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Charge in 5 minutes, Drive 500 miles?
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Tue Sep 26, 2006 06:34 AM
from the shocking-discoveries dept.
from the shocking-discoveries dept.
ctroutwi writes "In the wake of rising gasoline costs there have been plenty of alternatives seen on the horizon. Including Hybrids, Biofuels, fuel cells and battery powered all electric cars. CNN has recently posted a story about a company (EEStor) that plans on offering Ultra-Capacitor storage products. The claim being that you charge the ultra-capacitor in 5 minutes, with approximately 9$ (~$.45 a gallon) of electricity and then drive 500 miles."
Related Stories
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Your Rights Online: EEStor Issued a Patent For Its Supercapacitor 603 comments
An anonymous reader sends us to GM-volt.com, an electric vehicle enthusiast blog, for the news that last week EEStor was granted a US patent for their electric-energy storage unit, of which no one outside the company (no one who is talking, anyway) has seen so much as a working prototype. We've discussed the company on a number of occasions. The patent (PDF) is a highly information-rich document that offers remarkable insight into the device. EEStor notes "the present invention provides a unique lightweight electric-energy storage unit that has the capability to store ultrahigh amounts of energy." "The core ingredient is an aluminum coated barium titanate powder immersed in a polyethylene terephthalate plastic matrix. The EESU is composed of 31,353 of these components arranged in parallel. It is said to have a total capacitance of 30.693 F and can hold 52.220 kWh of energy. The device is said to have a weight of 281.56 pound including the box and all hardware. Unlike lithium-ion cells, the technology is said not to degrade with cycling and thus has a functionally unlimited lifetime. It is mentioned the device cannot explode when being charge or impacted and is thus safe for vehicles."
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daddypants email link broken? (Score:5, Informative)
( ERROR: Use of uninitialized value in concatenation (.) or string at... Line 126 )
On a sidenote, what seems odd to me is that not only is this a dupe that is currently visible on the index [slashdot.org] of slashdot, but that the article summary is almost identical to the earlier submission, and is even from the same submitter. Insert Matrix deja-vu quote here.
Mods, try to be on the lookout for copy and paste karma whores (man, plagiarism annoys me). Unfortunately with 700+ comments on the last discussion, this may not be easy, haha.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
On a sidenote, what seems odd to me is that not only is this a dupe that is currently visible on the index [slashdot.org] of slashdot, but that the article summary is almost identical to the earlier submission, and is even from the same submitter.
Yup:
500 Miles on a 5-Minute Recharge?
"In the wake of rising gasoline costs there have been plenty of alternatives seen on the horizon. Including Hybrids, Biofuels, fuel cells and battery powered all electric cars. CNN has recently posted a story about a com
Re:daddypants email link broken? (Score:5, Funny)
I emailed the on-duty editor (regarding this being a dupe), like any good little
( ERROR: Use of uninitialized value in concatenation (.) or string at... Line 126 )
On a sidenote, what seems odd to me is that not only is this a dupe that is currently visible on the index [slashdot.org] of slashdot, but that the article summary is almost identical to the earlier submission, and is even from the same submitter. Insert Matrix deja-vu quote here.
Sorry couldn't resist
Jaj
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Trinity: What did you just say?
Neo: Nothing. Just had a little deja vu.
Trinity: What happened? What did you see?
Neo: A Slashdot article was on the index, and then I saw another that looked just like it.
Trinity: How much like it? Was it the same article?
Neo: It might have been. I'm not sure. What is it?
Trinity: A deja vu is usually a glitch in the Matrix. It happens when the editors are lazy.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
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Cost/gallon of electricity is a new and fascinating unit!
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I still have several gallons of electricity from before the y2k scare. They're stocked up in a storage closet in the basement. Luckily, I bought it at $.27/gallon before the price was driven up.
Hmmm... I wonder what the shelf life of a gallon of electricity is. Maybe I should divide them into quarts or pints. Maybe even sell it off at $.45/gallon and make a profit!
But to be fair... (Score:3, Insightful)
I know it's more fun to bitch about people, but you ought to hand out some kudos every once in a while too. We could do with a bit more of that on the Intarweb.
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Improvement is.
If you emit nothing but negative feedback, if even improvement is met with negative feedback because the improvement doesn't make it to "perfection" or some other standard, the psychological result is as predictable as the sun rising tomorrow: Lack of interest in continuing to try and ever diminishing performance. It's a bit odd that anybody thinks relentless negativity can have any other effect. (But there are entire major
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Don't go China (Score:3, Funny)
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Have you ever seen a capacitor explode? Have you ever seen a large capacitor blow up a screwdriver that shorted across its terminals?
It doesn't matter if it's gasoline, Li-Poly, Li-Ion, Hydrogen, etc. We use it because it's easy to extract energy from it. It's easy to extract energy from it because it's very reactive. There are many ways to blow up a fuel tank - but we've had a century of design information and now they rarely go up like they could (except in movies). When we ha
Energy density (Score:3, Interesting)
This time around I have thought of something to say.
As we strive for higher energy density in our laptop computers, electric cars, mobile phones, etc; we are creating devices which can potentially release much of their stored energy in a short space of time. It doesn't have to be a chemical explosion. I have in my workshop a melted bicycle tail light and four cooked NiCD batteries from cycle commuting years past when I put two batteries in the wrong way and created a short circuit.
So IMHO battery/capacitor explosions are the way of the future, certainly much more than the backyard LPG explosions we get from time to time here in Australia (LPG is a cheap substitute for petrol, but a bit volatile.)
How is Alan Cox going with his hair? Is it growing back yet.
An accident waiting to happen (Score:2)
Gas prices seem to be about $2.50 [bakersfieldgasprices.com] per gallon, so this is charging with the same energy as 24 gallons.
Equivalent to 5 gallons of gas per minute.
paid editors, for what, exactly? (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, I expect there are a bunch of comments to this effect about the dupe.
What I'm wondering is why these guys call themselves editors. I'm frustrated that ad revenue and subscription fees go to these people who totally disregard all semblance of professionalism. I wish I had a cushy job like that, where I could sit back, press 'Accept' once in a while without even reading the blurb or the front page, and get paid for it.
More information here (Score:2, Funny)
stupid editors... (Score:2, Interesting)
were ever accepted. (Ok maybe your standards are higher than mine?)
But THIS? For crying out loud this story is such a DUPE it appears
TWICE on the same web page!!!!! This proves the
smoking bananas!
900KW (Score:2)
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Batteries and such (Score:5, Interesting)
It wasn't me!!! (Score:4, Funny)
Please define (Score:2)
Really. I'm curious.
Metric system (Score:3, Funny)
I dont know if anyone had heard this... (Score:2)
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Those figures do make sense (Score:5, Informative)
Supposition: 500 miles on a 5 minute charge, with $9 worth of electricity.
$9 worth of electricity = 100kWh
100kWh = 360 megajoules
500 miles = 804 kilometres
Force = Energy / distance
= 360e6 / 804e3
= 447 Newtons
(of course the above is only the average force available for that journey)
F_drag = 1/2 * Drag_Coefficient * Cross_Section * AirDensity * Velocity^2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_coefficient [wikipedia.org] gives Drag as around 0.3 for an average car. Cross-section is probably about 3 square metres.
F_drag = 0.5 * 0.3 * 3 * 1.29 * v^2
= 0.581 v^2
55 mph = 24 m/s
F_drag_55 = 334 Newtons
Which is well within the average 447 available; and gives scope for losses. So; it turns out it's not crazy to suggest you can get 500 miles on $9 worth of electricity.
I wonder how far my house would travel a month...
More details.. (Score:5, Informative)
http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/energy/2006/01
A breif run down:
-S
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
$9 to go 500 miles seems like a great deal (we're talking about cash here, not the environment. That $9 of electricity was probably generated with coal. Renewable sources can't even cover what we use *now*, so they don't stand a chance if we signifigantly increase our electricity usage), but if you only drive 20 miles and then park for three days only to come back to a discharged cap, then you can keep it and I'll sti
The math isnt very promising on this ! (Score:2, Insightful)
A capacitor bank to store that much charge (100 to 200 KwH) is going to cost, retail, at today's prices, oh, about $220,000 to $440,000 AND take up most of the space inside a minivan. . It's unlikely these folks have made that much of an improvement in cost and density.
That much energy stored in a capacitor bank will make Jerry Brukheimer really envious-- every such car out there will explode on impact.
Most houses are only wired for 100 to
Nah, It is 500 discussion threads (Score:2)
Slashdot does 500 discussions on a single news item. In just two days.!!!!!
OK, but... (Score:5, Funny)
Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/ [digitalelite.com]
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Re:How Much Does the Capacitor Cost? (Score:4, Insightful)
You mean like the "electrical energy stations" mentioned in TFA, from which a 5 minute charge may be obtained?
Parent
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You don't. But in general, once demand rises for something and manufacturing processes are in place, the cost begins to fall closer to that of the raw materials. I somehow doubt that the raw materials for these capacitors will be more expensive than Li-Ion and Li-Polymer materials.
Significantly better than batteries.
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This is only a problem if the cost/effort of replacing them is significant. Otherwise, it's part of your normal service schedule.
An 18 ton capacitor? Yeah, it would cost a bit (Score:5, Informative)
So if you want to store about 90 kWh in a bank of those, you'd need anywhwere between 18,000 and 30,000 kg worth of ultra-capacitors. Yes, between 18 and 30 metric _tons_. Not quite a commuter car, you know? I'll also go on a limb and say that buying whole tons of them will cost a pretty penny.
Also, transferring 90 kWh in 5 minutes means 1080kW power. More that 1 MW. So, yeah, I don't think your average power socket can do that. At 2.7V that means 400,000 A, too.
So, basically, it's just snake oil. It ranks up there with the promises to make energy out of water by changing the orbits of electrons in hydrogen. Some fraudster figured that he can get tens of millions of dollars VC to pretend to make such a thing. And given the IQ of some VC these days, they probably will too.
Parent
It's a capacitor (Score:3, Insightful)
In fact, if you RTFP (Read The F***ing Patent), it _is_ a fancy capacitor, plus circuitry to get a constant voltage out of it. In fact, it's downright the most classical kind of a capacitor, with two surfaces separated by a thin dielectric material. Only they use a fine powder to achieve lots of surface.
So, yes, it _
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Regular house current (FYI) (Score:5, Informative)
220V * 30amp = 6,600 watts * 5 minutes = 0.55 kilowatt hours. You're only a few orders of magnitude off from "$9 worth of electricity", specifically 52 kWhs for EEStor's product. To charge 52 kWhs in 5 minutes, you'd need to be chugging through ~600 kW of power, or about 2.7 kiloamps at 220V.
Bye, bye wall plug.
Parent
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
With this method you could even schedule your capacitor to cahrge during the night where electricity is cheaper (at least here in europe).
What are the advantages vs a battery? Well your local Shell station could be running massive capacitors for you and you could just plug-in real quick w
Re:Regular house current (FYI) (Score:5, Interesting)
As far as costs, of course the cost of electricity is going to go up for everyone. However, with transmission lines, you build them (once) and then the power keeps coming. So after the initial investment, you are going to save money over gas. Gas has to be brought in by truck, which costs money in labor and fuel and truck insurance, etc. Then you have pump maintenance, etc which is no longer necessary. On the other end you have a regional distributor who takes a cut, a refiner who takes a cut, a global distributer who takes a cut of the crude oil, and then a producer who takes a cut. Not to mention the people doing the transporting between each of these middle-men.
With electric, you are going to cut out a lot of middle men. The utility, if fossil powered, will buy in large bulk quanities that will be delivered to one location, probably by ship. So, just by moving energy by transmission line we are cutting back on the total energy use required by the country. It's all a big chain reaction.
I hope they can make this thing work.
Parent
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http://www.seeklyrics.com/lyrics/Proclaimers/500-
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Jaj
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Editors used to have recursive macro's to apply -1 moderation to controversial posts, so even if 50 users moderated something up the post would tank.
Today I think it's more benign editor abuse -- they simply MISUSE the "friend or foe" system so they can sometimes publish t
DON'T MOD PARENT UP!!! (Score:3, Funny)
In an discussion under a duped article we have a post that refers to Deja Vu that was modded Redundant! It doesn't get better than this folks!