"It's a paradigm shift" - EEStor's Ultracapacitor

[Davetech]

CNN article just posted today:


AUSTIN, Texas (AP)  -- 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."

<snip>

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.

<snip>

Whole article at: http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/09/07/electric.car.batteries.ap/index.html

[tao]

CNN article just posted today:


AUSTIN, Texas (AP)  -- 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."

<snip>

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.

<snip>

Whole article at: http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/09/07/electric.car.batteries.ap/index.html

Been following them for a long time.

It would truly change EVERYTHING, when it comes to motive things like cars and such.

To have a storage device that can ACCEPT an energy transfer at a very high speed AND be able to also store a huge amount of energy AND be light weight....

It's not FE, but that isn't the point. Even if you had an FE device and it was say at your home, EEStor's technology would allow you to charge up your car in minutes via your FE device, wind, solar, whatever and drive all over the place. Hence, you don't have to have an FE device in your car. One of the key goals for having an FE device in a car per say, is that you don't have to keep charging the car up and you can drive indefinitely, BUT, if it only takes 5 minutes or so to charge up your car and you can drive for 500 miles on those charges, that is akin to having an FE device already (in relation to cars)... You get the point.

That is the greatest block for electric cars, the differential between the time it takes to charge and the distance you are can drive on said charge. And this could meet both those needs easily.

[hartiberlin]

How many Farads do these supercaps have ?
What about shortcircuit them ?
Would it go boom like a bomb then ?
(in a car accident for example..?)

What about the charger ?
How many kilowatts must it be able to handle for these
5 minutes ?
You would be drawing about 20 KWatts for 5 minutes long or even
more ?
Must be a quite big charger then with big sized cables and
it would put a pretty heavy load on the grid for these
5 minutes, right ?
So if everyone would charge up around 7 to 8 am
in the morning their cars to be able to drive to work,
you would need heavy power in your power plant to
deliver this surge of power in the morning...
Could the grid handle this ?

[Davetech]

Both... Excellent points. 

I had thought of the accident / KaBoom danger myself. I used to be a firefighter and we thought cars with magnesium parts were a pain in the butt (pretty hard to extinguish magnesium) but I'd hate to face a flaming bucket of lightning!  I'd hate to have to attack one of the new polymer lithium batteries for that matter.

And yes, the article said that regular household wiring would not be able to handle recharging the ultracap. So I guess you drive it (or push it) down to the local recharging station and watch the city lights dim as they "fuel" up your ride.


"I don't know what weapons World War III will be fought with, but World War IV will be
fought with sticks and stones" -Albert Einstein   (or so I was told.)

[gyulasun]

How many Farads do these supercaps have ?
What about shortcircuit them ?
Would it go boom like a bomb then ?
(in a car accident for example..?)

What about the charger ?
How many kilowatts must it be able to handle for these
5 minutes ?
You would be drawing about 20 KWatts for 5 minutes long or even
more ?
Must be a quite big charger then with big sized cables and
it would put a pretty heavy load on the grid for these
5 minutes, right ?
So if everyone would charge up around 7 to 8 am
in the morning their cars to be able to drive to work,
you would need heavy power in your power plant to
deliver this surge of power in the morning...
Could the grid handle this ?

Hi Stefan,

Some of your questions are answered in the patent US7033406 Hans von Lieven kindly uploaded here:
http://www.overunity.com/index.php/topic,3243.msg47924.html#msg47924

So the capacity is about 31 Farad,  total weight 336 Pounds, volume is 13.5" x 13.5" x 11"=2005 cubic inch,
total stored energy is about 52220 Watthour and the voltage is 3500V!   The 1/2*C*V*V formula gives 52743Wh (using 31F and 3500V).

Gyula