Posted on 05/29/2024 10:58:55 AM PDT by ShadowAce
A chemical engineer says his discovery of a ‘missing link’ to describe the movement of ions within supercapacitors could lead to laptops and phones that can be charged in just one minute and electric cars in less than ten.
Previously, Kirchhoff’s Law, which has successfully described the movement of electrons since 1845, was limited in its definition. This resulted in an engineering roadblock that has prevented the adoption of supercapacitors to replace lithium-ion batteries in commercial applications.
Now, Ankur Gupta, a chemical engineer from the University of Colorado at Boulder, says his findings modify Kirchhoff’s law in a way that allows engineers to model and predict the movement of ions across a network of thousands of interconnected pores like those found in electric double-layer supercapacitors.
“That’s the leap of the work,” Gupta said of his modification to Kirchhoff’s Law. “We found the missing link.”
Although batteries and capacitors both store electricity, each has its distinct advantages and disadvantages. For example, batteries can store significantly more energy than capacitors. Supercapacitors close that gap somewhat, but on average, lithium-ion batteries can store ten times as much energy. This ability has made batteries the standard in home electronics and electric vehicles alike, as devices using supercapacitors would need to be charged much more often than those using batteries.
Conversely, batteries accumulate and release charge ten times slower than supercapacitors. This has resulted in laptops that can take over an hour to charge and electric cars that can take even longer. Unfortunately, supercapacitors leak their charges much more quickly than batteries. According to Car Magazine, “If you left a supercapacitor-powered car in the garage for a week, for example, you’d likely find it with no charge when you returned.”
There have been some efforts to combine the technologies, including using supercapacitors in regenerative braking or even employing supercapacitor-fueled buses that can quickly recharge at every stop. Lamborghini even employed supercapacitors in its 800-hp all-electric Sian supercar to offer quick bursts of extreme power. Still, those applications are the exception, leaving supercapacitors and their advantages sitting on the sidelines while batteries have become the industry standard for energy storage.
After analyzing the limitations of supercapacitors, Gupta wondered if approaching the problem from the perspective of a chemical engineer could offer him a unique perspective.
“Given the critical role of energy in the future of the planet, I felt inspired to apply my chemical engineering knowledge to advancing energy storage devices,” Gupta said. “It felt like the topic was somewhat underexplored and, as such, the perfect opportunity.”
Specifically, Gupta wondered if the movement of ions in supercapacitors was similar to the movement of other fluids in similar porous environments. If so, he figured that current engineering methods could be improved through computer modeling, which could result in supercapacitors with much higher energy storage potential.
“The primary appeal of supercapacitors lies in their speed,” Gupta explained. “So how can we make their charging and release of energy faster? By the more efficient movement of ions.”
As noted, Kirchoff’s Law, which has been accepted science for nearly two centuries, was the primary barrier. However, when studying its application in energy storage, Gupta saw that it only seemed to apply to the movement of electrons in one single pore. In supercapacitors, ions accumulate in a vast network of thousands of interconnected pores, meaning the law simply wasn’t designed to address the situation.
According to Gupta and his co-authors’ research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, understanding the dynamics of charging in porous media like supercapacitors “is essential for advancements in next-generation energy storage devices.”
To try this new approach, Gupta applied chemical engineering techniques used to study flow in porous materials, such as oil reservoirs and water filtration systems. This also involved developing customized modeling software to better characterize how ions might move in similar structures. As hoped, his efforts resulted in a new way of predicting the movement of ions in porous materials, which could increase the energy efficiency of supercapacitors.
“Our network model provides results up to six orders of magnitude faster,” Gupta and his co-authors explain, “enabling the efficient simulation of a triangular lattice of five thousand pores in 6 min.”
While faster charging cars, laptops, and phones may be the goal, Gupta’s team also believes that their work could move beyond energy storage for these industries alone. This includes potential applications across a wide range of products and systems, including “improving supercapacitor design and enabling 3D-printed microscale electrodes for wearable energy storage and supercapacitors in Internet-of-Things applications.”
“The discovery is significant not only for storing energy in vehicles and electronic devices but also for power grids, where fluctuating energy demand requires efficient storage to avoid waste during periods of low demand and to ensure rapid supply during high demand,” the press release announcing the team’s findings adds.
Another potential step-forward hopefully amidst many more to come if government will just get out of the way.
If government would lower taxes and their overhead there should be more breathing room for researchers and corporations to develop new technologies.
So, more porous means faster charging and discharging.
Does that mean even bigger EV fires that are even harder to put out?
:)
“We derive modified Kirchhoff’s laws and equivalent circuit equations for electrolyte transport in charged confinement. Our framework accelerates numerical computations by six orders of magnitude without compromising accuracy”
“Our network model provides results up to six orders of magnitude faster, enabling the efficient simulation of a triangular lattice of five thousand pores in 6 min. “
Based on above Abstract, it sounds like the new model gets to an “accurate” answer a lot faster (and cheaper) than the old model. Whether this technique leads to a more useful battery / capacitor scheme is still up in the air.
In other words, “Mom / Dad, send more money”.
And fossil fuels have 100 times the energy density of lithium ion batteries. Battery electric vehicles were a bad idea in the 19th century when they were first invented and still a bad idea today even though lithium ion batteries have 5 times the energy density of the original EV batteries (but still only about 1% of gasoline)
I always thought on cars that capacitors should have been used for the initial movement from stop and recharged by the regeneration of slowing down. These are the two largest moment of energy situations and would save the battery capacity for lower inertia events thus providing longer battery range.
Gasoline is going to be too expensive to just burn it to the sky. That’s a mathematical fact. There are people alive today that will witness the end of the fossil fuel era,not the end of petrochemicals the two are vastly different and it would be wise to know that critical difference. When not if 8 billion humans demand access and use of liquid hydrocarbons for fuel use the 47 years of technically recoverable resources not reserves again know the difference gets drastically cut.
Humans need to move as rapidly as possible away from burning liquid hydrocarbons to the sky and using them only for petrochemicals, medications, fertilizers,lubricants and polymers.
This is an urban planet most people now live in cities with very short daily transportation distances. There is no need for urbanites to have a 300+ mile range vehicle none at all on a daily or even weekly basis.
Most urbanites take two trips per year further than 500km the vast majority of trips are under 30km a day. There are no less than a half dozen battery technologies that can cover 100km per day or less. LFP and Sodium ion being the current leaders in cycle life and charge rates. The small group of people who live rural are not representative of what is urban reality. Rural is over represented in this board that much is obvious by the lack of knowledge of what real urban life is like. A lot of people don’t even own cars in NYC, London, Tokyo or Mexico City. Parking is a nightmare , and expensive to say the least about congestion tolls and super high insurance rates. When I am in those cities it’s all metro ,uber or taxis never rent a car that’s a fool’s errand in an urban core or megacity. You rapidly realize you don’t need a car in high density you time share a mode of transportation. Ebikes and as it down or stand up scooters makes the last few miles a breeze with a QR code and an app it’s seconds to timeshare an asset.
So the key market is the suburbs as urbanites have many tranpo options other than car ownership and the lower and middle class are priced out of ownership by design in the city cores. Suburbanites have 40 mile or less commutes on a daily basis here again no need for a 300 mile plus range. L2 home charging for a couple.hours per night covers 40 miles round trip. Having been to Shanghai where 85% live in condos or apartments and seen how 50% of new vehicles are EVs the argument that apartment and condos cannot have EVs due to charging is a flat out lie. L2 charge points are EVERYWHERE in China every apartment parking lot has L2 points by the dozens every other stall had a power pole and two cords so do condos and they have bucees sized HVDC state run supercharger stations wwith 50+ stalls in them. China is liquid hydrocarbons short and nuclear and coal heavy their electric grid is not some 1900s nightmare either they have 400v triple phase everywhere down to the individual condo units. The air is getting better over there as they phase out diesels and 2 cycles for EVs. Shanghai transportation system puts even NYC metro to shame it’s clean , efficient and on time all the time.
Yeah...every time I hear about ‘mega fast charging’ it comes to mind :)
It means your car will burn up faster................
Not too hard to do that.
That is correct. The usage of precious and limited resources should be prioritized by value of the end-product. I don't know how you do that without strict command and control economies, the antithesis of freedom and free markets.
In the same vein, it is absolutely criminal to use natural gas to generate power when nuclear could do the job. Natural gas is critical to produce urea for agriculture. Burning it in gas turbines to make power is insane.
The US has 400-500 years of recoverable coal resources. Coal can be liquified to substitute for oil (see Germany in WW II, Sasol in South Africa).
The global fertility rate is below 2, so maybe the population is leveling off. Unfortunately, in western countries, Japan, and Korea it's as low as 1.3 to 1.6 and those countries are going to die off in the coming decades. But the world's poor will want a higher standard of living at the same time the overall population starts to decline, so those two cancel each other out.
>>even NYC metro to shame
>Not too hard to do that.
Severe and even capital punishment for the violent criminals on the NYC system would make for a huge improvement in rideability with virtually no investment costs.
It sounds like he built a model on a spreadsheet...so 29 years away..
Also regular capacitors do hold their charge for a long time, old TVs still have a spark. So the whole article sounds dubious.
Thank you for sharing reality.
“could lead” I’m not holding my breath. Whats with the incessant posting “battery breakthrough” articles?
“Humans need to move as rapidly as possible away from burning liquid hydrocarbons to the sky”
We do? Why?
“There is no need for urbanites to have a 300+ mile range vehicle”
Because “urbanites” don’t “need” drive on vacation or the weekend.
Die already
“Rural is over represented in this board that much is obvious by the lack of knowledge of what real urban life is like”
condescending twat
If the model for a supercapacitor involves multiple layers of pores, then it's no wonder that the standard Kirchhoff's Law does not apply.
Why thank you for your superior opinion AOC. This is the "peak oil" hypothesis, and yes at some point we will run out. However, this does not by any means justify the mad dash to "net zero" nor does it justify the cramming of EVs which are vastly inferior to petrol powered vehicles. down everyone's throats. Let the market decide, not government ignoramuses with their thumb on the scales.
Most urbanites take two trips per year further than 500km the vast majority of trips are under 30km a day. There are no less than a half dozen battery technologies that can cover 100km per day or less.
A big fat so what to this. Unless you plan to NEVER go past the average daily use EV's are to quote Jeremy Clarkson, crap. And WHERE IS THE POWER COMING FROM? The transportation sector of the USA uses the approximate power equivalent of every nuclear power plant in the country running flat out. I forget how many there are I seem to remember there are about 70 of them, each with more than one reactor. Do you really think that this much generation can com from wind (unicorn farts) and solar (rainbows)?
Rural is over represented in this board that much is obvious by the lack of knowledge of what real urban life is like. A lot of people don’t even own cars in NYC, London, Tokyo or Mexico City. Parking is a nightmare , and expensive to say the least about congestion tolls and super high insurance rate
I disagree with that; as an example I lived in NYC for a couple of miserable years (North part of the Bronx just shy of Yonkers) and I found a car to be an absolute necessity to get away from "the city" which we did several times a week.
You totally ignore the nature of the electric grid and the demands on it for charging. Let's ignore L1 charging as useless because it is and go to L2 and L3. L2 charging is 240v which is the residential standard in the US. so lets see what the demand is to half charge a Tesla model 3 with an 80 kwh battery. First 80 kwh is 100 amps at 800 volts for an hour, but lets do half of this 50 amps at 800 volts for an hour. Ignoring transformer loss This is 167 amps at 240 V most modern houses are wired at 200 amp service, so this is most of the service. Now if 100 houses half charge EVs every night this is 4000 kwh or 4mwh. Night is base load time - nuclear and hydro so these run pretty much maxed out all the time. So if you have 100 neighborhoods at 100 houses that's 400 mwh that has to be supplied by something. That's half of the output of a Westinghouse PWR. It won't be solar at night and wind power only works about 25% of the time, to it's time to fire up the combustion turbines. But wait, they burn natural gas something that is also on the bad list for the enviro-wackos, so what you're left with is vehicles (EVs) that are vastly inferior to gas vehicles, and an electrical grid that cannot possibly supply the demand for even daily commuting. What the insane rush away from fossil fuels will cause is a drastic drop in the standard of living and for what? Some badly written science fiction plot of climate change.
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