Big News: EEStor Says Something

Can the technology be used with solar panels? Please excuse my "noobiness."

Hi DD,

There is no reason why the technology couldn't be used with solar panels. These special capacitors store electricity, which is what solar panels produce.

It could actually make a good pair, replacing batteries in some cases, IMO.

Used as solar panels,
No, they hold a charge, not convert photons into electircal energy. They would be great for charging up with solar cells though and then being used at night to power your house.
Hope this is all true and not hype. The main complaint that I have against cars is the noise. I can live with the pollution but the noise is what drives me crazy.

Severe crashes or vehicle consuming fires would be interesting as "The bright yellow-green colors in fireworks and flares come from barium nitrate".

Following are some warning excerpts from the JT Baker MSDS for barium nitrate. From a preliminary review of the MSDS it looks like recycling or accident cleanup would be challenge. If capacitors ruptured (the big "if") , emergency response personnel (fire and medical) would need full face respirators and skin protection while extracting victims and during accident site cleaning up. Towing and storage yard issues as well.
---------
"DANGER! STRONG OXIDIZER. CONTACT WITH OTHER MATERIAL MAY CAUSE FIRE. MAY BE FATAL IF SWALLOWED. HARMFUL IF INHALED. CAUSES IRRITATION TO SKIN, EYES AND RESPIRATORY TRACT. AFFECTS MUSCLES (INCLUDING THE HEART), AND CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM".

"Inhalation:
Causes irritation to the respiratory tract. Symptoms may include coughing, shortness of breath. Systemic poisoning may occur with symptoms similar to those of ingestion.
Ingestion:
Toxic! May cause tightness of the muscles of the face and neck, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain, muscular tremors, anxiety, weakness, labored breathing, cardiac irregularity, convulsions, and death from cardiac and respiratory failure. Estimated lethal dose lies between 1 to 15 grams. Death may occur within hours or up to a few days. May cause kidney damage.
Skin Contact:
Causes irritation to skin. Symptoms include redness, itching, and pain".

"Ventilate area of leak or spill. Keep unnecessary and unprotected people away from area of spill. Wear appropriate personal protective equipment as specified in Section 8".

I never heard of solar panels *holding* a charge, as if they were batteries. Everything I've learned is that they do indeed convert light photons to electricity. Batteries, including EESUs, are charged by solar panels (photovoltaics) so that battery-supplied electricity is available when the sun doesn't shine.

Those warnings for barium nitrate sound quite similar to the warnings for gasoline as well.

In every post about EESTOR I see the same fear posts. Barium Nitrate is used in so many electronics today that I'd say 99% of homes have Barium Nitrate inside.

I'd almost believe that there's a conspiracy to spread fear of products that will replace oil.

If this product ever does come to the market it will have the same requirements to prove safety as every other product and the same liability.

I am a chemist and it says clearly that the barium nitrate is used only for the manufacture of barium titanate (the actual dielectric material used to hold the energy). In a severe enough crash the dielectric material would be damaged and release the energy harmlessly to the ground.
As for the technology capacitors are notorious for their comparative short life (years versus decades for other electronics). If this is addressed capacitors are the ideal complement to the electric motor.

I'd say it would be unwise to make claims about EESTor's device based o n traditional knowledge of capacitors, if only because the EESTor device is not your average capacitor
in the first place. It is also unwise to assume that the
people at EESTor are the blithering idiots some of the posters here imly them to be. I rest assuered that these people understand the characterisitcs of their device, whcih they have been working on for 10 years, somewhat
better than the amateurs around here who, as far as I can tell, know virtually nothing about the device, or even what it's made of. Their opinions are worthless, actually less than worthless. The story of their device will be revealed soon enough. Silly speculations about fires and other nonsense has no place in serious discussions..

Until someone does extensive crash tests with vehicles powered with these devices no one can say whether they are more/less safe than gasoline powered vehicles. However it's relatively straightforward to build a crush-resistant outer shell that grounds itself in event of an electical discharge or that can be discharged remotely by rescue personnel with the right equipment.

Firefighters are already being trained how to safely extract victims from hybrid cars so it's not that much harder to deal with an al-electric car. Simply spraying water on the car would tend to discharge it to ground, I would think.

Perhaps this technology does exist. If you are really safety conscious - stop driving your car. ie. gasoline....

EMERGENCY OVERVIEW

- EXTREMELY FLAMMABLE LIQUID AND VAPOR. VAPOR MAY CAUSE FLASH FIRE
- HARMFUL OR FATAL IF SWALLOWED - MAY CAUSE LUNG DAMAGE IF SWALLOWED
- VAPOR HARMFUL
- CAUSES EYE AND SKIN IRRITATION
- LONG-TERM EXPOSURE TO VAPOR HAS CAUSED CANCER IN LABORATORY ANIMALS
- KEEP OUT OF REACH OF CHILDREN

************************************************************************************************************************

IMMEDIATE HEALTH EFFECTS
Eye: Contact with the eyes causes irritation. Symptoms may include pain, tearing, reddening, swelling and impaired vision.
Skin: Contact with the skin causes irritation. Skin contact may cause drying or defatting of the skin. Symptoms may include pain, itching, discoloration, swelling, and blistering. Contact with the skin is not expected to cause an allergic skin response. Not expected to be harmful to internal organs if absorbed through the skin.
Ingestion: Because of its low viscosity, this material can directly enter the lungs, if swallowed, or if subsequently vomited. Once in the lungs it is very difficult to remove and can cause severe injury or death.
Inhalation: The vapor or fumes from this material may cause respiratory irritation. Symptoms of respiratory irritation may include coughing and difficulty breathing.
DELAYED OR OTHER HEALTH EFFECTS:
Reproduction and Birth Defects: This material is not expected to cause birth defects or other harm to the developing fetus based on animal data.
Cancer: Prolonged or repeated exposure to this material may cause cancer. Gasoline has been classified as a Group 2B carcinogen (possibly carcinogenic to humans) by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC).

Whole gasoline exhaust has been classified as a Group 2B carcinogen (possibly carcinogenic to humans) by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC).

Contains benzene, which has been classified as a carcinogen by the National Toxicology Program (NTP) and a Group 1 carcinogen (carcinogenic to humans) by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC).
Contains ethylbenzene which has been classified as a Group 2B carcinogen (possibly carcinogenic to humans) by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC).
Contains naphthalene, which has been classified as a Group 2B carcinogen (possibly carcinogenic to humans) by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). Contains benzene, which has been classified as an A1 Group Confirmed Human Carcinogen by the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists (ACGIH).
See Section 11 for additional information. Risk depends on duration and level of exposure.

If EESTOR is proceeding into a production phase, then where are the results for their prototypes?

Sod the automotive applications ; what about the domestic?

I can see a secondary market for EESU units as fast chargers for EESU powered vehicles. Not everyone wants to wait overnight for their car to charge. And once that unit is wired in, why not make use of it as a home power unit?

The quoted 15kWh capacity is not as ambitious as their original 52kWh (in a 400 pound unit), but since the average American household uses around 32 kWh per day (statistic from that story about Al Gore and how much energy his house consumes), this would make home energy generation far more practical, by reducing the costs associated with the battery storage required to avoid the disconnect between generation rate and consumption rate.

I think that people are going to have to work on their consumption though. A rig capable of an average output of 1.5kW is quite an outlay, whether it's solar or wind.

All I can say is "Keep you feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars"

Why is EEstor so secretive? This is usually done to drive up stock prices in new technologies.
Being a battery engineer and electrochemist the absense of data is always suspicious.

Wouldn't you be secretive if you were in possesion of a product that could upend one of the largest industries in the world?? This product (if it exists as we speculate) could be a catalyst to a whole new evolutionary chapter of transportation and energy storage!
I mean... I'm no James Bond but it seems to me this stuff would make EEStor guys highly unpopular with some pretty tough characters. How much tax does the government get per gallon of gasoline again??

We'll all see when it hits the fan how much will stick and how much will splatter. I just can't wait for the ride to start!!!

Isn't it interesting that we castigate companies developing allegedly "impossible" technologies, such as a capacitive-type battery, for being secretive, and then nail them, or other firms, for "hyping" up their stuff, in other words, talking about it before they've brought out their engineering prototype. One is damned if one does, and damned if one doesn't.

Did Ford give progress reports on the development of their single-casting V8 engine back in the 30's, or did General Motors talk about their resin-core block-casting technology before they actually brought out the product?. Of course not, because the skeptics would have jumped all over them for wasting the investors' money etc., etc.

Today, with new energy-based technology so badly needed to get us off hydrocarbons, it's in the best interest of any company operating in good faith in energy technology, and ultimately the consumer who would buy it, to keep "mum" until the product has at least been demonstrated at the engineering prototype stage - common sense, from an engineering company's perspective, I'd say.

Hal Ade

I want the 2nd Zenn, right after yours.
How much will it cost?

Debbie Downer Says: The only problem is this doesn't create energy. If everyone switches to electric cars we still need the electricity to charge them and as I understand most major cities power grids aren't ready for the extra load since there are already brownouts in the summers. I guess we need more nuclear plants or solar panels. On the plus side now that they can make supercapacitors soon they'll perfect "The Flux-capacitor", the device that makes time travel possible!

There's an interesting notion afoot with respect to brownouts, that would require some significant infrastructure investment, but I like creative thinking no matter how impractical, so I'll pass it along.

The problem of brownouts is one of peak demand exceeding sustainable demand - that is, the power generation capacity during a heat wave is insufficient to supply the amps required to keep the air conditioners running - not one of insufficient wire conduction capacity. It has been proposed that with the advent of electric cars, most of which will be charged at night - when energy demand is low, energy is available in surplus, and in some instances is available at a lower price - that they be empowered both internally and through the presence of infrastructure (typically in urban centers) to plug into the grid and "give back" some of the energy stored the previous evening. In a sense, the fleet would act as a large electron buffer that smoothed out the flow from powerplants by using the electric cars as a distributed "generator" (really battery) facility. Most cars are parked in centralized lots during the workday, simplifying the localization aspect of the infrastructure.

The infrastructure requires a chargeback mechanism, metering, quality assurance, SCADA adaptation, protection against full depletion, etc, but all these are manageable technically. I thought it was an interesting notion and an example of "can do" thinking, rather than "bumblebees can't fly" thinking, and pass it along to encourage brainstorming about the various issues - like who would pay to deploy the infrastructure: private enterprise for a cut of the trade? Public utilities? Local government (I.e, you and I through taxes)? The feds?

Just a thought.

The fact is that most cars are in use during the day, so electric cars would have to be charged at night. Fortunately this is when the load on the power grid is lowest and electricity is at its cheapest (by miles!) So all you have to do is keep some of the existing power stations working all night instead of shutting them down. In fact, if there were a lot of Eestor units around, then power generation could become much cheaper as fewer power stations could operate 24 hours at peak load (totalling to the average power consumption over 24 hours) with the Eestor units smoothing out the peaks and troughs. Compare the price of daytime vs off-peak electricity if you want to see what I mean, though it will not be quite as good as this in practise - but still a lot better than at the moment.

Also bear in mind that electric cars are very efficient (measured "well to wheels") compared with gas cars, and cars are not used much each day (compared with air conditioners), so the actual additional load from everyone converting to electric cars could be managed from the grid with overnight charging with only modest improvements to part of the power grid infrastructure.

I just joined this site minutes ago. I am interested in all of this capacitor, solar etc stuff. I would like to comment on some of the earlier statements.
The part I like the most is taking control of my own future in the big oil gig, or maybe just like seeing the big oil gig loose control. ? Anyway. As I do my own research on this stuff, one idea comes to mind for me.
First of all, the electric car doesn't make us self sufficient from the oil gig. We still need it to produce the power to charge the cars. Another thing mentioned earlier is the tax base on the gas. It would cripple the economy if introduced to fast or with out regulations, like removing cigarettes.
If I ever have the money ( doubtful) I would like to make a solar steam turbine with an ordinary (older style) satelite dish. (inwhich the technology already is proven and is in use) Use mirrors to produce steam, to gererate power to charge a super capacitor while I am at work during the day. When I get home, just plug the car into the previously charged capacitor. PERFECT. Saves the current grid in place, removes us from the oil gig, creates more of different types of jobs, and we become autonomous on a family level. Why not make a big capacitor, barried in the ground in a cistern under the grass, out of site, with a small dehumidifier in it, keeping it dry and nonconductive? At the same time, use a big cistern for fresh water from the roof? Why not start using L.E.D.s in place of lamps (one of the biggest rackets out there) ? ETC,ETC.

screw the economy based on oil let it be crippled ! the faster we leave it the better . let the World economy shudder and fall as long as we have a better world for it, it will help bring about a more even power base and a equalizaion of the money power grid which controls all of us .I say let it fall and lets get a better world for it.the next step is free energy production for all. Revolution! is Evolution.

It's all about the powder

This sounds revolutionary. I'd like a job!

Sure it's about the powder, the kind you are snorting....this device is impossible for several independent reasons.

It's about the powder, alright, the kind they have been sniffing.

This is an impossible device on so many fronts, its tedious to repeat them. It literally violates a couple laws of physics, to whit:

High permittivity comes from a polar configuration of the BT crystal. When it is subjected to an electric field, it will distort, losing its capactive boosting effect. The device eestore is claiming has to use many times the field strength that is common.

When it is subjected to extreme temperatures, the capacitance drops off, it's afundamental principal with High K dielectrics...check out any ceramic capacitors makers web page.

The power being stored is equivalent to over a hundred sticks of dynamite. That energy is being held back by a million square inches of 13 micron brittle ceramic dielectric. (that's 1/5 the thickness of paper)

And on and on it goes...

The leverage for the stock price is through Zenn cars, if you are interested.

And I think one reason to be secretive is they have no answers to the real questions. If it were real, it could be worth billions to any capacitor manufacturer, they wouldnt have to build their own facility.

My opinion only, not my company's...been in the BT business for 40 years, and seen these claims every five.

And one comment in their defense...for balance: The Barium Nitrate is probably only an intermediary. It is water soluble, and would allow the favorable reactions to form small particle size Barium Titanate.

This thing is awesome if it is real. I also love the nanobatteries from altair nanotechnologies which are already being used in vehicles. The Solar revolution is upon us now as well with companies like nanosolar. Let's focus on getting whatever investments and infrastructure we need to perfect the solar to battery/capacitor to car/home energy transition as quickly as possible. Please support the renewable energy revolution as much as you can before it is too late! And spread the word to everyone you know! Global Warming is all too real nomatter how much people may scoff at it, and we need to come together now to save the world for our future.

The working voltage of the capacitor is high but much lower than the 60,000 Volts of car ignition. Vs 3,500 vdc. The 3,500 vdc could be pulsed into a flyback coil with a 12-1 ratio with 92% efficeincy creating 280 volts and less for a standard electric car motor. The insulation required for the 3,500 vdc is available lets hope its not too weighty for a safe capacitor area. The idea of series stacking of the capacitor layers is the real genius here. Capacitors used to be made with PCB's and were heavy. This light high voltage super sandwich sounds like more electrons per square inch than Altair NanoTech.

When thinking about a capacitor remember that mylar caps have a long life and high operating voltage. This EESTOR capacitor is like layers of foil separated by mylar.
The real genius of the EESTOR cap is the SERIES configuration. This increases the storage voltage. The 3,500 volts is high but is easily insulated by standard matierials. The ignition voltage of cars is 80,000 volts.
The 3,500volts could be pulsed through a 12 to 1 flyback coil with diodes(with 93% efficiency) to a 280 volt electric car motor.

Dear Treehugger Blog,

I have just started to keep track of this ultracapacitor story and already the misinformation encountered is staggering. A few examples:

(1) It is wrongly believed that certain nanotechnology tricks are capable of boosting capacitor energy storage capability to great new heights. Actually, the energy stored is dependent only on the dielectric permitivity, the electric field applied to said dielectric, and the dielectric volume.
(Energy = 1/2 volume integral of (permittivity times elctric field squared))Thus Eestor can not be doing anything heretofore unknown to boost energy storage in their capacitors. Other outfits that talk about aceiving great new energy storage capacity by roughening up the surface area of their capacitor plates (e.g., using carbon nanotubes,)are simply wrong - - that does nothing to boost the enrgy storage according to tyhe basic formula above.
(2) Energy stored in a capacitor is given by
Energy =1/2 C V^2. If you hook n capacitors of capacitance c in parallel the resulting capacitance C is given by C=nc. If instead you hook these capacitors in series the resulting capacitance C is given by C=c/n. Thus Eestor is hooking their capacitors in parallel, not series.OK I admit that is pedantic.
(3) If you go to the original Eestor patent and compare it to the recent progress they have announced you begin to suspect something rotten in Denmark. The original patent talked about developing a capacitor that was required to store about 75 kilowatt hours (14 horsepower for 5 hr). Now they talk about 15 killowatt hours???

If you plug their stated Energy goal into the above energy equation and solve for the required field strength you get
14 horsepower(5 hour) =
(volume of device)(permittivity )(electric field^2)

where volume of device is aout 1/10 meter^3, permittivity is 30,000 relative to vacuum. Solving for the electric field required gives you 100,000 volts per millimeter - - 10^5 volts/mm.The patent tates that this required field is acheived by applying 3500 volts across the thickness of their individual capacitor( which is connected in parallel as mentioned above). Soving for the thickness of the dielectric across which they apply this 3500 volts gives one 3/100 of a millimeter.

For comparison, a sheet of school notebook paper is 9/100 of a millimeter thick. In order to keep all of the capacitors from instantly shorting out (which ocurrs with vacuum between capacitor plates at about 10,000 volt per millimeter, much less than 100,000 volts per millimeter they are operating at) Eestor has to assume that under road operating conditions there will never form a void in this extremely thin dielectric. This is utterly preposteropus. These capacitors will short out under realistic vibration and road shock.

(4) The energy stored for 300 mile trip is about equal to 100 gallons of nitroglycerine - - check with any good chemist. If teir scheme fails and the capacitor shorts , an explosion of this magnitude will result.

Conclusion - - Eestor is not the credible

"Conclusion - - Eestor is not the credible"

You, sir, sound like a very credible source. You have a tried and true equation that you have latched onto, and even appear to have read the patent. I will not honor your post by checking the numbers against what the patent claims, but I would place very little faith in your codemnation of EEstor's technology.

You mention that increasing energy storage capability through the use of carbon nanotubes, etc., is all a farce based on your equation. First of all, the use of carbon nanotubes in supercapacitors has been carried out in the labs of MIT, and something tells me they know a little bit more than you.
Second of all, you mention that this equation uses the volume integral...I don't know if you are geting your "volume of device is aout 1/10 meter^3" figure directly from the patent, but note that the equation requires the volume INTEGRAL. Thus if you are taking the straight cubic dimensions of the layers (length, width, height), you would not account for any of the volume created through the use of arranging molecules optimally on the nano level.

Any speculation about the technology itself is useless to quibble about. Unless you are a scientist for EEstor, no one can say for sure what they have and have not done. I hope for the sake of everyone that they manufacture a product to be used in electric vehicles as soon as possible and end this oil nonsense once and for all.

It is now November. Have they started producing the devices and sending them to ZENN?

this technology probably doesnt exist, and the people at Zenn are probably being taken for a ride just like everyone else

I would like to talk to Richard Weir of the boad of directors at EEstor to discuss how our Ocean Energy Prototype would be able to charge the EEstor capacitors on the US COAST using wave energy.

It is the end of the 2007 and ZENN is quiet about eestor. why? Because it is fogg.

In Atlanta Ga city has passed a law that all new house's fire and smoke dectiries must be hard wired in . A house with solar power and eestor could be a better and safer than a hard wired system.

Ronnn Paulll's math is sound but I disagree with his conclusion. 30 micron films are possible and every super and ultra capacitor relies on a gap that thin. What's new here is that they are making a high permittivity material with high purity (so it doesn't break down under high voltage). Even if the system failed at one point, the parallel capacitors could be fused (or otherwise current limited) so that it can't 100% discharge faster than 5 minutes without blowing the fuses around the effected area.

The nitroglycerin claim sounds dubious: since it takes 10 gallons of gasoline to go 300 miles, gasoline would have to have 10 times (50 times including the efficiency difference) the energy density of nitroglycerin, and we don't mind driving around with that!

There's a strong element of wanting to believe here. However it's the first time I've heard someone build a factory before actually demonstrating a prototype. The concept is based on the use of an energy equation which is applicable works only when dielectric saturation doesn't happen. Yet they have not shown that that they have solved that fundamental problem. Sure we shouldn't criticize on the basis of little knowledge but we should be very wary of such outrageous claims too. After all we've seen this type of hype before. This is high risk stock and it could be just a "pump and dump" scheme aimed at green investors.

There's a strong element of wanting to believe here. However it's the first time I've heard someone build a factory before actually demonstrating a prototype. The concept is based on the use of an energy equation which is applicable works only when dielectric saturation doesn't happen. Yet they have not shown that that they have solved that fundamental problem. Sure we shouldn't criticize on the basis of little knowledge but we should be very wary of such outrageous claims too. After all we've seen this type of hype before. This is high risk stock and it could be just a "pump and dump" scheme aimed at green investors.