EEStor passes testing milestone
This just in on the wire. EEStor Inc. says the automated production line built for its new energy storage system “has been proven to meet the requirements for precise chemical delivery, purity control, parameter control and stability.”
The company continues by saying it has completed the initial milestone of certifying the purification, concentration and stability of its key production chemicals, “notably the attainment of 99.9994 per cent purity of its barium nitrate powder.”
The company said the independent third-party testing and analysis was done by Southwest Research Institute Inc. in San Antonio, Texas. It said that with these milestones completed it can now move on to producing its barium titanate powders (on its production line) and powder certification.
Here’s the kicker: The first commercial application of the EESU is intended to be used in electric vehicles under a technology agreement with ZENN Motors Company. EEStor, Inc. remains on track to begin shipping production 15 kilowatt-hour Electrical Energy Storage Units (EESU) to ZENN Motor Company in 2007 for use in their electric vehicles. The production EESU for ZENN Motor Company will function to specification in operating environments as sever as negative 20 to plus 65 degrees Celsius, will weigh less than 100 pounds, and will have ability to be recharged in a matter of minutes.
Perhaps most impressive with the release is that EEStor is now out of the closest and talking about its technology. This is important, because it means it is confident enough to publicly defend the nature and performance of its breakthrough. Hopefully we’ll get more updates like this as the year progresses. It seems as though ZENN Motor Co. (formerly Feel Good Cars) will serve as the initial test market for the real-life performance of these systems.
My big question is, wouldn’t these systems have to go through some kind of major safety review and certification before being installed in commercially available vehicles? Either way, an important step that we’ll all be watching very closely and with great hope and expectations.
Tyler Hamilton is senior energy reporter and columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the cleantech market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper. Tyler can be reached at tyler@cleanbreak.ca
January 17th, 2007 at 5:19 pm
OH MY OH MY!!!
Can it be true???
A friend did a ruff calculation and the 30 C at 3000 V make about 17 pound of TNT.
I guess we all need to stay turned now.
January 17th, 2007 at 6:01 pm
The real question now, of course: Can GM partner with EEStor to create a C-Flex (C for capacitor) engine that recharges the EESU with a biodiesel/cellulosic ethanol-fueled generator?
January 17th, 2007 at 6:36 pm
no need to charge it any more … it is not heavy nor expensive – just put enough of them for 600-800 miles and the driver will need to sleep … and plug in !!!
January 17th, 2007 at 7:47 pm
That’s closer! Should you be able to get 300 to 500 mile between charges, remember with the right Power (Supply) Station you can re-charge in minutes (10 for sure).
For a battery: you can not go to high in voltage and the current is great.
35 KWH times 6 = 210KWatts needed to charge 35 KWH in 10 minutes.
So for a battery it is: 250kWatt power supply divided by 480 volts = 520 amps
For the capacitor: the voltage can be high for an instant
250kWatt power supply divided by 5000 volts = 50 amps
250kWatt power supply divided by 25000 volts = 10 amps
The EEstor said 30 C at 3000 Volts
So your power supply would ramp down to the 3000 volts. You could use high voltages as long as it stays under 3000 volts when charged.
An additional plus for higher voltages will provide greater power with less heat for the same amount of current and lighter cars because wiring will be made smaller and therefore lighter.
This is all good stuff, but first we need to see some on the road. There are the issues of safety, of standardized power stations, what happens if there is an accident and things like that. But the main thing we should not need is any APUs to provide power to power the car like the GM and Ford designs. Should one be going on a long trip, just rent one to pull behind the car. Other wise just stop along the way. There should be 10, 60, and 180 minute charging station with prices to match.
January 18th, 2007 at 9:54 am
I hope the ‘powers that be’ don’t buy it and bury it. They are holding a holy gift for all humanity – if this is true – and they better be responsible.
I wish someone could get an interview with these guys! Maybe they are slowly tweaking and getting more patents to prevent others from taking the idea away too soon.
January 18th, 2007 at 2:16 pm
I was trying to do a back-of-the-envelope calculation to compare what Zenn currently has to what EEStor is offerinc. Zenn uses “6 x 12V Deka” batteries.
Assuming 200 amp-hour batteries, 6 of them would contain 2.4 kW-hrs of energy and would weigh over 400 pounds. EEStor’s battery, on the other hand, weighs 100 pounds and can hold 15 kW-hrs of energy. Not taking into account the 1/4 lower weight of EEStor, that should raise the range from 35 miles to about 219 miles.
Oh, that would be 219 miles at 25 miles per hour.
Stephen
January 18th, 2007 at 2:52 pm
Unfortunately EEstor has never made and will never make the supercapacitor described in the patent, because they ignore a well known physical effect, called “dielectric saturation”.
Barium titanate has been used in capacitors for decades, due to its high dielectric constant:
http://www.avxcorp.com/docs/techinfo/mlcmat.pdf
However, the dielectric constant drops as the electric field strength increases:
Phys. Rev. 1947
At a hypothetical field of 3500 Volts over a thickness of 12.76 micrometers, as proposed in the patent, the dielectric constant of barium titanate would be orders of magnitude lower than the claimed 18500, reducing capacity and energy density by the same factor…
This has been discussed in more detail by Anatoly Moskalev on December 24th, 2006 at
teslamotors blog
January 18th, 2007 at 3:06 pm
I am not sure – I am just speculating here, but I think they are planning on selling latencies for others to manufacture. I think they just what to receive income and they want to just keep on doing the inventing thing. The other option is that they have opened to all Cap manufactures (and others) a new and different way to make capacitors, meaning others may be able to follow but by their own inventions with the same or better results.
As to the powers to be, the best thing is they are NOT public, meaning someone could just come along and buy the Stock and them out.
January 18th, 2007 at 3:20 pm
You have missed 2 things. One is the batteries are lead acid and ONLY 72 volts. The second is the batteries desire to release its energy (internal resistance). What was talked about for the EEstor Cap is 3000 volts and the internal resistance is close to nothing; therefore that same car may meet your distance range but it will go faster because there is more power for the motor.
By the way you can improve the car with Altair’s LiIon batteries, get from high storage, and 4, 5, or 6 times the power. The car would run faster with these batteries also.
As for whether the EEstor can do it, well we will have to keep on watching and I assume you are correct on whether that cap will ever be build. But let’s say they do not meet their total goal; it still might work at some level.
January 18th, 2007 at 3:53 pm
I have seen a number of posts on several blogs disputing the barium titanate energy density numbers. On the most recent EEstor patent that uses plastic instead of ceramic for the plates, they seem to indicate the unit would have 32,000 plates, each with super-thin barium titanate coating, electrodes, etc. So at 52Kw, each plate would possibly be holding a potential of…a little over 1 watt? I know nothing about the physics of anything, including capacitors, but is it possible that these low-voltage, individual plates would not cause the large electric field/dropping dielectric constant? Maybe the major innovation would be more the barium titanate deposition technology and ability to sandwich together and control all these ultra-thin plates. (Please don’t flame me – I admit to knowing nothing – just enlighten me!)
January 18th, 2007 at 4:06 pm
This was kind of what I was thinking also. I have not seen the patent, but it does look like a lot (32000) of low voltage caps. The problem is that it would have to start with about:
30 C times 32000 = 960000 farad
I’m not an expert either, so is that possible?
January 18th, 2007 at 4:45 pm
I have noticed they refer to revolutionary”architecture” rather than technology in their (few and far between) info releases.
January 18th, 2007 at 4:58 pm
Any multilayer ceramic capacitor has a large number of plates, as the name indicates…
Please have a look at
Ceramic capacitors and
http://www.avxcorp.com/docs/techinfo/mlcmat.pdf
January 18th, 2007 at 5:12 pm
Thanks, I read both – clear as mud due to my lack of any knowledge in this area – but I appreciate the effort.
January 19th, 2007 at 9:35 am
Here is EEStor’s patent, courtesy of google patents:
http://tinyurl.com/2mcpjw
Stephen
January 19th, 2007 at 11:10 am
If I understand you than EEstor never made a working prototype. They just went out and wasted money on a production facility that will never be used? They also announced that production quantities will be delivered this year. I would rather wait for their products rather than put my faith in an incoherent rejection of the product, as posted by Anatoly Moskalev. Who is he anyway?
January 19th, 2007 at 1:28 pm
Anatoly Moskalev is Professor at the Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute.
January 19th, 2007 at 3:51 pm
I would hardly say that Prof. Moskalev’s comments are incoherent. Maybe English is not his first language, but the meaning is there, if only you try to go beyond the lazy languagism impulse.
He says current supercaps can store 30 Wh/kg, and this does not compare to Li-ion at 200 Wh/kg or nano Li-ion at 100 Wh/kg. Supercaps have a long way to go to reach Li-ion, and their limit due to quantum tunneling is 200 Wh/kg.
This sounds reasonable to me. Where he goes wrong is to assume an electric car needs 350 KWh per charge, because gasoline cars fill up on 350 KWh at the gas station (10 gallons).
He forgets to include the energy source-to-wheel efficiency of 16% for internal combustion, and 93% for electric vehicles. Therefore, you only need to fill up with about 50 KWh at the electric filling station, and this can be done in 15 minutes with nano-Li-ion batteries and current connector technologies (400 amps at 500 volts). Not to mention that 90% of EV owners will be charging at home and not at the electric station.
January 19th, 2007 at 3:52 pm
There is a newer patent that describes polymer instead of ceramic plates. I don’t remember where I accessed it. Can anyone find it?
January 20th, 2007 at 11:14 am
A search of USPTO.gov shows only one patent assigned to EEStor. The search also shows a published application that is a continuation of that patent with claims numbered 17 thru 40. Are you referring to something patented by someone else?
January 20th, 2007 at 4:48 pm
Does anyone know the investment relationship between KPCB and EEStor ie. is the $3m mentioned a seed round or a Series-A? Thank-you
Dinesh
January 20th, 2007 at 8:49 pm
My understanding is that Kleiner has put in a lot more than 3 million into Eestor.
January 21st, 2007 at 2:01 am
Here is an update on EEStor supercapacitors by Prof. Anatoly Moskalev (January 20th, 2007):
Teslamotors blog
and by Roger Pham (January 20th, 2007):
greencarcongress
January 22nd, 2007 at 7:20 pm
There is no shortage of money for Eestor. Very very deep pockets are involved and in my conversations with people close to EEstor this is a serious attempt to come up with very promising technology. None fo us are likely qualified to comment on what Eestor is doing. For those who think they might be able to pull it off buy sahres in Znn on the Canadian venture exchange since they have the exclusive rights to the battery. We will just have to wait and see.
February 21st, 2007 at 12:53 am
Ever walk under a high tension line and wonder what the equivalent quantity of TNT would be?
February 22nd, 2007 at 11:45 am
well this is a great day as we have a running rare earth motor 1 amp in to run and the balance of 100 amps out. motor speed is about 2000 rpm with a usable second shaft speed of 500 rpm. we have just passed the 2 week run mark and no problems. we could infact team up and use this to power a car, house, boat or truck. seems to me the future is about to come to the oil companies now !
our press release will not go out for a few weeks. but with 100 million in funding inplace we can have units in place by the end of this year. our units will be 20″x20″x36″ and come in flavors from contractor to megawatt units. no need to recharge just drive !!!
July 14th, 2008 at 9:56 am
wait. you just commented about a free energy machine, completely and blatantly defying the laws of all known physics? please explain where the other 100 amps are coming from. they don’t come from thin air, and i think anyone on here knows that, because they’ve passed junior high physics.
July 14th, 2008 at 4:33 pm
If you areinterested, the Brooklyn bridge is still for sale.