Yeah so frustrating seeing a need and we have the answer pity Samsung and Elon didn't have good enough researchers when they wanted
Together with scientists from Monash University and the graph specialist Ionic Industries, which was founded in 2014, both located in Melbourne, Skeleton developed a nanoporous graph electrode that made the enormous capacity jump possible.
Links included with photos ETC
Ultra-Caps
battery manufacturer Skeleton planning to manufacture in Saxony
Enlarge image
This is how the stores will be built, which will be manufactured in Saxony in the future. (Photo: Skeleton)
by Wolfgang Kempkens
The Estonian company Skeleton produces its high-performance energy storage from next year near Dresden. Germany is not a popular location.
Ultra-caps - these are capacitors that can store a lot of electricity. The world's most powerful ones will come from Großröhrsdorf near Dresden. There, the Estonian company Skeleton is currently building a production facility. Five million stores are to be built annually, ten times as many as in the pilot plant in Estonia. Already in January the production in Saxony will start.
The company is investing around ten million euros in its location. Skeleton can afford these issues loose. The confidence in the technology is so great that investors have made 26.7 million euros available so far.
Large capacitance thanks to nanoporous graph electrode
In fact, the technique is convincing. Together with scientists from Monash University and the graph specialist Ionic Industries, which was founded in 2014, both located in Melbourne, Skeleton developed a nanoporous graph electrode that made the enormous capacity jump possible.
The second electrode consists of a metallic foil. In between is an isolator. The wafer-thin sandwich is rolled up into a cylinder with a diameter of 60 millimeters, the storage is finished. Most of these cells are integrated into a box.
Thus, while high-power energy storage units will be produced near Dresden, German companies have lost their faith in the fact that complete batteries can be manufactured economically. All battery manufacturers only fit cells from the Far East. From the production of cells Daimler was last exited and had adjusted the production at its subsidiary Li-Tec in Kamenz, Saxony end of 2015 .
Charge or unload within seconds
While batteries are slow to pick up and release electricity, Ultra-Caps is fast-paced. Within seconds they can be charged or unloaded. However, they are not able to replace batteries completely because they have a much higher capacity, based on volume.
Nevertheless, they are becoming more and more important. The French company Flying Whales (flying whales), developed the huge cargo airships , uses them as support for the on-board batteries, if the short term particularly much power is needed, such as for lifting heavy loads. The European Space Agency (ESA) is deploying it in satellites from 2018 onwards. In Formula 1 cars, they temporarily stored brake energy.
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In Great Britain, Skeleton, in collaboration with Adgero from France, tested a hybrid truck that was used as a delivery vehicle in the city. In this vehicle, equipped with a diesel and electric motor, five 160-volt Ultrium capacitor modules from Skeleton are installed, which store the braking energy in the form of electrical energy. When accelerating, they supply the electric motor so that the truck gets faster on the road.
ARTICLE 2
Airships are back. And this time they use graphene
By Jamie Carter July 02, 2016 World of tech
Helium-filled Zeppelins will stay airborne 24/7
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Over three million people travel by air every day, but do the 10,000 aircraft in the skies as you read this represent a 'golden age' for aviation? Surely that belongs to the period between the two world wars when airships – the world's first passenger airlines – cruised around the skies conducting both luxury tours and scheduled services.
That was until New Jersey's Hindenburg disaster of 1937 crushed public confidence in airships, and they sank into history.
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But airships are back. No longer a steampunk fantasy, there are advanced plans to fill the skies with helium-filled lighter-than-air machines for travel, cargo and even as emergency mobile phone masts.
Airliner 10 is 'the world's biggest airline'. Credit: Hybrid Air Vehicles
What's changed?
So what's changed since 1937? Back then airships used highly flammable hydrogen, whereas now they rely on helium, which is completely inert and safe.
"It's also about modern materials and fabrics - the old 800ft airships had metal lattice works internal structure," says Hwfa Gwyn, Chief Financial Officer at Hybrid Air Vehicles (HAV), which has created the Airlander 10.
"Our vehicle is much shorter, much lighter with a pressure-stabilised hull of helium air, pressurised by a fan and valve system, but no other internal structure."
At 92m long, Airliner is still bigger than a Boeing 747 and can fly for as much as five days without landing. "We can fly three times further than a helicopter and carry many more people – 50 instead of 16 – in the Airlander 10, and do it for about a third of the cost," says Gwyn, who describes it as a "weightless plane" that gets 100% of its lift from that helium gas, which expands as it rises, and is completely safe.
"You get a greater lift from hydrogen, but because of the risk we've never used it," he adds. To fill Airlander 10 with helium costs about £250,000, with only about 25% of it lost each year.
From next year Airlander 10 will be used for advertising, geo-surveys, offshore movement of people, delivering up to 50 tons of humanitarian aid or commercial cargo, coastguard search & rescue and, of course, by the military for 'eye in the sky' surveillance.
Flying Whales' LCA60T uses graphene-based ultracapacitor batteries. Credit: Flying Whales
Vertical take-off
At its heart, the new drive for airships is about logistics – and a massive upgrade on the cargo-carrying abilities of helicopters.
French company Flying Whales has developed a 140m-long airship, the 60-ton LCA60T, which will be manned by two pilots (though autonomous control is possible, too) while a third looks after loading and unloading cargo into its 75m-long suspended cargo hold.
It can take off vertically and travel at up to 100 kilometres/hour (or, at least, it will when Flying Whales launches a prototype in 2019).
"We're designing the LCA60T to be able to deliver a wind turbine to the side of a mountain, help transport electricity pylons or pre-fabricated buildings across undeveloped terrain and transport large aircraft components from one supply chain location to the next." says Sébastien Bougon, CEO of Flying Whales. The project is primarily for the French timber industry, though it's also funded by the China Aviation Industry General Aircraft (CAIGA) company.
Flying with graphene
The rigid-frame LCA60T also has a rather special electric propulsion system that uses graphene. Its hybrid electric power system uses graphene-based ultracapacitors – batteries – that give the airship a boost when it needs to hover, lift cargo, and stabilise itself in bad weather.
"Our ultracapacitor technology driving the airships' electric power systems will ensure manoeuvrability and control, such as vertical take-off and landing ability, which will be vital for heavy-lift industrial applications," says Taavi Madiberk, CEO and co-founder of Skeleton Technologies, which manufacturers the graphene-based ultracapacitors.
Industrial production of the LCA60T is expected to start in 2020.
The LCA60T could be used for building houses in remote areas. Credit: Flying Whales
Why do we need airships?
Aircraft need runways. While it's hard enough for busy airports to get permission for extra runways, it's even more difficult to construct them in remote areas. That poses problems for companies wanting to work in areas without roads, rail or navigable rivers; airships could make it possible to more easily mine for important metals and minerals, harvest trees, or build houses, wind farms, solar panel plants or construct electricity pylons in off-the-beaten track regions.
Airships could also be used to take humanitarian aid to earthquake or flood-hit areas, which are often the worst affected and least assisted.
"Aid very quickly gets into hub airports, but the difficulty is getting it to where it's really needed because roads and rail can get destroyed, so you're reliant on helicopters," says Gwyn. "Our vehicle can land on any reasonably flat surface and carry up to 10 tons."
Airships could also be used to bring communications to disaster-struck areas, or even to float extra mobile masts above Glastonbury Festival or sports stadiums. "It wouldn't rival something like Google's Project Loon – that's about low-cost internet – but for short-term, high value connectivity, Airlander10 could work very well," adds Gwyn.
The LMH-1 uses air cushions to land on anything. Credit: Lockheed Martin
Skunk in the sky
Although its Skunk Works plant in California has so far only produced a smaller prototype - shown at the Paris Air Show - Lockheed Martin claims that its LMH-1 Hybrid Airship will stretch to 91m and carry 23 tons of cargo - as well as 19 passengers - while also burning less than one tenth the fuel of a helicopter per ton.
Based on its earlier prototype the P-791, Lockheed Martin is hoping that the LMH-1 can one day be scaled-up as required for industrial applications to cope with as much as 500-tons of cargo.
Because it uses air cushions to land, the LMH-1 can land on rocky areas or even on water, so it's well suited to rough areas. The LMH-1 is being sold by Hybrid Enterprises using the hashtag #noroadsnoproblem. It's planned for 2018.
Zeppelin already offer short pleasure flights in airships from Friedrichshafen, Germany. Credit: Zeppelin/Michael Haefner
Winging it
For now, airship engineers are all at prototype stage, but the competition does look intense enough to herald a new age of airships.
As well as Flying Whales, Lockheed Martin and the Airliner 10, there are rival airships in development in Russia and Brazil. RosAeroSystems is promising the Aerostatic Transport Aircraft of the New Type (ATLANT) hybrid cargo-and-passenger airship, which takes off vertically and is being touted for VIP tourism and as an 'air yacht', though also as a way of transporting 60 tons of cargo up to 2000 km.
Meanwhile, Airship do Brasil already has a crewed airship that can take three tons. Future 140m-long iterations could carry 30 tons, probably for hydroelectric turbines, pylons and blades for wind turbines into the Amazon rainforest.
The future of airships
Though they promise to open-up the skies to truly global trade, airships are likely to be used first for something a little gentler.
"Airships have different flight properties and flight dynamics, but the uses for airships will be as varied as they are for fixed-wing aircraft," says Gwyn, who expects a £50 billion market across the next 20 years spread across commercial and military markets.
"But the first uses are likely to be in leisure and advertising." If you want to get ahead of the curve you can take a short flight in a Zeppelin now in Friedrichshafen, Germany.
Article 3
Flying Whales and Skeletons: the next generation of large capacity airships coming soon
July 6, 2016 | Filed under: Air Freight,Breaking News | Posted by: Charles Pauka
/metas
A new European partnership aims to ensure that graphene ultracapacitor technology powers the next generation of large, heavy-lift airships for industrial applications in China and France.
Europe’s leading ultracapacitor manufacturer Skeleton Technologies will join French firm Flying Whales’ program to build a 60-tonne large capacity airship, or LCA60T, for the global transport market.
The main advantage of the LCA60T will be its ability to transport heavy and oversized cargo of up to 60 tonnes either in its 75m-long hold or underslung, at speeds of 100 km/h, with a range of several thousand kilometres per day.
The helium-filled, rigid-structure airship will be capable of winching to pick up and unload cargo while hovering, at a fraction of the cost of a heavy-lift helicopter, and for much heavier loads. Without the need to make conventional take-offs and landings, energy consumption via its hybrid electric propulsion system will be low.
Skeleton Technologies will join the program to help design and build hybrid propulsion for the LCA60T’s electric power systems. Average operational power is expected to be approximately 1.5 MW with the company’s graphene-based ultracapacitors assisting to cover the additional 2 MW peaks for hovering, lifting and stabilisation in reasonable and turbulent environments.
Flying Whales CEO Sébastien Bougon said of the program:
“A key advantage of the LCA60T is that it will not require an airport or any kind of runway to operate, opening up new markets across the world for industries that require heavy-lift or oversize cargo options, across terrain lacking in infrastructure.
“We’re designing the LCA60T to transport logging timber from remote locations, but that also means being able to deliver large items like wind turbines or electricity pylons in one piece to the side of a mountain, for example. It could also move prefabricated houses or building modules across undeveloped terrain or transport large aircraft components from one supply chain location to the next.
“The airship’s hybrid electric power propulsion delivers a minimal environmental footprint at a fraction of the cost of current solutions, if such solutions even exist.”
Skeleton Technologies CEO and co-founder Taavi Madiberk commented:
“Our ultracapacitor technology driving the airships’ electric power systems will ensure maneuverability and control, such as vertical take-off and landing ability, which will be vital for heavy-lift industrial applications.
“The large capacity airship programme is initially focused on addressing the specific industrial requirements for the timber industry in France, but it also has the potential to connect landlocked regions across the world to the global economy.
“Airship technology has the potential to be a game-changer, assisting economic development for industries constrained by a lack of infrastructure in a carbon-constrained world.”
The program is part of the French Government’s “Nouvelle France Industrielle” plans for future transport, with the country’s forestry agency highlighting the need for LCA60T to extract timber cargo.
Last year Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang and French Prime Minister Manuel Valls oversaw the signing of a cooperation and investment framework agreement between Flying Whales and the China Aviation Industry General Aircraft (AVIC General) company, which is to become a Flying Whales significant shareholder.
Mr Bougon says that other potential applications could improve freight and logistics in remote areas in parts of Africa where business development is hindered by a lack of transport infrastructure, including shipments of humanitarian aid or other urgent supplies. For that purpose, Morocco will become the ‘third parent country’ of Flying Whales.
The international shareholding company is leading a consortium of about 30 companies and labs to cover the research and development, engineering, industrialisation and manufacturing phases of the programme.
Industrial production is expected to start in 2021
(20min delay)