EEStor Ultra Capacitors: The Science Explained
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 11. 8.06
We finally find out about the science behind the secretive EEStor Capacitors from the Austin American Statesman:
Think of it as a grilled-cheese sandwich: The bread holds opposite charges. The cheese helps maintain the opposing charges, even as it separates the bread and keeps those charges from canceling each other out. Then you stack one layer atop another.
"It's real simple," Hebner said. "It's just two pieces of metal with some material in between them. You put a voltage across them and they store a certain amount of charge."
The hard part is making them efficient enough to store more and more power. Most research has focused on ways to increase the surface area of the plates so they can hold a greater charge. To use the grilled-cheese example, the nooks and crannies of a rough piece of bread can hold more butter than a smoother slice of the same size.
Earlier this year, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said its researchers were developing plates made of super-small nanotubes that would vastly increase surface area on the same size plate.
Weir and Nelson [of EEStor] have gone the other direction: They're focusing on the cheese instead of the bread. Different types of cheese — and thinner slices of it — help store more powerful charges. EEStor's patent describes a method that takes a really good cheese and creates an extremely thin layer of it.
Read the whole story at the ::American Statesman via ::Clean Break and then go for lunch.
I really hope this comes to fruition and isn't merely a pipedream.
It should also be mentioned that the thinner you make the cheese, the higher the likelihood of dielectric breakdown (current flowing from one piece of bread to the other). Dielectric breakdown is not only a safety hazard as it releases all of the energy in the capacitor in a split second, it will also almost certainly destroy the capacitor.
Energy capacity of the capacitor goes up if you use thinner cheese or higher voltages (spicier condiments?). Dielectric breakdown limits both of these.
It also should be noted that, if these things are carrying the amount of charge that they say they're carrying, a dielectric breakdown would not just destroy the capacitor, but also the car, the driver, and probably a good bit of the road underneath it.
So lets hope that it is, indeed, very good cheese.
This is oddly lacking in technical concepts, although that grilled cheese does look dang good :)
Engineers have played around with different permutations of dielectric material, thickness, material etc. for decades, so I wonder what they are doing that is new. Odd they aren't talking even in general terms (i.e. more than cheese analogies).
Any old timers that have witnessed a capacitor explosion gets a little edgy just thinking about this.
I'd put my money on the Nanotube guys. I saw them at MIT and I think they are on to something.
I believe its fantasic if we can get it to work properly, but there's one major obstacle, The oil companies. They are not going to sit back and let people buy and use cars with these new engines and watch their profits dissapear from their petrol garages. A couple of years ago an inventor invented an car engine that runs on water by extracting the hydrogen from the water. The Oil companies were very quick to buy the rights of the idea and shelve the product maybe for good, lets hope this does not happen to this idea. After all what most of use want is to just look after the planet for ourselfs and our childrens future.
well USA doesnt make anything right the first time and if they did as mention the big brother will buy it up and our federal government will turn its back while they do it .
the REal AMericans should give the axe to every politican who turns their back on the environment and our country . the american would rather buy foreign cars because usa cars have poor mileage and high maintenace cars , where did the american dream go out with the wash water of oil companies
this eestor if they really have the right stuff the USA govermnment should make it nationally supported and licensed for AMerica first . give america back it integrity get US out of debt .
use it as a forum to get the USA out of national debt for china is killing us with the debt
all the big manufacturer could get a real big shot inthe arm too if they comply with eestor
sure those senators could take their hands out of their pockets and get something dont instead of being idiots all the time. they let are country be over run by everything and everyone .
if they had those cars ready to go you could have them patrol the borders of iraq and mexico border .
you could have only rental cars at the border so no cars could smuggle drugs in the usa . just rental cars
at each border side the rental cost would go to the
border patrol fund texas border and the national debt ,
i thought about it these landfills why not have allare recycle waste goto the national debt why not .
i am feed up with our poor country why dont we cut the cream and get some money out of these products and ideas. recycleing eestor
when is are country going to take their head out of the sand .
I would be interested in seeing the power electronics EEStor plans to use for getting energy into and out of their high-energy capacitor. There are currently no methods (or switches) for easily stopping the discharge of high-voltage capacitors once it starts. The inverter and power conditioning circuitry would be more miraculous than EEStor's new energy-storage device! For example, how do they drive a traction motor - probably a more efficient ac type motor if they're smart - without wasting over half the stored electric energy as heat. Not only that, the logarithmic discharge of a capacitor makes voltage regulation for any practical purpose next to impossible. This is all common knowledge for engineers designing HEV's that use even low-voltage ultracapacitors for load-leveling and regenerative braking. Perhaps this is all a part of their big secret, or fantasy, or whatever.
In EEStor's patent, they listed the 4 words that has shaken the battery industry: Replacement of Electrochemical Batteries.
It will be interesting to see this roll out.
Greg
www.ultracapacitors.org
what about using the electricity from the ultra capacitor to seperate the hydrogen out of water to run an engine to charge the capacitors, and to run a car. You could basically run a car on water. I am sure it is more complicated than it sounds.
We need some leader of some sort to set up a company to figure out ways to get us off oil power.
Or one could use solar power to charge the capacitors. Have solar charging stations.
EEStor may have a quality product. It's hard to say until we see the product in production doing what it does best. I don't care if someone independently tests the product as long as they bring one to my town and demo it in front of my own two eyes. Even better, viral marketing is just as good, especially if I see my buddy driving one around town.
The ability to store and release large amounts of energy is a difficult thing to do in an environmentally friendly manner. Batteries work well, but they often release lead or acids into the environment at disposal (even when we are suppose to dispose correctly). Capacitors on the other hand have this uncanny ability to store a charge without near the amount of environmental troubles and far less weight capacity - ha ha no lead. I suspect that we will see some new materials used and that the limitations (resources or environmental) of these materials will be the deciding factor of the products longevity.
And like the previous poster, I would like to see how they are going to regulate the power in and out of the capacitor.