Discovery Could Increase Power of Ultracapacitors

This technology is also owned by MIT, so let's make sure the MIT licensing office doesn't give the exclusive production rights to a company that will sit on the technology for the next ten years, like it did with roll-to-roll solid state li-ion batteries. I urge you to write to the MIT Technology Licensing Office
Room NE25-230
Five Cambridge Center, Kendall Square
Cambridge, MA 02142-1493
and demand they allow as many companies wishing to go into production as possible, and not allow a repeat performance of the VoltaFlex debacle!

This is great! Instead of hybrids, we could use this for completely electric vehicles. Use it to store solar, wind, hydro power for use when the source energy is not so plentiful. This eliminates a big argument against renewables, "What do you do when there is no sund/wind/etc?" Well, we havea storage medium that can accept the excess electricity as it is generated and release in high capacity when needed, oh and in addition to these advantages, can undergo many times the charge cycles of conventional batteries, and contains far fewer toxic materials.

But does anyone know if nanotubes are an inherently safe technology anyway? Biodegradable? recycleable? (PS Does anyone know if carbon fibre is biodegradable??)

This is a wonderful innovation. And it looks like they're testing at bench scale which is a good sign. The electrolytes used in Li batteries, commonly lithium phospho-fluoride based solution, is some nasty stuff for skin contact, and that might include the poor buggers who end up on the dirty end of the recycling business. Of course we'd intuitively expect carbon to be cheap and benign by comparison. PAUSE Carbon nanotube cost of goods is probably thousands of dollars per gram (a guess), so scaling this up to commercial scale waits cheap processes for making the main component. All is contingent on who makes nanotubes, by what patented process, and what the energy burden of nanotube manufacturing per gram. Even if we assume that carbon nanotube's relative hazard is lower than lithium electrolyte, a life cycle analysis is needed before we get too "charged up".

Here's a great link that shows you how to make your own small ultracapacitors
to power small electronic devices. Combine this with a wind up dynamo and you'd never need to use batteries for small electrical devices again!
http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2005/12/the_supercap_battery.html

carbon nanotubes are pretty expensive.. I dunno if this will fly very soon

I would be interested to know what the load/unload efficiency is.

Yes, it is true, nanotubes cause cancer. According to a study conducted last fall by Popular Science and Cosmo magazine, nanotubes were inserted into the ears of adolescent children to ease the pain caused by ear infections. Once installed, scientists were surprised to find that children were receiving Sirrus radio channels through these nanotubes. They quickly started tuning into Howard Stern broadcasts which hastened the formation of brain tumours and an increase in foul language. Very sad. Imagine what would happen if this same technology found its way into an automobile!

It is good news about nanotube based Ultracapacitors. I think it is a way for solve world energy quastion. Say more crearly, world do not have quastion for energy. The sunlight gives enough energy. The quastion is peaple have quastion about controlable energy, and cheap and higher effective way to translate energy from one form to another. From logical thinking, materials change from active carbon to carbon aerogel and finily to carbon nanotube for ultracapacitors is a reasonable way.
One quastion is if carbon nanotube is too expensice? answer is no. It is prety sure that in the furture it will most cheap thins.