Energy storage: Batteries, capacitors, and now "surface-mediated cells"

[kristopher]

Some critical details are missing, but it is interesting nonetheless:

New energy storage device could recharge electric vehicles in minutes
August 19, 2011 by Lisa Zyga


Compared with supercapacitors and batteries, SMCs (with three different electrode thicknesses shown) offer both a high power density and high energy density. Image copyright: Jang, et al. ©2011 American Chemical Society

(PhysOrg.com) -- It has all the appearances of a breakthrough in battery technology, except that it’s not a battery. Researchers at Nanotek Instruments, Inc., and its subsidiary Angstron Materials, Inc., in Dayton, Ohio, have developed a new paradigm for designing energy storage devices that is based on rapidly shuttling large numbers of lithium ions between electrodes with massive graphene surfaces. The energy storage device could prove extremely useful for electric vehicles, where it could reduce the recharge time from hours to less than a minute. Other applications could include renewable energy storage (for example, storing solar and wind energy) and smart grids.

The researchers call the new devices "graphene surface-enabled lithium ion-exchanging cells," or more simply, "surface-mediated cells" (SMCs). Although the devices currently use unoptimized materials and configurations, they can already outperform Li-ion batteries and supercapacitors. The new devices can deliver a power density of 100 kW/kgcell, which is 100 times higher than that of commercial Li-ion batteries and 10 times higher than that of supercapacitors. The higher the power density, the faster the rate of energy transfer (resulting in a faster recharge time). In addition, the new cells can store an energy density of 160 Wh/kgcell, which is comparable to commercial Li-ion batteries and 30 times higher than that of conventional supercapacitors. The greater the energy density, the more energy the device can store for the same volume (resulting in a longer driving range for electric vehicles).

“Given the same device weight, the current SMC and Li-ion battery can provide an electric vehicle (EV) with a comparable driving range,” Bor Z. Jang, co-founder of Nanotek Instruments and Angstron Materials, told PhysOrg.com. “Our SMCs, just like the current Li-ion batteries, can be further improved in terms of energy density . However, in principle, the SMC can be recharged in minutes (possibly less than one minute), as opposed to hours for Li-ion batteries used in current EVs.”

Jang and his coauthors at Nanotek Instruments and Angstron Materials have published the study on the next-generation energy storage devices in a recent issue of Nano Letters. Both companies specialize in nanomaterial commercialization, with Angstron being the world’s largest producer of nano graphene platelets (NGPs).

As the researchers explain in their study...

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-08-energy-storage-device-recharge-electric.html

[RC]

1. Reduce the recharge time from hours to minutes?

You'd need a fork lift for the charge connector plug and a receptacle on the vehicle so large it would change the overall shape of the vehicle.

Someone needs to do the math here.

[PoliticAverse]

3. Not that big for say a 12 minute charging time...

http://www.altfuels.org/events/otherafv/quikchrg.html

[OKIsItJustMe]

2. More details here

http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/nl2018492

[kristopher]

4. Great! Thank you. nt

[txlibdem]

5. Very interesting

The high power per kg is interesting because that may lighten the load on the battery during acceleration and braking, something that current batteries still have a little trouble with (shortens the battery life if you do jackrabbit starts and 3g stops -- like my wife does on occasion).

My wife. I'll tell ya.

I told my wife the truth. I told her I was seeing a psychiatrist. Then she told me the truth: that she was seeing a psychiatrist, two plumbers, and a bartender.

:rofl: RIP Rodney Dangerfield :rofl: