EEStor Capacitors- "This could change everything"

With a capacitor, unlike a battery , no chemical reaction is needed to free electrons for completion of a circuit. Both store electricty in a way of speaking, but capacitors function somewhat like what happens when you slide across the car seat on a cold dry day and touch a "ground". Your body and clothing are a capacitor of sorts!

Barium and titanium are not noted for high toxicity and also are reasonably abundant. If cost is low enough, this design could y disrupt the alkaline battery industry and change many appliance and device designs.

As fast as a capacitor can charge it can also discharge. There is a risk, therefore, of short circuiting, or of "shock", which requires some design protection appropriate to the use.

Critical thinkers will ponder the connection between disposable or short design life electronics technology (toys for example) and an electicity storage device with near infinite life. For short lived devices,the carbon based capacitor may make more sense, depending on price. Better still, increase the design life of the toy and make the capacitor easy to dissassemble and re-use elsewhere.

hypercapacitor

I wonder how/if they solved the self discharge issue. Capacitors (and batteries) eventually lose charge due to leakage currents. Or if the rate is low compared to the usage rate. Another issue is whether you could actually get the energy into a car as quickly as claimed. Assuming 17kWH in 5 mins from the article, that's 200kW about 5 times the maximum power able to come to a house.

well...let's hope this is more 'capacity' than 'hype'.

I love the idea of this hypercapacitor, but I beleive charge times will be limited by other factors. The article mentions a charge time of 6 minutes for a 17kWh bank. My math may be wrong, but that should requires 170kW to be delivered over 6 minutes, or 220 volts @ 773 amps. This may not be as much of an issue for industrial charging stations, but could be an issue in a house where I believe that is more power than most homes have delivered to them. I guess a buffer capacitor bank could be used, but there are still safety concerns with connector types and safety measures for transfering that kind of power in such a short ammount of time. It may simply be an issue of not trying to charge at the maximum rate possible, except for with commercial equipment being charge by trained professionals with appropriate safety equipment.

Then again it could sit on the shelf for another ten years... It all depends on political alliances that are either pro-oil or don't have any vested interest. Who "owns" the patents, and who owns the companies that own the patents, that's what you really need to take into account. If the technology was funded and developed to be owned so as to be prevented from entering circulation, it will also prevent anyone else from putting it on the market. Interesting that the Vice President of Government and Industry Relations at Feel Good Cars is also called Graham Hill ... maybe they should do a meeting!

A quick USPTO search using "barium titanate" brings up US Pat. App. 2004/0071944 with inventors being Weir, Richard Dean; (Cedar Park, TX) ; Nelson, Carl Walter; (Austin, TX).

Second to last paragraph of the summary reads: "This EESU will have the potential to revolutionize the electric vehicle (EV) industry, the storage and use of electrical energy generated from alternative sources with the present utility grid system as a backup source for residential, commercial, and industrial sites, and the electric energy point of sales to EVs. The EESU will replace the electrochemical battery in any of the applications that are associated with the above business areas or in any business area where its features are required."

Pretty skimpy patent coverage, if that's all there is.

Re: Old_Wolf's comment, i got about the same numbers. 770 amps is not a reasonable current, they don't make common cables that can handle that. The solution of course is to run at higher voltage, 1700 volts at 100 amps is better, but it requires high-voltage cabling. Still non-trivial and still beyond doing this at your house.

I suppose if this technology were to become available, one could charge the car quickly at a 'gas' station via some special high power connection, and slow charge it over some hours at home via 220v.

supercaps are not new, but it is good to see more and more technologies get their due.

Drew: It is obvious how much this subject interests me because I looked at a basic gas station and saw 12 fueling stations. Going with this format, 12 charging stations at the rates we discussed would draw just over 2 megawatts when all stations are charging.

Most of the time I see this many stations full at a prolonged rate is along I-15 out here from California to Vegas and beyond, so I guess such stations might be encouraged to augment the power supply with renewables if they can buy some surrounding land.



... I need to go call a real estate agent.

A lota hypercapacitor hype out there. At least this one does not claim "nanotechnology". Still, I have a hypercapacitor bridge to sell you....

feel good cars

Correct web address is http://eestor.us/
not eestor.com

Don't believe the hype.

The invention is a barium titanate capacitor. This is not a new invention. It is a high-voltage capacitor system not unlike those used in common electrical products. The most novel thing about it is the operating voltage, which is very high -- several thousand volts.

The energy stored by a capacitor is proportional to the voltage squared; hence a high voltage capacitor can, in theory, store a great deal of energy.

However, the capacitance of barium titanate capacitors is small. To get any meaningful energy capacity, you have to put a lot of capacitors in parallel. EESTOR attempts to address this in their patent, but their arguments are not convincing.

The manufacturing obstacles are significant, as are the market obstacles of getting anyone to drive around in a car with energy storage at 3500 Vdc.

The article suggests that EESTOR's "patent documents" were difficult to obtain, but like all patents they are a matter of public record, and are available on the U.S. patent website, http://www.uspto.gov. Search for patent 0071944 A1 published April 15, 2004.

While the idea of charging straight from the grid is one thing, I have two questions

1. How much is the efficiency improved (in terms of power lost from driving) if you set up the capacitor to charge from things like braking (like the current Toyota? or is it someone else's? hybrids) i.e. charge the capacitor via kinetics from all the things the cars does that create waste energy.

And

2. What about using the grid power to jump the car and having the car engine run to generate the charge? is it feasible using today’s wall current and volts to run the engine to charge the capacitor that runs the car? or is that too much pipe dream?

I know most cars currently today charge their batter y off the engine, and its seems feasible to do this as if the car is 100% ev it doesn't fill your garage with all sorts of nasty... even assuming low efficiency I think the only problem could be waste heat? but no idea

Hmmm hyper capacitor EV or hybrid gun engine (assuming that actually works was /.’d a whiles back but do not know if anyone agreed to the inventors restrictions) + hyper capacitor cars seem to have a ton of potential hope its not wasted.

This sounds like it could work with a few tweeks of a wrench.

Ultra-capacitors are still maturing. The technology could be a large leap into uninterrupted power supplies for the home, car, or remote cabins. Imagine only hooking up to the grid for 15 to 20 minutes then running your house for a week, or powering your car for a week with low usage, or driving your equipment with these?

Using this technology to replace lead acid batteries would be a good thing but it also has a potential for abuse if it makes it to the market with out becoming a suppressed invention.
So lets not zap this story too much.

We still need a power source to charge these capacitors that is a green power source. Keep going with the research folks.

D~W

EEStor - new non-battery energy storage

If it's real, and they're serious then I'm certianly intrested in licensing it for a number of applications. I'm already in the process of raising funds for a number of environment initiatives and would be happy to talk to these people when they're ready for market.
Hmmmmm.......

Michael
http://www.sterling-bond.com

I use a litmus test to see if it is even worth analyzing a new technology.

1. Does it sound too good to be true? Yes
2. Can the claims be substantiated? No

Oops. Eestor goes 0-2 andfails my litmus test.

What's the National Examiner's number again? Boy do I have a story for them!

US Patent 3288641 issued 11/29/1996 to Standard Oil Company looks pretty similar.

link to patent 3288641

There already IS a battery that cn chrge as fast as you can deliver it current, or about 8 to 10 minutes. Made by Altair, it's a lithion ion w/o any bad characteristics in terms of heating, exploding, etc. It can discharge 4 times faster than LI
cells and last well over 10,000 recharges, or about 25 years. It will appear in Phoenix Motorcar electric pickup trucks later this year
and in hybrids by major manufacturers. Let's knock off the paranoid silliness about oil companies buying up great new electrical storage devices - no one could possibly sit on such an invention, and it couldn't possibly be kept secret. Every other country would start building
it and pirating the patent,
with government forebearance.
The public would also tar and feather any company that attempted to do such a thing.
It would be the death of that company.

This is all crazy...has anyone checked the technology...I have been in Barium Titanate capacitors for 30 years..THIS WILL NOT WORK!!!

I read the patents, they left out the calculation for the voltage and temperature coefficients...they will have less then 10% of what they need, or claim.

The goverments initiative for electric cars (google the "freedom car" explains some of this, and also describes why the BT devices cant be used..they do not fail "gracefully", which is a euphemism for "blowing up"..there is the equivalent of 100 sticks of dynamite, if it could charge at 100 times the accepted voltage ratio...

Now some will say, its sour grapes, but cold fusion comes to mind...check the science...

Even at 10% this isn't a bad ultra cap.

Everyone is a skeptic, including me, but I haven't seen anyone that gives any true reasons why it can't possibly be, so I'll continue being a skeptic and yet continue to watch this.

As far as the Altair battery, I still have a skepticism about that as well. They give the life and charge-discharge rates, but you never see any ranges for cars, even as estimates.

Sure it can discharge and charge fast, but how large a battery will we need, and whats the range on the car.

If it's only 40 miles, that's still within the niche market and not mass.

I found it relevant to mention that one of the first practical implementations of the idea to replace Batteries with Ultracapcitors (or Supercapacitors) to power portable audio electronics was introduced almost 10 years ago in the article:
Single capacitor powers audio mixer (Alexander Bell, USA, EDN, March 14, 1997, http://www.edn.com/archives/1997/031497/06di_04.htm). The article describes hi-quality audio mixer powered exclusively by Ultracap, running for 2 hours on a single charge, while the charging time could be made as low as 10 seconds; it was awarded as the “Best Design Idea” by EDN Magazine.

Since that the author was working hard as an active proponent of Capacitor-based Power systems, mostly for the portable devices. Btw, there is one particular heavily-overlooked issue of Global Environmental Contamination by the Batteries disposed from portable electronics. This issue is REAL and URGENT, and getting worse as Batteries production is increasing every year and many of them would be potentially improperly disposed (see the link following): http://www.alexanderbell.us/Project/GreenElectricity.htm

“Green Electricity (GEL) Initiative”, addressing this issue and proposing the solutions, which include the replacement of the Batteries with Ultracaps in conjunction with alternative renewable primary energy sources, is detailed at: http://www.alexanderbell.us/Initiative/GEL.htm

Another practical examples of using Ultracaps as intermediate energy storage is described in articles, published in EDN Magazine: Muscle power drives battery-free electronics (Alexander Bell, EDN, 11/21/2005. http://www.edn.com/index.asp?layout=article&articleid=CA6283833
). Article describes portable, autonomous, environmentally-friendly solution utilizing Ultra-capacitor in conjunction with alternative energy sources to power portable electronic equipment.

Saltative conduction is merely serial capacitance discharge. Thus ordinary motor axon Schwann cells and oligodendrocytes are biological capacitors (cut one in cross section & check out the electron microscopic image. Such organic dielectrics represent ultracapacitors at the low end, but work doubly well because they utilize inductance as well as capacitance within the same structure. Don't even talk about shared capacitance switching among oligodendrocytes--suggesting that white matter is seat of coordination for musculature. Oh well. Just 2 cents.

I doubt that such a device exists, or if it does that it is all that everyone hopes. Why would such a device remain a mystery? Answer : there is the HOPE that they can devlop
such a storage unit. Does everyone remember the plastic battery that came out during the 1980's? Remember how the paranoid kooks claimed that big oil had somehow
suppressed the technology? Do you also know that the technology is alive and well and doing what is within its grasp - making paper thin, foldable batteries in niche markets. The media exaggerates and hypes to such an extent that by now we supposedly have found 13,4776 "imminent" cures for cancer, 3,467 cures for baldness, etc, etc. Don't let your enthusiasm lead you to believe any of this hype. If EEStor had such a device, it would be installed in an electric car and on display. There is NO VALID reason for them to keep secret such a device which they would obviously have patent protection on. The whole idea is just plain dumb, dumb, dumb. No matter how you slice it, it makes no sense, UNLESS the device really doesn't exist in the form that is being bandied about by totally ignorant newswriters.

If I had such a viable product, my marketing staff would be working overtime singing to the world. Not even a web-site exists for this company.
All of which leads me to believe that they do not have a viable product.

Sometimes in R&D, success is often the ability to fund yourself for a finite period of time. If your efforts produce something marketable, all the better. If not, you still succeeded in funding yourself. I'm sure all too many high-tech investors are aware of this.

I have a tech degree in Automotive power. It seems very difficult to tell if this is real or not. There are plenty of reasons for these claims to be made either way.

I can deduce from the comments above that there must be something more required than what the patent states. The real breakthough maybe that they have a controler/regulator that can efficiently deal with both a very highvoltage down to -nut'n honey-.

In any case, they have every reason to excite investors and jass-up the market for the car with or with out the capacitor. And if it does exist as stated, the car maker has every reason to keep it for themselves. They actually benefit from the buzz about this being real or not.

I believe they will feed us just enough to keep to keep things buzzing. But if this is in the context of no successful car, their only benefit is to swindel investors. So I would check there, are all the investors sold yet? Are they actually hyping the car or the investment? Who's money are they accepting right now?

Personally, I hope it is real. I would like one for my own design proposal http://www.3wheelers.com/projgal14.html

But if they keep the supply tied up I have no hope to compete. Then again, is it really as good as they claim? If it is, one day, I'll simply buy a battery from thier parts supplier. Then get on with my own dreams.

(ps, any dubbled/garbled words above are not my fault)

A press release today claimed success in meeting critical
production characteristics, apparently meaning that
the production line may be producing product before long. They claim before end of 07.
This SOUNDS promising. Supposedly EEStor is still
under consideration be GM for Chevy VOLT, but success
by EEStor would seem to allow practical fully electric
cars to appear posthaste.

"SOUNDS" is the right verb.

If you read the press release carefully, what they have done is purchased very pure barium nitrate, which anyone can do, and get it overnight. Then they had it analysed.

There is a lot, lot more to do before they convert the nitrate to the titanate, mix the other ingredients, calcine it, then add the silica and alumina and calcine it again, then cast a tape, put electrodes on, make a stack, fire it, and THEN, test it for the first time.

We and many others have been doing this for decades, with the same basic ingredients, and get very different properties from what they claim.

It will take a year before they realize they dont have what they thought.

I am part of the industry, so maybe I have an "AGENDA" but anyone can call any MLC company, or any of the half dozen universities (Penn State, U of I, MIT, Alfred-they all have expertise in ceramic dielectrics, and no agenda) and check on the probablities.

But that would take the fun and suspense out.

EESTor claims they have successfully demonstrated
production line capability, Zenn has raised cash to pay to build some cars and has paid EESTor and says the cars will be on the road in 2007. Everybody can now stop
their theorizing because it's quite obvious that the capacitors are being built and that they obviously must work.
I would assume that each of the Big Three (at least) would receive one of the first units off the line. All eyes are on EESTor, the time for speculating is over.

Bike45:

You have fallen for the hype...read the press release again, slowly.

They have not made a single capacitor,they have purchased pure barium nitrate, which anyone can do. They are "on track" whatever that means.

They still have to make barium titanate, add the dopants, calcine, add the glass, cast tape, print electrodes, build green parts, fire them, join them, and then TEST THEM! They are counting on creating a device that violates four rules of physics! If you believe they can accomplish what no one else has with decades of experience, I have a bridge to show you.

Get real...look at the MIT site for realistic comments.

Or, go look up the freedom car initiative and see where the BT solution really stands with real scientists doing open and peer-reviewed work.

I am surprised at the skepticism and the apparent cynicism by some who have no basis for doubt and disbelief except for cynicism.

I do not say the above as reason why Mr. Weir's claims are true. They might ultimately be shown true or they might not be. Only time and results will tell. But I see no reason whatsoever to think Mr. Weir is a charlatan as some seem to imply.

So much of what we use and enjoy in our lives today is the result of advances in material sciences over the last 100+ years. Many of these advances were accompanied by false starts and disappointment but success in many areas was eventually had. DNA and its implications and possible uses was unknown not too many years ago. So was the concept of the genome. The best a forensic lab could do with a blood sample was to determine a blood type. And that was not good for much by today’s standards. Metals are stronger and more uniform today and new alloys do things unheard of only 50-70 years ago. Silicon and dopants do things un-thought of 50-70 years ago. Disk drives, inconceivable 50-70 years ago, have achieved data densities thought of as theoretically impossible only a few years ago. Look at what materials science has done in the last few decades to developing processes that have wrought silicon and other elements into the things of which computers, and communications devices and fantastic optical devices are made. And today, we are just entering a period where we are likely to see incredible new devices made of organic semiconductors, organic LEDs, etc.

Not too many years ago most capacitors were made with paper dielectrics and a couple of dozen microfarads was unheard of except in leaky old electrolytic capacitors. And only a little over 100+ years before that the Leyden jar was as good a capacitor as you could get.

Oddly enough, if I understand correctly, Mr. Weir was a researcher and developer of disk drives at IBM. He has a number of advances and patents to his credit in the disk drive industry. Barium titanate is also used in disk drives (as well as other applications) for some of its unique properties.

One of Barium titanate's properties is that it has an extremely high dielectric constant except when formed into a thin film where the dielectric constant is known to degrade considerably. Before I get far over my head, I suggest anyone interested go to this IBM site (http://domino.watson.ibm.com/comm/wwwr_thinkresearch.nsf/pages/frontier399.html) where there is discussion of barium titanate and its properties as well as some of the processing techniques being considered to improve its presently known characteristics. Could Mr. Weir have knowledge or thoughts of this material and its properties for applications other than those on which he worked at IBM?

Lastly, a couple of random thoughts:

1. Not sure where the mention of barium nitrate came from in the press release. It was certainly there. The material is barium titanate, not barium nitrate. Could whomever prepared and/or transcribed the press release have made a typo?

2. At one time there was a machine called "Fulton's Folly." But it worked and it sailed up the river! Be careful of what your call a “folly.” Navigation and maritime travel have never been the same since.

3. Before and during WWII, there was a lot of conjecture and serious doubt that anyone could build an atomic bomb. And there was also conjecture that the chain reaction would spread around the world and destroy the world or perhaps just consume all of the oxygen in the atmosphere. While there are many things about our world that we do know, there are many more things that we don’t yet know and understand. We are still discovering a lot of things that we once considered to be closed topics.

4. I have spoken with several capable manufacturers of ultracapacitors. One of them pointed out how much the science of producing ever more capable capacitors has advanced in the last 10-20 years. A much more capable capacitor in the future should not be ruled out. It appears that it could be a matter of extending the development cycle we have witnessed and are still witnessing. So far, much has been done to increase plate surface area (usually by using porous structures for the plates). But plate spacing and dielectric constant are also equally critical to increasing the ability of a capacitor to store energy. Whether Mr. Weir's work will lead to the next major advance is yet to be seen.

5. The issue of a presently non-existing infrastructure to charge millions of capacitors such as envisioned by Mr. Weir is a real issue. Our present generating and transmission capacity is more-or-less matched to our present needs and means of consuming energy. Major improvements to our electrical generating and distribution system would have to be done to accommodate the charging of lots and lots of Mr. Weir's capacitors. If the capacitors work and are used is huge quantities, much of our pipeline and trucking capacities for shipping energy from refineries to filling stations will have to be replaced by generating and transmission capabilities for delivering necessary energy to recharging stations. That is not a reason to not move ahead.

6. To the best of my understanding, Mr. Weir's monetary needs have been relatively modest so far. Feel Good Cars got their exclusive by helping to finance his work, but only to the tune of perhaps six figures to $1mm so far (details are discussed on the Canadian Sedar site - similar to the U.S. SEC Edgar site) . Mr. Weir preferred to trade an exclusive for a certain area of use for needed R+D cash rather than to dilute his equity. Kleiner Perkins probably invested an additional $1-3mm so far. Mr. Weir is not a young kid and I must assume that he will eat regularly for the rest of his life from achievements prior to his work on capacitors. If he prospers further from his work on capacitors, it will only be because the capacitors are marketable in quantity and offer bona fide advantages over other energy storage methods for certain applications. It won't be because of his ability to spin wild yarns or tell tall tales about non-existent capacitors.I

7. The ability of a capacitor to rapidly accept a charge makes it much more desirable for use in a car than is any known chemical battery. Chemical batteries, being slow to accept charge, cannot accept but a small fraction of the regenerative braking energy created when decelerating a car. Presently most of that energy is wasted.

Kent Beuchert lives apparently in McLean, VA and my estimate he works for the an oil antil global warming lobby hired to discredit global warming. He has various email addresses listed in Florida also. He can be seen listing comments on literally hundreds of global warming / electric car articles as one of the first or second listers. I am working on a story to track him down and the number of fake reviews he lists on behalf of the lobbying industry. If you have any information, please forward it to me. Regards - David Lassiter.

Altairnano has delivered over 10 battery systems to Phoenix Motorcars with ranges of 130-230 miles per charge. Also MOST electric utilities out there are willing to sell you electricity overnight for half of what you pay during the day as long as you pay for the metering equipment and installation. So charging your vehicle overnight and driving during the day makes sense. Unfortunately the cost of the battery packs would average to about 80k apiece as these ten systems were delivered for 800k. This is, however, a non-mass-produced price. Also, I read the whole patent on the EEStor device. I have a degree in chemistry and a full working knowledge of physics and know of no laws of physics they break as is posted above. I do however doubt that 3500 Volt operation is very safe?? The venture capitalists that invested in EEStor are not dummies, though, i doubt they would've invested in something they have not seen actually work.

In support of R Hamms comments. Recent developments in material science have allowed capacitor technology, moribund for a hundred years, a new lease of life.

The key to storing power in charge devices is the use of EHT voltages, rather than the low voltage, high current used in chemical storage. (Electrical and TV engineers are used to EHT, the semiconductor technology to switch HV is there and we should not be concerned for the engineering practice).

Surely it is now a reasonable development goal for the next 5 years to produce a module to store say 50 Farads at 10K volts. Such a device will solve many engineering problems and allow the move to more efficient electrical power.

EESTOR claim the initial high ground, only time will tell. But if they don't succeed I am convinced a company with the necessary materials skills, like IBM, will be able to achieve this goal.

Bob Bangkok

EESTOR is all hype at this point. They have already missed their first delivery dates promissed for January of 2007. They are now saying 'later this year'. For all the public knows EESTOR might be a sham company trying to inflate their 'apparent worth' to investors. I will believe it when I see it. And so far there hasn't been anything to see.

We are working on the powder. It is all about the powder

Guys,
The idea of an electric car has everyone starry-eyed to the point that they will believe and hope for anything.
Right now, compressed air vehicles are being manufactured and sold in europe and India.
see you at the compressor!

Google:
air car france
air car australia
MDI

Who needs it to recharge in 6 minutes. 15kw aux heat strips are common in homes. 75 amps for an hour and you recharge the 17kw pack in an hour if it is completely discharged. Sounds good to me.

Someone is using my name, I know how to spell capacitor..

Kedros, you are sadly mistaken if you think its all about the powder, even if it has properties very different from every other BT formulation. If at this time, you are still at the powder stage, you are years away from producing a capacitor. There has been a 50 year evolution of the process for making an MLC. How are you going to do that in 2 months?When you mix this "perfect" powder with glass, the K will drop.

Assuming you get by all the other hurdles in making the dielectric formulation, you need to cast 13 micron tape in a clean room, on casters that are state of the art. This will cost millions, and take a couple years to get.

Then, you have to print your base metal electrodes, which is a huge development, and then you will find that changes have to be made in the dielectric, so you will be back in the powder stage.

And so it will go...each subsequent step, and there are 35 of them, will need to be developed for the material set you have.

How many miracles can you possibly claim?

The president of Zenn electric autos sent me an email with an attachment about this company. Zenn is investing in EESTOR.They advance monies as they meet certain production levels. Go to ZENN and read up..

It would be great, if true.
Unfortunately, conspicuously missing from the announcement is some kind of independent verification of claims or even a simple demo.
Sad, very sad...

I got that Email as well, unfortunetly it is all hype and no substance. Nothing new was disclosed and no where did a actual employee or spokesperson from EEStor say anything about the product.

Here is the actual Email:

AUSTIN, Texas — Millions of inventions pass quietly through the U.S. patent office each year. Patent No. 7,033,406 did, too, until energy insiders spotted six words in the filing that sounded like a death knell for the internal combustion engine.

An Austin-based startup called EEStor promised "technologies for replacement of electrochemical batteries," meaning a motorist could plug in a car for five minutes and drive 500 miles roundtrip between Dallas and Houston without gasoline.

By contrast, some plug-in hybrids on the horizon would require motorists to charge their cars in a wall outlet overnight and promise only 50 miles of gasoline-free commute. And the popular hybrids on the road today still depend heavily on fossil fuels.

"It's a paradigm shift," said Ian Clifford, chief executive of Toronto-based ZENN Motor Co., which has licensed EEStor's invention. "The Achilles' heel to the electric car industry has been energy storage. By all rights, this would make internal combustion engines unnecessary."

Clifford's company bought rights to EEStor's technology in August 2005 and expects EEStor to start shipping the battery replacement later this year for use in ZENN Motor's short-range, low-speed vehicles.

The technology also could help invigorate the renewable-energy sector by providing efficient, lightning-fast storage for solar power, or, on a small scale, a flash-charge for cell phones and laptops.

Skeptics, though, fear the claims stretch the bounds of existing technology to the point of alchemy.

"We've been trying to make this type of thing for 20 years and no one has been able to do it," said Robert Hebner, director of the University of Texas Center for Electromechanics. "Depending on who you believe, they're at or beyond the limit of what is possible."

EEStor's secret ingredient is a material sandwiched between thousands of wafer-thin metal sheets, like a series of foil-and-paper gum wrappers stacked on top of each other. Charged particles stick to the metal sheets and move quickly across EEStor's proprietary material.

The result is an ultracapacitor, a battery-like device that stores and releases energy quickly.

Batteries rely on chemical reactions to store energy but can take hours to charge and release energy. The simplest capacitors found in computers and radios hold less energy but can charge or discharge instantly. Ultracapacitors take the best of both, stacking capacitors to increase capacity while maintaining the speed of simple capacitors.

Hebner said vehicles require bursts of energy to accelerate, a task better suited for capacitors than batteries.

"The idea of getting rid of the batteries and putting in capacitors is to get more power back and get it back faster," Hebner said.

But he said nothing close to EEStor's claim exists today.

For years, EEStor has tried to fly beneath the radar in the competitive industry for alternative energy, content with a phone-book listing and a handful of cryptic press releases.

Yet the speculation and skepticism have continued, fueled by the company's original assertion of making batteries obsolete _ a claim that still resonates loudly for a company that rarely speaks, including declining an interview with The Associated Press.

The deal with ZENN Motor and a $3 million investment by the venture capital group Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, which made big-payoff early bets on companies like Google Inc. and Amazon.com Inc., hint that EEStor may be on the edge of a breakthrough technology, a "game changer" as Clifford put it.

ZENN Motor's public reports show that it so far has invested $3.8 million in and has promised another $1.2 million if the ultracapacitor company meets a third-party testing standard and then delivers a product.

Clifford said his company consulted experts and did a "tremendous amount of due diligence" on EEStor's innovation.

EEStor's founders have a track record. Richard D. Weir and Carl Nelson worked on disk-storage technology at IBM Corp. in the 1990s before forming EEStor in 2001. The two have acquired dozens of patents over two decades.

Neil Dikeman of Jane Capital Partners, an investor in clean technologies, said the nearly $7 million investment in EEStor pales compared with other energy storage endeavors, where investment has averaged $50 million to $100 million.

Yet curiosity is unusually high, Dikeman said, thanks to the investment by a prominent venture capital group and EEStor's secretive nature.

"The EEStor claims are around a process that would be quite revolutionary if they can make it work," Dikeman said.

Previous attempts to improve ultracapacitors have focused on improving the metal sheets by increasing the surface area where charges can attach.

EEStor is instead creating better nonconductive material for use between the metal sheets, using a chemical compound called barium titanate. The question is whether the company can mass-produce it.

ZENN Motor pays EEStor for passing milestones in the production process, and chemical researchers say the strength and functionality of this material is the only thing standing between EEStor and the holy grail of energy-storage technology.

Joseph Perry and the other researchers he oversees at Georgia Tech have used the same material to double the amount of energy a capacitor can hold. Perry says EEstor seems to be claiming an improvement of more than 400-fold, yet increasing a capacitor's retention ability often results in decreased strength of the materials.

"They're not saying a lot about how they're making these things," Perry said. "With these materials (described in the patent), that is a challenging process to carry out in a defect-free fashion."

Perry is not alone in his doubts. An ultracapacitor industry leader, Maxwell Technologies Inc., has kept a wary eye on EEStor's claims and offers a laundry list of things that could go wrong.

Among other things, the ultracapacitors described in EEStor's patent operate at extremely high voltage, 10 times greater than those Maxwell manufactures, and won't work with regular wall outlets, said Maxwell spokesman Mike Sund. He said capacitors could crack while bouncing down the road, or slowly discharge after a dayslong stint in the airport parking lot, leaving the driver stranded.

Until EEStor produces a final product, Perry said he joins energy professionals and enthusiasts alike in waiting to see if the company can own up to its six-word promise and banish the battery to recycling bins around the world.

"I am skeptical but I'd be very happy to be proved wrong," Perry said.

Unfortunately the statement below that there are no safety concerns is not true. If the capacitor is storing 17 KWH of electrical energy, and is shorted out due to an accident or internal failure, that energy must be turned to heat. 17 KWH converts to a lot of heat and very high temperatures if the process is rapid, as in an accident.

"Because it's a solid state battery rather than a chemical battery, such being the case for lithium ion technology, there would be no overheating and thus safety concerns with using it in a vehicle."

Bil Isecke

Gosh I hope the EEStor technology pans out. Not only because of the lack of gasoline emissions, but also the short charging time and thus serious reduction in the utilization of fossil fuel produced electricity.

I would trade my hybrid in in a heartbeat for something like this that wasn't an eyesore - ala the Tesla. Okay maybe even if it was ugly as sin (hint hint ZENN).

But seriously, I would also like a cradle to grave analysis to gauge the environmental impact of the manufacturing and disposal of this "ultracapacitor".

If this works and makes it to market - the ramifications could be HUGE (and the oil cartel may put a hit out on this company)

I remember blowing up a capacitor in a lab. A big bang and then the thing burned lilke a candle. Good thing it wasn't one of these things. Don't think I would have survived the hyper-bang and the ensuiing hyper-fire.

These people don't even have their own website and I'm expected to believe this. I've been in the alternative energy business for decades and have seen these outfits come and, more importantly, GO even faster than they came on the scene.

^ yeah ...thats what I thought too, with that kind of shaky credibikity i'm pretty convinced this capacitor is a hoax

Also they could be used for Laser and Plasma Weapons

Also they could be used for Laser and Plasma Weapons

I didn't read all the posts, but has anyone brought up how all this power is being generated? The world still runs on coal and oil and having batteries in our cars isn't really going to solve anything, all it would do is put more strain on an already overused power generation system.

I saw this news item dated 10 Jan. 2008

"Lockheed Martin has signed a deal with EEStor to try to integrate the ultracapacitor start-up's electrical energy storage units into the defense contractor's products.

Financial terms of the agreement, announced Wednesday, were not disclosed. "

Maybe Eestor isn't dead yet...

Dave

To address Anonymous' comments - The whole point of working toward an viable energy storage system is that then alternative energy becomes viable.

If you can store sufficient energy to overcome the variability of solar or wind power you are in a whole new ball-game. This could be especially pertinant if the new production facility being developed by Nanosolar (http://www.nanosolar.com/) fullfills it's promise. The combination of solar panels costing $1 per installed watt, plus a storage facility at around $36 per KWh would be a major step forward.

The whole question come back to whether EEstor can actually come up with the goods.

LM is a Class A endorsement; they may be just covering their options, but if they did due diligence on the tech, I'd have to admit there's gold in them thar hills.

There is some competing tech to take account of, including nanowire LiIon. And check XH150 for an ultracapacitor-LiIon combo design. Toshiba starts marketing the SSiC battery this month, with very similar performance. http://www.toshiba.co.jp/about/press/2007_12/pr1101.htm

I read most of the posts. Solar and wind will power these supercaps, then they will power everything else in a large scale. I think the reason we don't see anything about this in websites etc is the government. This is a great idea, and is too good to give to other counties. We are probably developing weapons and vehicles that use this technology. If this information came out as feasible 2-3 years ago, I think by 2015-2020 we'll actually see it on the market, hopefully sooner, but my guess is they need to test and develop the tech safely. If this thing holds as much power as it sounds each car could be a mini "atom bomb" of sorts and we don't want to be driving one of those around.

I've been following the news about this company for a few months now. The aspect of this story that interests me is the overall interest there is with regard to this company. It's like Segway in a way but since we're in the midst of this energy crisis from a dollars/gallon point of view, it seems to have more legs.

If you want to review quite a few links about this topic, here's a page I've set up to consolidate the info.

http://bariumtitanate.blogspot.com/

Im also adding a link to this treehugger thread. -jm

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A highway speed vehicle with an ultracapacitor from EEStor is due to roll out in the fall of 2009. Ask insiders who work for EEStor about the energy storage product the company is building, and they'll tell you it's superior. A delayed battery technology may indeed be on the way."will change everything" http://www.eestor.biz/

A public company in Canada "Zenn Motor Company" ZNN on the Toronto Stock exchage has the exclusive rights for the Capacitor for Automotive use. The stock is up approximately 85% in the last few weeks on very high volume, which leads me to believe that they hype is true, and an announcement is coming shortly. Lockheed Martin's buy-in is also a really strong indicator.

After reading all comments skeptical about EESTOR, I decided to do some simple arithmetic myself. I was very surprised to come out with totally different figures.

Assume that the TESLA car battery is roughly of same order of capacity as the EESTOR unit.

The TESLA ESU is made of 7000 lithium cells of 18mmX65mm.

A 10000µF/100v electrolytic capacitor is roughly the same size as these cells.

The microfarad (symbolized µF) is a unit of capacitance , equivalent to 0.000001 (10 to the -6th power) farad .

The EESTOR uses barium titanate with a dielectric constant of 18000.

Electrolytic capacitors are made with thin barrier films which have a relatively "high" dielectric constant of 8.

Assuming that the EESTOR unit is around the same size as a Tesla ESS, it should contain around 7000 capacitors of 18mm diameter by 65 mm height.So the total capacitance of such a unit made out of electrolytic capacitors would be around 70000000µF ie. 70 Farads.

So an equivalent barium titanate capacitor should have a capacitance of aproximately 160000 farads at the very least, because capacitance is directly proportional to the dielectric constant of the medium.

I dont know where I am making the mistake but for 52kwh unit with 160000 farads the voltage figure is around 50V no where near the 3475 volts (wiki).

I think that figure has to be wrong or misleading. I am beginning to think that the figure of 39 farad is for a single unit and not for the entire ESS. The fully assembled ESS should have a capacitance of around 200000 farads.

Can any one correct me here?

Ultra-capacitors are here!. I own a "Flash-cell" electric screw-driver from "Coleman", powered by Super capacitors. From dead state to full charge in 90 secs. Will recharge for years with no loss of power. I have used it a lot with NO loss of power and the recharge rate stays exactly the same. If they can get these in the ZENN, I will be first in line to buy!!