10 September, 2007
Hi Bill,
Sent:
Sunday, September 09, 2007 7:40 PM
Subject: RE: more powerful capacitors?
Pretty
interesting. The article is right on in saying this is a game changer if
it actually works. Kleiner Perkins, one of the largest blue chip Venture
Capitalists in the world obviously believes it can be made to work. I
hope it does. It would make electric vehicles much more competitive.
Love
Fred.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office"
/>
P.S.
Ccing John Horner who follows alternative energy much more closely than I
do.
Interesting. JD
Battery-like device could power electric cars
Story Highlights
New battery could breathe new life into electric cars
Current electric cars require overnight charging and drive about 50 miles
Ultracapacitor stores and releases energy quickly
Company building device a long way from having a working prototype
An
Austin-based startup called EEStor promised "technologies for replacement
of electrochemical batteries," meaning a motorist could plug in a car for
five minutes and drive 500 miles roundtrip between Dallas and Houston
without gasoline.
By
contrast, some plug-in hybrids on the horizon would require motorists to
charge their cars in a wall outlet overnight and promise only 50 miles of
gasoline-free commute. And the popular hybrids on the road today still
depend heavily on fossil fuels.
"It's
a paradigm shift," said Ian Clifford, chief executive of Toronto-based
ZENN Motor Co., which has licensed EEStor's invention. "The Achilles' heel
to the electric car industry has been energy storage. By all rights, this
would make internal combustion engines unnecessary."
Clifford's company bought rights to EEStor's technology in August 2005 and
expects EEStor to start shipping the battery replacement later this year
for use in ZENN Motor's short-range, low-speed vehicles.
The
technology also could help invigorate the renewable-energy sector by
providing efficient, lightning-fast storage for solar power, or, on a
small scale, a flash-charge for cell phones and laptops.
Skeptics, though, fear the claims stretch the bounds of existing
technology to the point of alchemy.
"We've
been trying to make this type of thing for 20 years and no one has been
able to do it," said Robert Hebner, director of the University of Texas
Center for Electromechanics. "Depending on who you believe, they're at or
beyond the limit of what is possible."
EEStor's secret ingredient is a material sandwiched between thousands of
wafer-thin metal sheets, like a series of foil-and-paper gum wrappers
stacked on top of each other. Charged particles stick to the metal sheets
and move quickly across EEStor's proprietary material.
The
result is an ultracapacitor, a battery-like device that stores and
releases energy quickly.
Batteries rely on chemical reactions to store energy but can take hours to
charge and release energy. The simplest capacitors found in computers and
radios hold less energy but can charge or discharge instantly.
Ultracapacitors take the best of both, stacking capacitors to increase
capacity while maintaining the speed of simple capacitors.
Hebner
said vehicles require bursts of energy to accelerate, a task better suited
for capacitors than batteries.
"The
idea of getting rid of the batteries and putting in capacitors is to get
more power back and get it back faster," Hebner said.
But he
said nothing close to EEStor's claim exists today.
For
years, EEStor has tried to fly beneath the radar in the competitive
industry for alternative energy, content with a phone-book listing and a
handful of cryptic press releases.
Yet
the speculation and skepticism have continued, fueled by the company's
original assertion of making batteries obsolete -- a claim that still
resonates loudly for a company that rarely speaks, including declining an
interview with The Associated Press.
The
deal with ZENN Motor and a $3 million investment by the venture capital
group Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, which made big-payoff early bets
on companies like Google Inc. and Amazon.com Inc., hint that EEStor may be
on the edge of a breakthrough technology, a "game changer" as Clifford put
it.
ZENN
Motor's public reports show that it so far has invested $3.8 million in
and has promised another $1.2 million if the ultracapacitor company meets
a third-party testing standard and then delivers a product.
Clifford said his company consulted experts and did a "tremendous amount
of due diligence" on EEStor's innovation.
EEStor's founders have a track record. Richard D. Weir and Carl Nelson
worked on disk-storage technology at IBM Corp. in the 1990s before forming
EEStor in 2001. The two have acquired dozens of patents over two decades.
Neil
Dikeman of Jane Capital Partners, an investor in clean technologies, said
the nearly $7 million investment in EEStor pales compared with other
energy storage endeavors, where investment has averaged $50 million to
$100 million.
Yet
curiosity is unusually high, Dikeman said, thanks to the investment by a
prominent venture capital group and EEStor's secretive nature.
"The
EEStor claims are around a process that would be quite revolutionary if
they can make it work," Dikeman said.
Previous attempts to improve ultracapacitors have focused on improving the
metal sheets by increasing the surface area where charges can attach.
EEStor
is instead creating better nonconductive material for use between the
metal sheets, using a chemical compound called barium titanate. The
question is whether the company can mass-produce it.
ZENN
Motor pays EEStor for passing milestones in the production process, and
chemical researchers say the strength and functionality of this material
is the only thing standing between EEStor and the holy grail of
energy-storage technology.
Joseph
Perry and the other researchers he oversees at Georgia Tech have used the
same material to double the amount of energy a capacitor can hold. Perry
says EEstor seems to be claiming an improvement of more than 400-fold, yet
increasing a capacitor's retention ability often results in decreased
strength of the materials.
"They're not saying a lot about how they're making these things," Perry
said. "With these materials (described in the patent), that is a
challenging process to carry out in a defect-free fashion."
Perry
is not alone in his doubts. An ultracapacitor industry leader, Maxwell
Technologies Inc., has kept a wary eye on EEStor's claims and offers a
laundry list of things that could go wrong.
Among
other things, the ultracapacitors described in EEStor's patent operate at
extremely high voltage, 10 times greater than those Maxwell manufactures,
and won't work with regular wall outlets, said Maxwell spokesman Mike Sund.
He said capacitors could crack while bouncing down the road, or slowly
discharge after a dayslong stint in the airport parking lot, leaving the
driver stranded.
Until
EEStor produces a final product, Perry said he joins energy professionals
and enthusiasts alike in waiting to see if the company can own up to its
six-word promise and banish the battery to recycling bins around the
world.
"I am
skeptical but I'd be very happy to be proved wrong," Perry said.
Copyright 2007 The
Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be
published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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