Saturday, November 27, 2010

Super Capacitor Advance

I picked up some info on graphene from a newpaper article this year, but haven' pursued it much. Anyway, this is looking pretty cool:

These energy density values are comparable to that of the Ni metal hydride battery. This new technology provides an energy storage device that stores nearly as much energy as in a battery, but can be recharged in seconds or minutes. We believe that this is truly a breakthrough in energy technology.

5 comments:

PXPT said...

It's a step in the right direction as far as I'm concerned but have a look at this article in Wikipedia. Have a ganders at the graph on this page and you will see that even the much praised Lithium ion battery is nowhere near the energy density of the common fuels we burn:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density

Quite a few more years yet before it gets really exciting (or they get those fusion reactor things to work properly).

Neal Asher said...

Energy density is one of the main things we need to aim for now, I reckon. We've got and are developing all sorts of wonderful technology. It's almost as if we're in the position of having the blue prints for sports cars but haven't begun to make petrol yet. Fuel cells are looking good, however.

Jebel Krong said...

graphene certainly has potential to be the next big "wonder material" in all sorts of applications (once they get the large-scale manufacturing sorted out).

fuel cells are coming along, slower than they should (but that's because all the car companies are currently distracted with easier hybrids and EVs), when they are sorted there'll be no looking back in terms of personal transport.

Myrddin Emrys said...

The downside of capacitors, currently, is that they have the capability to discharge disastrously. Battery fires are bad and all, but nothing compared to the literal explosions a capacitor is capable of if it fails structurally.

I'm sure this can be overcome, in time, but for now it remains an engineering difficulty to overcome, much like the issue of finding a way to get power into one of those capacitors safely so it really can be charged in under a minute.

Neal Asher said...

I look forward to it, Jebel, though I imagine someone will start hectoring us for producing too much water vapour.

Myrddin Emrys, as energy density increases I imagine it might also become a problem on the terrorist front too.