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First Sale of Eden’s Nano-Carbon Fibres to a Battery Manufacturer for Commercial Application
Eden Energy Ltd (“Eden”) has made its first commercial sale of its carbon nanotubes (CNT) and carbon nanofibres (CNF) to an industrial battery manufacturer.
The sale followed the testing by the battery manufacturer of the suitability of Eden’s nano-carbon fibres in its batteries, which include a wide range of rechargeable industrial batteries including re-chargeable vehicle batteries.
They advertise that a very small quantity of carbon nanotubes added to material in the battery, dramatically increases the storage capacity of the battery and significantly reduces the time taken to recharge the battery.
Whilst the first sale was of only a relatively small quantity of carbon, it is nevertheless understood to be sufficient for possibly up to 1000 batteries, but most importantly is confirmation from the market of the commercial acceptability of Eden’s carbon nano-products for electrical applications.
I first saw the mention of the CSIRO UltraBattery quite a few years ago now, here is an article on it and how it works, it is basically very similar to the old lead acid battery except they have modified one of the electrodes and added a super capacitor, this means that the lead acid battery can now be fast charged, something that lead acid batteries don't really like! they like a slow charge, well that was back then, things have changed and I also believe they can store more power for the same size and weight.
The UltraBattery has turned the conventional lead-acid battery — a 150 year-old energy-storage system — into a dynamic technology for storing electricity and powering vehicles. The challenge
Cost
Finding cost effective and efficient ways to store and deliver energy, when it is needed, is the holy grail of energy. Our response
Investing in new battery technologies
As part of a global partnership, the battery system was developed by CSIRO in Australia, built by the Furukawa Battery Company of Japan and tested in the United Kingdom through the American-based Advanced Lead-Acid Battery Consortium.
The UltraBattery
The UltraBattery can store renewable energy providing reliability, stability and load levelling. It has been commercialised by energy storage solution company ecoult and is being used by Honda in its new Odyssey hybrid model.
In comparison to alternate renewable energy battery options, the UltraBattery is low cost, durable, has faster discharge/charge rates and has a life cycle two to three times longer than a regular lead-acid battery. By using the UltraBattery, intermittent electricity from renewable sources being fed into the grid can be ‘smoothed’, improving power quality and stability and allowing a greater percentage of our energy supply to be generated by a renewable source. Commercialisation in India
The UltraBattery is being tested in rural India by the Institute of Transformative Technologies and battery manufacturer Exide Industries. It has the potential to improve energy security in the world’s second largest country by population and reduce reliance on diesel generators. If successful, Australian research and development could play a vital role in providing renewable energy solutions for India. Electric vehicles
The UltraBattery has been tested both in Australia and internationally and has been proven to offer a number of advantages over the existing nickel-metal hydride batteries, including the fact that it is approximately 70 per cent less expensive with comparable performance in terms of fuel consumption. Renewable energy storage
Energy from renewable sources such as the sun and wind offers the potential for a low emission, sustainable future. However, electricity from renewable sources is intermittent and variable only producing energy when the sun shines or wind blows. By using the UltraBattery, intermittent electricity from renewable sources being fed into the grid can be ‘smoothed’, improving power quality and stability and allowing a greater percentage of our energy supply to be generated by a renewable source. As well as providing a stable supply, the UltraBattery can store energy for use during peak demand times, thereby assisting the grid to balance supply and demand and avoid local stressed on the grid.
Now as some of you may be aware? the CSIRO joined forced with Deakin Uni on some battery tech, I think it may have something to do with this development at Deakin?
Now stay with me here, because I think these things may be related in some way? I do know the CSIRO were looking at MWCNT's and I now believe it was related to the Supercapacitor side of things in their battery?
BTW Ecoult was a company set up by the CSIRO and spun out.
Deakin scientists uncover alternative to lithium-ion
THE type of battery powering your mobile phone could become a thing of the past.Scientists at Deakin University have uncovered an alternative technology to lithium-ion batteries which they say would address cost and safety issues.
Maybe now would be a good time to read this article -:
Carbon nanotube nanocomposite-modified paper electrodes for supercapacitor applications
Introduction
The recent decades have witnessed growing interest in energy storage devices for portable applications. Among the energy devices being developed, the supercapacitor holds significant promise for portable and other macro-level applications requiring relatively large electric charge. A supercapacitor is similar to a capacitor with one exception in that it exhibits much larger capacitance than a typical capacitor. This is made possible by different mechanisms, primarily including the mode of operation, the device structure and constituent materials. For portable applications, the typical requirements involve high energy density, lightweight structure and in some cases structural flexibility. Thin and lightweight film type device structures potentially allow for these criteria. This is the primary reason why there has been recent research interest in thin film and flexible supercapacitors. One of the approaches to make these types of devices is using paper and fabric in their structure, primarily as the basic electrode materials. Recent developments on this front have focused on rendering paper and fabric substrates suitable for electrode applications. This has primarily involved the use of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) to make the substrates electrically conductive while increasing their surface area significantly, among other reasons. Some reports have employed relatively complex methods and high-temperature processes to deposit CNTs on paper and fabric substrates (Yuan et al. 2012; Hu et al. 2010; Kim et al. 2012). To address such technology constraints, we developed relatively easy and room-temperature processes to incorporate nanostructured active material including CNTs on carbon micro-fiber paper surfaces (Korivi et al. 2012). These processes based on established thin and thick film technology allowed us to fabricate novel supercapacitor electrodes that were thin and lightweight.
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6616693/?reload=true
14-18 April 2013 Abstract:
Modeling of multi-walled carbon nanotube (MWCNT)-based capacitors is performed in this paper. Their equivalent circuit model is modified with the impacts of quantum capacitance as well as kinetic inductance treated in an appropriate manner. Further, both effective capacitance and quality factor of the MWCNT-based capacitors are predicted even at ultrahigh frequencies, and their self-resonance frequencies are also captured successfully.
Energy storage leap could slash electric car charging times
Development of new material for supercapacitors has potential to raise range to that of petrol cars Adam Vaughan Energy correspondent @adamvaughan_uk
Tue 27 Feb 2018 04.32 AEDT Last modified on Tue 27 Feb 2018 23.30 AEDT
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It takes about eight hours to charge the lithium-ion batteries in electric vehicles. Photograph: Christopher Thomond for the Guardian
Researchers have claimed a breakthrough in energy storage technology that could enable electric cars to be driven as far as petrol and diesel vehicles, and recharge in minutes rather than hours.
Teams from Bristol University and Surrey University developed a next-generation material for supercapacitors, which store electric charge and can be replenished faster than normal batteries.
This could allow cars to recharge in 10 minutes, rather than the eight hours it can take to replenish the lithium-ion batteries in current electric vehicles.
The technology has sufficient energy density to comfortably surpass the 200 to 350-mile ranges of leading battery-powered cars such as Teslas, according to its backers. How green are electric cars?
Read more
Dr Donald Highgate, the director of research at Superdielectrics – a company that worked with the universities on the research, said: “It could have a seismic effect on energy, but it’s not a done deal.” Supercapacitors have existed for decades and can store and release power rapidly. Tesla’s Elon Musk has said a breakthrough in transportation is more likely to come from supercaps than batteries.
Superdielectrics was originally developing a polymer that could be transparent and hold electronic circuits for potential use in Google Glass-style applications.
But after realising the energy storage capabilities of the material, it changed tack in 2014 and has produced 10cm² demonstrations that can power a tiny fan or LED bulb.
There are drawbacks to the technology, however. If you left a supercap car for a month at an airport car park, it would have lost much of its charge by the time you returned, the researchers admitted. For this reason, they expect the first such cars to also have a small conventional battery.
The Bristol-Surrey teams believe the polymer they are using could be more energy-dense than lithium ion, holding 180 watt-hours per kilogram compared with 100W⋅h/kg-120W⋅h/kg for commercial lithium ion.
Dr Thomas Miller, an expert on supercapacitors at University College London, who was not involved in the work, said the technology would have to scale up to compete. “If a significant leap has been made in energy density, it would be an important achievement,” he said.
“One major consideration that is yet to be proven is the scalability, cost and sustainability of the new technology.”
Highgate said he was confident that prototype production of his supercaps could be under way within two years, initially for specialist use, such as by the military.
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