To do so in a few minutes requires (quite literally) the kind of power feeds hooked up at factories. Well beyond your 240V dryer hookup or the three-phase coming to your house. "
This might be the solution:
Posted on 09/03/2009 12:40:32 PM PDT by Titus-Maximus
... The EESTOR's EESU promises to solve all the shortcomings of the modern chemical battery. Every one.
Highly detailed description of the technology is included.
The problem that this doesn’t address is how to recharge a vehicle powered by these in a reasonable amount of time.
To do so in a few minutes requires (quite literally) the kind of power feeds hooked up at factories. Well beyond your 240V dryer hookup or the three-phase coming to your house.
I’m unable to open pdf file.
Care to summarize?
Just need another larger capacitor to charge the one in the vehicle.
Wouldn’t load for me either.
Here’s a somewhat sceptical article with an excerpt discussing safety issues.
Seem Warm To You?
But what if it works? Before it can be used in automobiles, many other questions remain — although many of these apply to electric cars in general. Where will the electricity for this really come from in the next few years? Charging infrastructure? Safety? Assorted colors?
Some of these I will reserve for another article. But I will consider here the issue of safety, which is given scant mention in the EEStor patent.
None of the EESU materials used to fabricate the EESU, which are aluminum, aluminum oxide, copper, composition-modified barium titanate powder, silver-filled epoxy, and poly(ethylene terephthalate) plastic will explode when being recharged or impacted.
The inherent danger is not necessarily the risk of explosion, but simply the sudden release of 52 kilowatt-hours of energy if the capacitor self-discharges. As shown in this illustration from the patent,
the individual energy storage units (capacitors) are connected in parallel such that, at full charge, a potential of 3.5 kV sits across each of the 31,351 units of 10 microns thickness. Although the dielectric breakdown voltage is sufficiently high such that leakage current is low, there is a finite probability that a stress fracture from impact due to an accident or a manufacturing defect propogated as the EESU ages results in electrical breakdown in one of the units. If this occurs, all of the energy stored in the EESU (52 kilowatt-hours) could potentially be released in a very short period. It is somewhat disingenuous to stress the large amount of energy which can be stored in the device and the rapidity of charging and discharging without acknowledging the downside of these.
In a rapid electrical breakdown of the device, the stored energy would essentially result in the instantaneous generation of a vast amount of heat. For example, the EESU is made primarily of barium titanate, which has a heat capacity of 434 J/kg-K. The 52 kW-hr released will heat the 280 lb unit to about 3400°C. Of course, it would probably start heating up everything around it before it got that hot. One ton of steel (with about the same value for heat capacity) would heat up to 460°C. Best to get out fast.
There are possibly ways to deal with this risk, but preferably not the Ford Pinto strategy. In any case, an extensive testing phase is warranted to assess both damage and age-related risk for a catastrophic self-discharge event. Crash-test dummies are cheaper than lawyers.
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5557
Thanks for the info, I have been watching this company for the last 4 years. The have promised shipment in 07, 08 and now 09.
The idea is exciting, but they (Eestor and indirectly Zenn) have not been reliable with their predictions.
There are individual cells that may accelerate and not the entire battery. If a bullet is shot through it, the cells lining the hole will accelerate but the remaining 30,000 cells will not. Supposedly this addresses the risk. The entire battery discharging in one second would melt the car, and everyone in it. But that is not the case.
That is the easiest answer. You put a large capacitor in your house.
This lets you charge your car quickly and as a benefit could provide power to the house during an outage.
the three-phase coming to your house.
????
What kinda house you got?
Eestor claim that the thing is redundantly internally fused. Short it out and all you get are popped fuses.
A really big shop in the basement?
I wonder about leakage. There is always some leakage, and that is intensified by moisture and heat. The automobile is quite a difficult environment.
I suspected something was "up" when that big flatbed truck arrived with a very large forklift to deliver some equipment. Thankfully, it was easily solved.
In a capacitor, the current/voltage discharge is non-linear in that you get a higher voltage/current at the start of the discharge decreasing to 0 when it is discharged. You need some pretty fancy equipment to be able to run off a variable voltage like that. I mean, you have a twelve volt battery that always give twelve volts, but a capacitor gives off V=C/Q and Q is always decreasing as it discharges. Since VR=I, as V goes down your current goes down. How do you run anything useful with an exponentially decreasing current/voltage and no additional power source?
Bottom line: Capacitors are good for quick discharges for a burst of high current. They are not good power sources for things that currently use batteries.
I have only one comment. Murphy’s law.
Still, I know no device is perfectly safe and there will be problems. Only if they are significantly worse than carrying gasoline around in a thin aluminum tank would this technology be stopped. The author of the article I linked to had some other doubts though.
I’m sure any Hams in the area appreciate your help in suppressing the interference.
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