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EEstor battery/super capacitor

I have been looking at the recently issued US patent 7466536 for a radical "battery" design from EEstor. In summary, the "battery" is actually an array of 31353 physically small capacitors of 980uF at 3500 volts making a total of 30.693 Farads and capable of storing 52.22 KWh of energy in a package weighing 128 Kg.

All the numbers add up, but look a bit calculated. Assuming it actually exists, there seem to be a number of practical problems for any automotive environment, including safety concerns.

On this note, the patent document says, somewhat disingenuously I feel:

" 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. Thus the EESU is a safe product when used in electric vehicles, buses, bicycles, tractors, or any device that is used for transportation or to perform work, portable tools of all kinds, portable computers, or any device or system that requires electrical energy storage. "

Well, um!

I am not at all sure that I would like the consequences of a shorted "battery" dumping 50 KWh into a plasma. This is not likely to be a peaceful event, and I suspect it could be similar to detonating a few pounds of TNT.

As the invention claims the possibility of charging the "battery" in 3 minutes or less (about 300A at 3.5KV) the battery resistance would have to be very low if it is not to be cooked on recharge, and this would indicate the possibility of a high intensity discharge. How could safety of recharge by the unskilled be guaranteed?

Notwithstanding all that, I think that this is a very interesting development that it will pay to follow.

All the best Ian Macmillan

Reply to
Ian Macmillan
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Insert a diode in series. Then you can easily charge it and it's short sircuit proof.

-- Thanks, Fred.

Reply to
Fred_Bartoli

Stop right there. That's absurd. No 6 kJ cap is going to be small.

John

Reply to
John Larkin

What if you overcharge it? :-)

The list of materials doesn't sound too exciting. If barium titanate is used for the most part, what's so special about that? I mean, we already have multilayer ceramic chip capacitors.

Let's see, Digikey sells, say, 10uF 50V MLCCs for about 13 cents/ea in quantities of 10k. That's $1300 for 0.1F 50V or 125J (within ratings ;) ), or 96 mJ/$. Size is 1210 footprint, doesn't say how tall but let's say it's

1/8" cubed. That's 19 in^3 (0.31 l), another cube 2.7" on each side. That means these things are about 403 Ws/l, or 0.11 Wh/l. A typical supercapactor, on the other hand, places 5.7 Wh/l and provides 18 J/$. Double layer types are clearly superior, even if you can't pull a microsecond pulse off them.

Tim

--
Deep Friar: a very philosophical monk.
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Reply to
Tim Williams

NIST cites:

ton of TNT (energy equivalent) 25 joule (J) 4.184 E+09

formatting link

So 50Kwh = ~43Kg of TNT

I'm sure that you could fit all manner of fail-safe mechanisms to deal with recharging (and to prevent them from being used in "pranks"). Safety of maintenance by the unskilled could be more interesting. I think that these would need to be sealed units, with a mechanism to prevent them from being opened unless fully discharged.

I daresay they'll be making an appearance on "world's coolest traffic accidents" sooner or later.

Reply to
Nobody

Cool. 52 KWH is about 190e6 joules. The 10 uf 50v cap stores 12.5 mJ. So he'd need about 15 billion of them, if my math is right. But I bet the 10 uF degrades a lot at 50 volts, so you'd need more.

I don't think my Rabbit would hold 15 billion caps.

John

Reply to
John Larkin

How about if you add a top carrier? ;-)

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Reply to
Michael A. Terrell

Wait till someone connects the charger backwards.

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Reply to
Michael A. Terrell

Good idea. Then you can extract the energy out of all the tops?

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Reply to
krw

),

Unless a bird lands on it. Then its beaks, bones & feathers all over the road. :(

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Reply to
Michael A. Terrell

Or feed it premium gas, so it can grow. Or does that make it multiply, as rabbits often do?

Ed

Reply to
ehsjr

Rabbits don't multiply. The herd grows expotentailly! Something on the order of E to the 7th power. ;-)

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Reply to
Michael A. Terrell

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