Ultra Capacitor Experiments

[Taylor1992]

I have all of these capacitors in a bank that is wired into a 16.2V 2000 Farad configuration, but I have no idea what to do with it now. I didn't know if I could maybe do some tests for anyone that was wondering about these capacitors. I did do a run test with my electric scooter, but that's about it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exwd-tswyzA

[Sprocket]

Hi.  How long would it take you to charge that lot, and from what kind of a supply?  I bought 5 360F caps and my measly 2A supply takes ages to charge them, so I can only imagine you are using something much beefier!  I don't have recommendations either - after the novelty of being able to run a motor for over an hour on a single capacitor wore off, I was also left contemplating 'what next...'

How many kilometers/miles do you reckon your scooter would manage on a full-charge with your set-up?

[Pirate88179]

The most interesting thing I have seen while experimenting with supercaps, and also boost caps like shown above, is how fast they charge and, how they can utilize spikes from a Bedini, JT or even an earth battery and store those as usable power.  In my experiments, these spikes had a much more noticeable effect on the caps than any battery I have ever used.

I first noticed this effect while charging a 650 F 2.7 volt boost cap from my earth battery.  The EB normally puts out around 2 volts, or a little under.  I was amazed that in not too long a time that cap was charged up to 2.7 volts.  How could this be? I wondered.  When I hooked up my scope to the EB and saw all of those very high spikes I think I figured it out.

The other advantage these have is the number of charge/re-charge cycles which is way more than any battery invented to this day that I am aware of.

That is quite a collection of caps over there.  I am wanting to get several more myself for some other experiments.

Bill

[Taylor1992]

I forgot to post anything about this, but this guy on another site built an ultracap ev or something, but is now selling the 2.5V 2500F caps for $10 each.(Or so he says)
Email the guy to see if he'll put them on ebay or something if you're interested. He said he has over 200 of them.

http://www.ultracapacitors.org/index.php?option=com_fireboard&Itemid=99&catid=9&func=view&id=904

And I found that by far the fastest way to charge these capacitors is with a solar panel. And with a solar panel, you don't have to worry about frying your power supply, or worry about using a big resistor. I haven't done a charge time using the panel, but I did used to charge them up with my electric scooter's charger, or by hooking them up to some 12V batteries,(with a 40 watt light bulb as a resistor) and it took hours that way. As apposed to maybe an hour of good sunshine on a solar panel. I make my solar panels, so I used a few spare cells and some tape to make a small 2.5V 3 amp solar panel, which worked great when I only had one cap. Now I have a full sized panel with a wire on it for 18V output and 13V output that I use.(I like having the option of running 12V appliances without a battery)
Also, when I used a blocking diode, the charging amperage went down sharply, and the voltage dropped as well. By not using a diode between the capacitors and solar panel, you get a HUGE difference in charge time.
So use a solar panel that doesn't exceed the maximum voltage of the capacitors, no blocking diode, and just disconnect it when the sun goes down.

And if you watched the scooter video, that's about as far as I got, because the voltage dropped too low and the controller thought the batteries were dead. I'm looking into getting a DC/DC converter to step up the 12V bank to 24V so I can use more of the stored power. I'm thinking I should get almost a mile after that? But at half speed and with a solar panel in tow, there's no telling how far I could go without actually testing it. I'll have to do that sometime this summer.

And I'm scared to charge them with bedini's or anything else with voltage spikes, because these caps use a water based electrolyte, so I'm scared of electrolysis occurring and Hydrogen gas accumulation. I know I overcharged one of them one time to over 3 volts, and it was burning hot. And I don''t know if the hydrogen can turn back into water inside of the cap without some activation energy(a spark) to make it recombine with the oxygen inside.

Cheers
          Taylor