2010年7月29日星期四

Can Battery get Breakthrough?

Two years ago ,a Texas accession says it can achieve a new ultracapacitor adeptness adjustment to adapt the electrochemical batteries in accumulated from cars to laptops.A backdoor Texas startup developing what some are calling a “game changing” energy-storage technology broke its blackout this week. It arise that it has able two accumulation milestones and is on clue to abode systems this year for use in electric vehicles.EEStor’s advancing goal, according to credible documents, is to “replace the electrochemical battery” in about every application, from hybrid-electric and pure-electric cars to laptop computers to utility-scale electricity storage.

The accession angrily claims that its system, a affectionate of battery-ultracapacitor admixture based on barium-titanate powders, will abominably exhausted the best lithium-ion batteries on the exchange in acceding of action density, price, accusation time, and safety. Batter for pound, it will aswell haversack 10 times the chaw gateway laptop battery of lead-acid Dell inspiron 1721 adjustment at bisected the bulk and afterwards the accusation for baleful abstracts or chemicals, according to the company.

The implications are astronomic and, for many, unbelievable. Such a beforehand about KD476 has the abeyant to radically transform a busline across already flirting with an electric renaissance, beforehand the accomplishment of alternating action sources such as wind and sun, and admission the adeptness and adherence of adeptness grids–all while accomplishing an oil-addicted America’s chance for action security.

The beforehand could aswell affectation a bribery to next-generation lithium-ion makers such as Watertown, MA-based A123Systems, which is animate on a basic admixture accumulator adjustment for General Motors, and Reno, NV-based Altair Nanotechnologies, a supplier to all-electric car maker Phoenix Motorcars.

Much like capacitors, ultracapacitors affluence action in an electrical acreage amidst two anxiously spaced conductors, or plates. When voltage is applied, an electric accusation builds up on ceremony plate.Ultracapacitors acquire abounding advantages over adequate electrochemical batteries as Dell inspiron 1721 battery, Sony pcga bp71, Toshiba pa3420u 1brs. Unlike batteries, “ultracaps” can actually blemish and absolution a accusation at top ante and in a about amaranthine aeon with little degradation.

Where they’re weak, however, is with action storage. Compared with lithium-ion batteries, high-end ultracapacitors on the exchange today affluence 25 times below action per pound.This is why ultracapacitors, with their adeptness to absolution quick jolts of electricity and to blemish this action just as fast, are ideal today as a accessory to Dell 1721 adjustment or armament beef in electric-drive vehicles. The adeptness admission that ultracaps board can abetment with stop-start acceleration, and the action is added calmly recaptured through adorning braking–an across in which ultracap maker Maxwell Technologies has credible cogent results.

Regarding applicable about temperature, leakage, and basin brittleness, Weir did not acceptance to an e-mail allure him how EEStor overcomes such issues.Nonetheless, the accession has some solid backing. Its axle has admiring Morton Topfer, aloft animality ambassador of Dell and drillmaster to Michael Dell.The accession is aswell backed by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, a venture-capital absolute that has an arresting clue record: it bogus ancient and abominable accustomed bets on Google, Amazon.com, and Sun Microsystems, a allotment of others. Whether EEStor can analyze that success to the action across charcoal to be seen.