Mar

29

EEStor Makes a Little Bit of News

March 29, 2012 | 4 Comments

The Bariumtitanate.blogspot, which is a close observer of the EEStory as they’re calling it over there, found a bit of news on the EEStor saga. Zenn, the motorcar company that took off thinking that the EEStor ultra capacitor was coming soon survives with essentially nothing for sale of note.  But the capital base has a [...]

Mar

19

Build a Super Capacitor with a DVD Burner

March 19, 2012 | Leave a Comment

The insightful and clever folks at UCLA have used a standard LightScribe DVD optical drive ($25+ and up at Newegg.com today) to produce a new type of capacitor electrodes that not only maintain high conductivity but also provide higher and more accessible surface area than conventional electrochemical capacitors (ECs) that use the typical activated carbon [...]

Mar

15

On the Path to Much Better Lithium Ion Batteries

March 15, 2012 | Leave a Comment

Regular readers may recall that the silicon electrode for lithium ion batteries is the current leading candidate for a big capacity increase.  A study led by Chongmin Wang at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) has been published online in the journal Nano Letters examining a new type of silicon-carbon nanocomposite electrode. [...]

Feb

28

The Best Battery So Far

February 28, 2012 | 2 Comments

Start-up called Envia Systems says it’s built a lithium-ion battery prototype at 400 Wh/kg.  That, if the prototype can scale would be both a new world record, but a deep change in electric vehicle economics. The world record looks secure for now, the battery prototype has third party tests confirming the energy density at the [...]

Feb

27

A Real Ultra Capacitor Discovery

February 27, 2012 | 1 Comment

With EEStor out of sight and supposedly over, new research with very striking potential is coming.  North Carolina State University researchers led by physicist Dr. Vivek Ranjan have discovered the means by which a polymer known as PVDF enables capacitors to store and release large amounts of energy quickly.  Understanding leads to exploitation. Ranjan previously [...]

Feb

20

New Electrolytes to Make an Ultra Flow Battery

February 20, 2012 | 1 Comment

Sandia researchers have developed a new family of liquid salt electrolytes (metal-based ionic liquids or MetILs) that could lead to new flow batteries able to cost-effectively store three times more energy than today’s batteries. To start, a flow battery or accurately a Redox Flow Battery (RFB) is a type of rechargeable electrochemical system that relies [...]

Feb

14

Looking At Batteries From the Inside with an MRI

February 14, 2012 | 1 Comment

At breakthrough for developing the batteries of the future was announced this week by researchers at Cambridge University, Stony Brook University, and New York University.  The research group has developed a methodology based on magnetic resonance imaging, the MRI we are familiar with, to look inside a battery without destroying it. Advanced batteries are the [...]

Feb

8

The Best Lithium Air Batteries Get a 33% Boost

February 8, 2012 | Leave a Comment

The best lithium air lab research batteries had cathodes built with graphene nanosheet materials.  Back in August of 2011 scientists at the Nanomaterials and Energy Group at the University of Western Ontario (UWO), Canada, reported the development of graphene nanosheet cathode (GNS) materials for non-aqueous lithium-oxygen (Li-air) batteries showing a capacity of 8,705.9 mAh g-1 [...]

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