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This looks interesting...
Unfortunately it doesn't onebox well at all. They're a company working on supercapacitor technology that they claim "is real today" (though they aren't selling any products quite yet) that gives energy storage comparable to lithium batteries, but without any of the stuff that makes lithium batteries scary, and capable of charging an order of magnitude faster.
This could be a real game-changer if it turns out to be legitimate.
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@masonwheeler said in Zap & Go:
without any of the stuff that makes lithium batteries scary
I seem to recall piercing a charged capacitor has the same result as piercing a charged lithium battery.
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@masonwheeler said in Zap & Go:
without any of the stuff that makes lithium batteries scary
I seem to recall piercing a charged capacitor has the same result as piercing a charged lithium battery.
Yeah but a supercapacitor can't be pierced except by a kryptonite nail
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@masonwheeler Naw, I understood the reference. But seriously, I call BS on their claims of safety.
I can't find the article anymore, but the German tech magazine c't reported about a guy who turned on his new PC only to hear a muffled "boom" and the PC shutting off.
He then opened his PC and found a hole with a diameter of about 2 cm on the board due to a literally blown capacitor.
ASUS replaced the motherboard without further questions asked, at least.
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@masonwheeler Naw, I understood the reference. But seriously, I call BS on their claims of safety.
I can't find the article anymore, but the German tech magazine c't reported about a guy who turned on his new PC only to hear a muffled "boom" and the PC shutting off.
He then opened his PC and found a hole with a diameter of about 2 cm on the board due to a literally blown capacitor.
ASUS replaced the motherboard without further questions asked, at least.
Building off of this: @masonwheeler
Energy density poses hazards. For lithium batteries it shows up as flammability (as the energy is stored chemically). For capacitors, it's electrostatic. Literally--good old Coloumb's law puts stress on things due to the immense electric fields involved with packing that much charge close together. Those pesky physical laws...
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@Benjamin-Hall Yes, I understand this. Wherever there is energy stored, the potential for catastrophic release of that energy also exists. But what I was referring to is that this doesn't also have nasty hyper-toxic stuff like fluorine-based electrolytes.
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@masonwheeler said in Zap & Go:
@Benjamin-Hall Yes, I understand this. Wherever there is energy stored, the potential for catastrophic release of that energy also exists. But what I was referring to is that this doesn't also have nasty hyper-toxic stuff like fluorine-based electrolytes.
True. How the relative risks balance out, I'm not sure. But it's an inherent property of risk that you can't truly eliminate it--you can only shift it somewhere you don't care about for that application.
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@masonwheeler said in Zap & Go:
But what I was referring to is that this doesn't also have nasty hyper-toxic stuff like fluorine-based electrolytes.
Explosion risk isn't necessarily better. Best we can say is to look at the specifics, how they're being used, how they're put together, etc.
I wonder what they're using. There's been a lot of interest in things like graphene for various components of both batteries and capacitors, but it's not an area I pay attention to. (I notice a few things from the stuff that the people studying these things like to crow about in the WTF-U organization-wide newsletter, but I mostly just think “so you've got the spare money to have a press officer in the institute”.
)
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I wonder what they're using. There's been a lot of interest in things like graphene for various components of both batteries and capacitors, but it's not an area I pay attention to.
That's probably it; the page says their capacitors are made of "carbon."
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Their 'technology' page is nearly empty of information, just vague puffery.
As an EE, the things that jump out is that they seem to claim storage density improvement compared to other supercapacitors, not lithium batteries. And that the major improvements compared to other tech are just to life and charging times.
Historically supercapacitors have had a huge problem with leakage, I.E. that the self discharge is abysmal compared to normal batteries. Unless they've fixed that then the uses will be limited. No-one is going to want a drill 'battery' that goes flat by itself in three days.
I'll be interested to see what actual products are emitted from this.
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@masonwheeler said in Zap & Go:
That's probably it; the page says their capacitors are made of "carbon."
Then their designs will be about putting layers of graphene very close together, as that's a great way of boosting capacitance (and graphene layers tend to have far fewer surface flaws than most alternatives) and then having a whole bunch of them in series so that the actual voltage across any individual layer isn't too much (because the breakdown voltage won't be very high). I wonder what they plan to use as a dielectric; it's not something I know much about…
With all that carbon about, the result will likely be quite flammable.
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@Cursorkeys said in Zap & Go:
Historically supercapacitors have had a huge problem with leakage, I.E. that the self discharge is abysmal compared to normal batteries. Unless they've fixed that then the uses will limited. No-one is going to want a drill 'battery' that goes flat by itself in three days.
Depends on the application as well. Nobody cares these days about cell phone batteries being flat that fast. Similarly there's probably plenty of applications where having to put it in the charger 15 mins before use rather than storing it charged is not a problem.
And as I understand the lifetime of supercapacitors is mostly in charging cycles and not very much in years, particularly when kept uncharged.
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@Cursorkeys said in Zap & Go:
No-one is going to want a drill 'battery' that goes flat by itself in three days.
But if you can charge it in seconds would that really be a problem?
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@masonwheeler said in Zap & Go:
technology that they claim "is real today"
Unless it's the same handwaving that brought" us that wristwatch that projects the phone screen on your arm.
I've been waiting for this super capacitor to come out since I was in elementary school....
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@Tsaukpaetra said in Zap & Go:
I've been waiting for this super capacitor to come out since I was in elementary school....
Depending on how old you currently are, that could mean any number of different things.
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@masonwheeler said in Zap & Go:
@Tsaukpaetra said in Zap & Go:
I've been waiting for this super capacitor to come out since I was in elementary school....
Depending on how old you currently are, that could mean any number of different things.
In high school I was powering my "portable" laptop with four D-size batteries. I was also immensely proud that I could dual-boot straight to DOS or Windows 95 (the latter being used outside of class because of how long it took to actually get to a reasonably operating state on that hardware.
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Depends on the application as well. Nobody cares these days about cell phone batteries being flat that fast. Similarly there's probably plenty of applications where having to put it in the charger 15 mins before use rather than storing it charged is not a problem.
Sure it would be application dependant, but phone use is likely out of the question. Lithium Polymer batteries have an energy per unit area of about 200 Wh/Kg, generally good supercapacitors are about 10 Wh/Kg. Unless they've increased the energy per unit area by an order of magnitude then it simply won't store enough energy to power a smartphone, your battery life would be half an hour!
And as I understand the lifetime of supercapacitors is mostly in charging cycles and not very much in years, particularly when kept uncharged.
That's what I understand too, except that the electrolyte is slowly lost though the seals so they will eventually dry out even if they aren't being used.
@Tsaukpaetra said in Zap & Go:
But if you can charge it in seconds would that really be a problem?
I'd say so, you are usually using a cordless power tool because there isn't any mains at the job site. You could argue that Milwaukee could make a van charger, but the cigarette lighter socket is generally on a 10A fuse, so it would take 3/4 of an hour to charge your drill battery!
I guess they could make one with jump leads so you can go directly on the battery but that doesn't seem likely for liability.
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@Cursorkeys said in Zap & Go:
@Tsaukpaetra said in Zap & Go:
But if you can charge it in seconds would that really be a problem?
I'd say so, you are usually using a cordless power tool because there isn't any mains at the job site.
I'm usually using a cordless power tool because I don't want to drag a cord behind me inside my house. (Again, application dependent.)
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@Cursorkeys said in Zap & Go:
@Tsaukpaetra said in Zap & Go:
But if you can charge it in seconds would that really be a problem?
I'd say so, you are usually using a cordless power tool because there isn't any mains at the job site.
I'm usually using a cordless power tool because I don't want to drag a cord behind me inside my house. (Again, application dependent.)
I have a cordless drill that I use a couple of times a year. As a result, the battery is pretty crap and needs a few hours of charging for each small job I need it for. Something I could plug in for a couple of minutes to get enough power for what I need to do and leave discharged the rest of the time would be much more useful
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@Cursorkeys said in Zap & Go:
I'd say so, you are usually using a cordless power tool because there isn't any mains at the job site. You could argue that Milwaukee could make a van charger, but the cigarette lighter socket is generally on a 10A fuse, so it would take 3/4 of an hour to charge your drill battery!
I guess they could make one with jump leads so you can go directly on the battery but that doesn't seem likely for liability.That's just an ecosystem problem. They could easily build charging stations into the van, rather than having a carry-along charger that goes into the cigarette lighter socket.
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@Rhywden Looks like a dead angel carrying a big gun.
