7. That would get us up to 15.5 HP. Not 248 HP. Hmm... It notes that the 248 is the maximum - Standard ratings for electric motors are sustained - not max, like for engines. Factors of ten is possible for limited times, combined with a voltage increase (600V+), and removal of a considerable amount of housing weight and it sounds feasible.

BTW, from elsewhere in the thread, EEStor's unit is about the same size, physically speaking, but much lighter than the LiIon pack. The reduced weight will increase range some, but I'd say the biggest hope is cost savings. That's where the money is.

Oh, and the trunk is just large enough for a golf bag. Not what I'd call large. An electric snowmobile would have a hard time fitting the current EEStor unit into it's structure - even with a total redesign to optimize layout for the new technologies. There's also the environmental question - the EEStor unit would have to work down into the -40/-50 range to be on the safe side.

More importantly, will costs less

[WindBourne]

Gas is going UP in price. Yes, it is down TODAY. But we all KNOW that it will go up. In addition, an ICE is a complex beast. LOTS of maintenance. An electric car has minimal costs on that. But best of all, in the west, electricity will costs much less than gas does and will improve with time.

Re: can hold 52.220 kWh

[tehcyder]

Start getting you units right, and capitalization DOES matter.

Ha, slashdot's first Capitalization Nazi, and he's quite right.

low energy efficiency?

[marmusa]

Vague memories from my physics degree suggest that as much energy is wasted while charging the capacitor as is actually stored in it. See eg. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor#Power_dissipation. Does this mean that this system could only ever be 50% efficient? Does anyone know whether similar physics applies to battery systems?

Re: can hold 52.220 kWh

[shutdown -p now]

Actually, there is one punctuation symbol that can be used unambiguously in a number to group digits - space: "1 000.50" or "1 000,50". It works better if you do it in Unicode (or TeX) and use a smaller-width space. Coincidentally, the latter format is in fact what a lot of European countries use to format numbers (in fact, I can't even remember anyone using "." to separate groups).

Re: can hold 52.220 kWh

[YttriumOxide]

Using dots seems to be pretty standard here in Germany - "1.000.000,00€" for example (I just checked my latest payslip and bank statement, and they both follow this style). I'm also generally a fan of using a space (preferably a thin space, when possible) when writing a single number in a sentence (such as "there are 6 600 000 000 people in the world"), but I still avoid it for technical writing because it could lead to ambiguity or misinterpretation as a list or other such thing. Of course, for really big numbers, in technical writing, I'd never write 6600000000 anyway, I'd just write 6.6E9 (when constrained to ASCII, or 6.6x10 followed by a superscript 9 if not constrained by ASCII).

Re:Psst....

[Khyber]

Psst - I do. That's why the computer never stops running. I set it to encode something, I go do gardening. Come back, set another task, head out to do some photography. Come back, unload those photos, process them, upload wherever, make a few posts, maybe take a break and play a game, read slashdot, then set it to protein fold, cook dinner, eat, smoke a bowl, run out to the theater, etc.

You talk as if you actually knew me. Try again.

Also - how was my above post off-topic when I started the topic and was responding to comments that needed clarification?

Stupid mods must be up - did you guys come from RepublicanOperative?

Re: can hold 52.220 kWh

[bwcbwc]

Especially since it isn't just m vs. M. k=kilo, K=Kelvin, h=hour and H=Henry, W=Watt and w=wombat. So are we talking about 52.220 Kelvin*Wombat*Henries here or what?

Re:30,000 F = 50kWh?

[LabRat]

A Farad is similar to Amps..useless for comparing actual energy or power without the corresponding voltage involved. In (over)simple terms it describes the number of electrons being stored for later release...similar to the relationship to volume to a liquid in some arbitrary container. And similarly, asking how much work can be done with 1 gallon of water is as useless as asking how much work (ie kWh) can be stored in a 3000F (or 30,000F) capacitor. Without knowing the pressure (ie voltage), it is indeterminate.

your AA battery (and thus ultimately the 3000F capacitor it is connected to) stores 1.5V of potential. The EEStor ultracap claims to store 3500V. For every coulomb of charge, the eestore device is storing about 2300 times as much energy (kwh) as the 3000F capacitor in your example. There's the difference ;)

I wonder how well they endure...

[A New Normalcy]

... long-term vibration?

Re:Check out the patent

[Macka]

The point i was trying to make is that it'll take a bit longer to recharge than it will to just tank up with gas. So given the choice, are you going to sit around twiddling your thumbs at a local recharge station while waiting 10 minutes. Or are you more likely to head to your local Starbucks for a recharge in their car park, where you can have a coffee 'n bun + browse the net and check your email until your car is ready.

Plus, given that leccy is a lot cheaper than gas, where's the profit for dedicated recharge stations? Add to that an increased turn around time getting customers in and out: 10 mins to fill up 'vs' 2, and their profits are going to go down the pan.

I just don't think it's going to add up when more attractive recharge points can be purposed just about anywhere where the vendor can offer added value (and inducement for you to spend extra) while your car is charging.