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Energy Storage of the Future: Researchers Find Promising Properties in Lightest Materials
Virtual-Strategy Magazine ^ | October 20, 2014

Posted on 11/07/2014 10:01:27 AM PST by 2ndDivisionVet

Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory recently found that properties of graphene aerogel could be used to enhance energy storage for electric vehicles and other high-power energy storage applications. The research will appear as the cover article in the Nov. 14 issue of the Journal of Materials Chemistry A.

Personal electronics such as cell phones and laptops could get a boost from some of the lightest materials in the world.

Lawrence Livermore researchers have turned to graphene aerogel for enhanced electrical energy storage that eventually could be used to smooth out power fluctuations in the energy grid.

The team found that graphene aerogel-based supercapacitor electrodes could be particularly useful in the electric vehicle sector because they feature high surface area, good electrical conductivity, chemical inertness and long-term cycling stability.

Energy storage systems for electric vehicles have especially demanding requirements because they must combine high power and energy density, cyclability, safety and low cost. Supercapacitors (also known as ultracapacitors or electrical double-layer capacitors) can help to meet these requirements due to their high power density and excellent cycling stability.

"Commercial carbon-based supercapacitors are used to recover braking energy in numerous vehicles (cars, buses, trains, etc.) and to open the emergency exits of the Airbus A380," LLNL's Patrick Campbell said. "Our materials can potentially improve on the performance of these commercial supercapacitors by more than 100 percent."

Compared to traditional carbon-based supercapacitor electrodes fabricated from carbon black and binder materials, graphene aerogels offer many advantages such as control of density and pore size distribution, and increased conductivity due to carbon linkers between the active carbon sheets and the absence of binder materials.

Aerogels derived from carbon as well as inorganic materials were developed at LLNL and have found a number of applications -- from capturing space dust to lining the inside of National Ignition Facility targets.

"Graphene aerogels are a relatively new type of aerogel that are ideal for energy storage applications because of their extremely high surface area, excellent mechanical properties and very high electrical conductivity," Campbell said. "We have been exploring various ways to enhance their energy storage properties such as increasing electrode density through mechanical compression. The non-covalent modification strategy is simply another route to increase the electrical energy storage capacity."

While use in personal electronics or other high-power applications where the energy needs to be stored and released very quickly has yet to be tested, the outlook is promising, said Juergen Biener, LLNL's team leader.

The research will appear as the cover article in the Nov. 14 issue of the Journal of Materials Chemistry A. Other Livermore researchers involved in the project include Brandon Wood, Marcus Worsley and Ted Baumann.

The research was funded by the Department of Energy Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy and the LLNL Laboratory Directed Research and Development Program.


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Computers/Internet; Science
KEYWORDS: batteries; cellphones; grapheme; graphene; grapheneaerogel
Full title: Energy Storage of the Future: Researchers Find Promising Properties in some of the Lightest Materials in the World
1 posted on 11/07/2014 10:01:27 AM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

I’ve been following the saga of EEstor for the last couple of decades.

I wish somebody was reporting on something actually in production. These lab findings never seem to make it to products.


2 posted on 11/07/2014 11:03:01 AM PST by dangerdoc ((this space for rent))
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To: dangerdoc

Homes can wrap up warm with super-insulating foam
http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/2014/11/homes-can-wrap-warm-super-insulating-foam


3 posted on 11/07/2014 11:05:17 AM PST by 2ndDivisionVet (The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet; Ernest_at_the_Beach; ShadowAce; Las Vegas Dave; AdmSmith; AnonymousConservative; ...

Thanks 2ndDivisionVet. Graphene, one of the most surprisingly large keywords on FR.


4 posted on 11/08/2014 4:31:50 AM PST by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/_______________________Celebrate the Polls, Ignore the Trolls)
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