If I read the abstract correctly, they're claiming that an assembled supercapacitor bank using this technology will store 12 watts per kilogram. One of the most energy-dense lithium-ion battery modules currently available is the Moxie+ from Enerdel: http://www.enerdel.com/me350-049-moxie-battery-module/ which stores 100 watts per kilogram. This means that the supercapacitor folks are within an order of magnitude of reaching the same gravimetric energy density as lithium-ion, (now they're roughly on par with lead-acid.) Next they have to do testing to determine lifetime, self-discharge rates, and temperature degradation, and to check safety issues. (What happens when you've got a few kilowatt-hours stored in a supercapacitor module and it gets punctured by a chunk of metal during a collision - lots of lighning and a really hot fire? Commercial lithium-ion modules like the Moxie+ go through puncture testing to show that there's no rapid discharge from being punctured with a nail shot from a nail-gun, or being crushed under rollers, overcharged, discharged, reverse-charged, overheated, or frozen. On the plus side, I suspect that if a supercapacitor catches fire, you can put out the fire with water or CO2, unlike many lithium-ion cells which will happily burn under water once you get them going.) I'll be very interested to see if this winds up going anywhere, it sure sounds like it has... potential.
Have a look at the Kubuntu Trinity repository:
http://apt.pearsoncomputing.net/
It's the KDE3.x tree grafted back onto Kubuntu, with all KDE3 and KDE4 apps supported painlessly. Between my office and various friends, I've put it on a dozen or so machines, and it's just great. Every time I installed KDE4, it just spawned an endless series of phone calls from mystified users, so it's Trinity now, and it all Just Works.
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If I read the abstract correctly, they're claiming that an assembled supercapacitor bank using this technology will store 12 watts per kilogram. One of the most energy-dense lithium-ion battery modules currently available is the Moxie+ from Enerdel: http://www.enerdel.com/me350-049-moxie-battery-module/ which stores 100 watts per kilogram. This means that the supercapacitor folks are within an order of magnitude of reaching the same gravimetric energy density as lithium-ion, (now they're roughly on par with lead-acid.) Next they have to do testing to determine lifetime, self-discharge rates, and temperature degradation, and to check safety issues. (What happens when you've got a few kilowatt-hours stored in a supercapacitor module and it gets punctured by a chunk of metal during a collision - lots of lighning and a really hot fire? Commercial lithium-ion modules like the Moxie+ go through puncture testing to show that there's no rapid discharge from being punctured with a nail shot from a nail-gun, or being crushed under rollers, overcharged, discharged, reverse-charged, overheated, or frozen. On the plus side, I suspect that if a supercapacitor catches fire, you can put out the fire with water or CO2, unlike many lithium-ion cells which will happily burn under water once you get them going.) I'll be very interested to see if this winds up going anywhere, it sure sounds like it has... potential.
Have a look at the Kubuntu Trinity repository: http://apt.pearsoncomputing.net/ It's the KDE3.x tree grafted back onto Kubuntu, with all KDE3 and KDE4 apps supported painlessly. Between my office and various friends, I've put it on a dozen or so machines, and it's just great. Every time I installed KDE4, it just spawned an endless series of phone calls from mystified users, so it's Trinity now, and it all Just Works.