Posted on 07/31/2009 5:47:32 AM PDT by CharlesWayneCT
We've been closely following EEStor's potentially game-changing ultracapacitor--a technology that could allow for electric cars that charge almost instantaneously and drive hundreds of miles on a single charge.
And if a purportedly "leaked" phone conversation from EEStor CEO Richard Weir currently making the rounds is legit, the long-in-development ultracapacitor has hit a breakthrough, and could be unveiled within months.
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EEStor's ultracapacitor works more or less exactly like the capacitors found in electronics today, briefly holding and releasing small charges, only on a much larger scale; it would be able rapidly take on enough juice to power a car for 250-300 miles within a matter of minutes, EEStor claims. It could also be used to store renewable energy generated by solar and wind plants more efficiently.
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Though the source of the leak is unconfirmed, rumors are swirling that EEStor is working with the likes of Lockheed Martin, making the project seemingly more legit. But considering the company's secretive nature and unspectacular previous public tests, this "leak" could be nothing more than an ingenious marketing stunt.
The previous article is at:
Forgot to check that this is an excerpt. Sorry.
Ping to a follow-up to the article you posted about EESTOR
Hmmm...Leaked, huh? Sounds a little fishy to me.
If true. I want 5 of ‘em! I have a house I wanna power up!
I can use one to power my Flying Car, which PM said I would have ten years ago... and twenty years ago... and thirty years ago...
I do not like leaky capacitors.
Publicity stunt. That’s all these types of companies are good at doing.
Well, we will see when the rubber hits the road. Batteries in electric cars have consistently produced underwhelming results. The battery pack is designed for 300 miles, so they say, and then most of the reviews have the car actually going 100 miles or less. If the capacitors are equally elusive in yielding their best in the real world, we have progressed no further. I would also be concerned about the safety of these beasts — what happens if one decides to short itself out? Do we get a big explosion as it and all the rest dump their energy into the fault?
You know what’s really sad => 50 years ago, we dreamed of advancing life through technology. Today, all we hear is gloom and doom. If these clowns win the day, we’ll all be moving back into caves in 10 years, that is only the lucky few who are allowed to live!!
I voted for Palin, too ; - )
This is going to make regenerative braking systems into a whole new breed of cat. With an electrical boost motor all your braking power is collected and when you accelerate you get an electrical boost thus saving fuel, a concept thats been tried hydraulically and in some electric cars but the battery bank weight overcomes any real advantage.
maybe i can add this to my list of truly amazing inventions and cures that will be here in just “five years”
why not just do as Tesla suggested ...send the power through the air and put a receiver in each car ...kinda like a radio
You probably COULD have a flying car today. I don’t think the idea took off too well (pardon the pun) because of the dangers posed by filling the skies with a city’s worth of car-weight aircraft steered by average drivers. Nobody on the Jetsons ever had a car crash or stall in the sky and fall into somebody’s house.
To accomplish that, you would need a power cord able to carry a megawatt of power.
For example, the Honda EV+'s battery holds 26.2 kwh. To charge that in 10 minutes, you need a 262 KW power source. That's over 500 amps at 500 volts.
I’m calling BS on the “almost instantaneously” part. Capacitors may allow for much higher charge rates, but for most uses, where are you going to get this extremely high voltage and current source to stuff however many Joules of energy into the capacitor in that short of a time? We’re talking some seriously big conductors and/or seriously high voltages. And probably a bank of (even higher voltage)ultracapacitors in the charging station to build up the juice ready to transfer it to the vehicle. OK, not to say it’s completely unfeasible technically, but it’s certainly another challenge.
Where’s the “Not this shit again.” poster?
Clarify on why regenerative braking would need a heavier battery bank than the car already needs to just run on a charge?
I also have an MP3 of a speech given by the CEO of Zenn motors proudly proclaiming that they would have the eestor pack in their cars at the end of the year, unfortunately, that year was 2007.
I remain hopeful but not optimistic.
Thinner dielectric=higher capacitance, but also higher leakage (runs down faster), lower voltage allowed before breakdown.
These guys may have found a good new compromise material for the dielectric, and have some unique plate fabrication tech...but it's just the same old physics.
That might be possible at specialty charging stations. At home, no way. You’d kill the lights in the whole neighborhood.
If the ultracap was damaged in a collision, and the energy release explosively, it would be the equivalent of 860 grams of TNT per kwh of capacity. For a 26kwh battery, that would be about 50 lbs of TNT.
That would definitely wake the neighborhood!
At question is getting the capacitor to STORE the energy, then provide a controlled release of electricity to convert it to actual physical work.
This is what capacitors were in fact designed to do, however the SCALE that's being proposed in this case is something that hasn't been accomplished (at least to my knowledge) yet. I'm not going to poo-poo the company yet, but I'll watch with interest to see if in fact they've done what they claim. If they have, we're witnessing the beginning of the end of a big portion of our dependence on foreign oil, and IMO that'd be a good thing.
Personally I'm tired of spending my hard earned cash and giving it to people who'd kill us if they could.
You do not understand what the technology promises.
Our current state of technology is transient. A petro economy is not the penicle of human achievement. This type of technology could move use to an entirely nuclear powered economy. Or what ever is the most secure and economic power source.
If they can make it, it opens up a whole new world of posibilities. This is a good thing if true.
Basically a glorified electrolytic capacitor, with spongy stuff rather than flat plates.
“That might be possible at specialty charging stations. At home, no way. You’d kill the lights in the whole neighborhood.”
Unless you have a larger power storage unit in the garage. It would continually recharge at a lower current draw. As a benefit, it would also power the house for a few days if the power was out.
Where are those flying cars? I remember seeing them in Sci-fi all the time back in the forties and fifties. They were supposed to have arrived several years ago as I recall.
Regenerative braking is limited by how fast a battery can take a charge. Most hybrids can only regenerative brake at a modest deceleration. If the driver calls for more brakes, the excess energy is scrubbed off as heat in the disc rotors and pads.
In theory, a capacitor can charge (and discharge) orders of magnatude faster than a battery, so that more dynamic regenerative braking can be used.
These guys sound like the brothers of that obnoxious Tesla press-release manufacturing company.
Exactly. It’s simple math to compute an amperage rate from the drive distances and charge times they quote. Which will lead you to power cables as thick as your wrist, or such.
Chemical energy of a fuel is not a bad way to move automobiles. Being able to convert grid power into chemical fuel energy at a reasonable efficiency would be the death of a “petro economy” just as much as an ideal battery or capacitor, and probably an easier goal. Oil won’t go away in any case; we need it for chemicals and plastics.
This is exciting news, if real...but read the posts on this blog...sounds like a different story maybe.
http://bariumtitanate.blogspot.com/2002/07/if-fascination-of-eestors.html
Why not use capacitors as buffers? They can release their energy back into acceleration without having to supply cruising power.
And the current it takes to charge a capacitor big enough to run a car "almost instantaneously" will melt your wires. In a practical sense, the rate of charge will have to be throttled to a more reasonable level.
As always, the underlying problems remain-where is the electricity going to come from in a country in which the environmental Nazis won't allow nuke plant contstruction, and how much is it going to cost to upgrade the power grid to handle millions and millions of capacitors being charged?
I think that's the bigger problem vs. the size of the cable required to charge the vehicle. I don't think I can publish my solution to that problem on this forum however.
As for the first part of your statement, I have ham radio equipment that pulls 220v and an excess of 75 amps to key and run (think large amplifiers here..) so visualizing the cable required to charge a vehicle for me isn't that big of a deal. However, the thought of an average, every day consumer making that connection at a charging station DOES scare the hell out of me. One bad connection, one spark and the whole thing may just go up ....
Yep. They've been trying the Kinetic Energy Release System (KERS) in Formula One racing this year. They are already deciding to scrap it next year because it has been underwhelming. It produces interesting effects at the start and on long straights where the driver can engage it to bring a little more horsepower, but this is balanced out by the extra weight from the battery the car has to carry around the rest of the track.
Sorry, but it is spelled Gigawatts, no J.
It’s just a funny image from the internet. I think it is spelled ‘jigawatts’ on purpose. It’s that whole satire/humour/poetic license thing. I know, I know. I have a hard time with those things as well. Breathe in. Breathe out.
I don't think it would be hard to design a safe plug system. You could even automate it so all terminals are safely covered until the device is inserted into the charger. The charger unlocks it and plugs it in inside the charger. When ready, the charger locks it back up and ejects it.
Here’s a more sceptical view of EESTOR. There are some serious safety issues with these things.
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5557
When comparing gas to electric, you need to include the comparative weights of the engines, because the power you care about is the power delivered to the wheels, not the power delivered to the motor.
An electric motor for a given horsepower will weigh significantly less than the gas engine and associated parts.
The odd thing about the capacitor number here is that lithium-ion batterys are already at 340 W-hr/Kg, and can theoretically get over 1700 W-hr/Kg
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