10 Minute Charge Battery Almost Here [Archive]

safety1st

08-03-2007, 10:11 PM

Here is an article on a small battery manufacture here in Texas.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/03/eestor_capacito_1.php

The paragraphs below are one of the 2 very interesting statements. The other being one of the investors is the same as one of the major investors in Segway, Inc

Quote
"It also says its technology more than doubles the energy density of lithium-ion batteries in most portable computer and mobile gadgets today, but could be produced at one-eighth the cost.

If that's not impressive enough, EEStor says its energy storage technology is "not explosive, corrosive, or hazardous" like lead-acid and most lithium-ion systems, and will outlast the life of any commercial product it powers. It can also absorb energy quickly, meaning a small electric car containing a 17-kilowatt-hour system could be fully charged in four to six minutes versus hours for other battery technologies, the company claims."

David Ford
D/FW Segway

KSagal

08-03-2007, 10:52 PM

That looks very promising. I hope to have one by the end of the month, but I suspect I may need to wait longer...

bystander

08-03-2007, 10:53 PM

Here is an article on a small battery manufacture here in Texas.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/03/eestor_capacito_1.php

Dated March of 2006?

Here's someone else who noticed your financing link to Segway, Inc.:

http://forums.segwaychat.com/showpost.php?p=125384&postcount=10

Might also search these forums for the word "EEStor"

Here's a more recent blog link (and it's dated this month, even):

Light shines on world's craziest battery company (http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9754444-7.html)

Looks like we'll have to be patient to see anything concrete from these guys.

BringOnI2

08-03-2007, 11:27 PM

Looks like we'll have to be patient to see anything concrete from these guys.

I do believe concrete batteries would outlast the product they're in :P

bystander

08-04-2007, 12:35 AM

I do believe concrete batteries would outlast the product they're in :P
Mmmmmm.....

Concrete battery = aggregate power!

polo_pro

08-04-2007, 01:02 AM

"It also says its technology more than doubles the energy density of lithium-ion batteries in most portable computer and mobile gadgets today, but could be produced at one-eighth the cost.

If that's not impressive enough, EEStor says its energy storage technology is "not explosive, corrosive, or hazardous" like lead-acid and most lithium-ion systems, and will outlast the life of any commercial product it powers. It can also absorb energy quickly, meaning a small electric car containing a 17-kilowatt-hour system could be fully charged in four to six minutes versus hours for other battery technologies, the company claims."

Imagine a pair of segway Li-Ion batteries that cost $300 dollars and charged in half an hour! It'd totally revolutionize long distance gliding. With $1000 to cover two extra pairs and off-board chargers, a person could EASILY carry everything they need in a lower cargo system and literally travel 100 miles a day. Total cost in electricity per day would be under a $1.

With good weather (and a well planned route with stops every 100 miles), you could cross the country in a month!

quade

08-04-2007, 01:21 AM

. . . a person could EASILY carry everything they need in a lower cargo system and literally travel 100 miles a day.

And then, due to lack of circulation in their feet . . . spend the night in the hospital!

bystander

08-04-2007, 02:05 AM

Imagine a pair of segway Li-Ion batteries that cost $300 dollars and charged in half an hour! It'd totally revolutionize long distance gliding. With $1000 to cover two extra pairs and off-board chargers, a person could EASILY carry everything they need in a lower cargo system and literally travel 100 miles a day. Total cost in electricity per day would be under a $1.

With good weather (and a well planned route with stops every 100 miles), you could cross the country in a month!Um, with one PT and two off-board chargers, all running at the same time, and charging in 30 minutes, it will require approx. 47 amps at 120 volts.

You will probably need to to charge at a reduced rate to avoid popping circuit breakers at the places you charge at. Doing just one set of batteries should be about 15.7 amps - ok on a 20 amp circuit, but iffy on a 15 amp circuit on a hot day.

With the reduced charge time, the extra off-board chargers may not be necessary. Kinda a hassle if the Saphions still use the 4 screw mounting though. Since we're talking pie-in-the-sky here, why not imagine the battery packs have a slide-in locking system w/ optional padlock?

Other speculations at this old post:

http://forums.segwaychat.com/showthread.php?t=14498

quade

08-04-2007, 02:52 AM

It can also absorb energy quickly, meaning a small electric car containing a 17-kilowatt-hour system could be fully charged in four to six minutes versus hours for other battery technologies, the company claims."

Lemme guess, they have to drive the at precisely 88 mph and catch a wire strung over the street while a lightning bolt strikes it? How are you gonna get that kinda power through a household (hell industrial!) power service, into some kinda wire and into the battery?

Pure snake oil for the suckers that can't do basic math. These guys ought to go into business with Moller.

yosgof

08-04-2007, 03:18 AM

If they catch the wire while traveling at precisely 88 mph they'll be thrown into the future so the almost readily awailable technology would no longer be available... wait, it's not available as it is... what a time paradox!

JohnM

08-04-2007, 03:34 AM

Imagine a pair of segway Li-Ion batteries that cost $300 dollars and charged in half an hour! It'd totally revolutionize long distance gliding. With $1000 to cover two extra pairs and off-board chargers, a person could EASILY carry everything they need in a lower cargo system and literally travel 100 miles a day. Total cost in electricity per day would be under a $1.
Imagine all that pie-in-the-sky battery technology... and still being unable to keep up with an overweight (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/17/health/nutrition/17essa.html?ex=1186372800&en=ab78d292bb3642ed&ei=5070) 57 year-old guy on a bike. Long distance gliding won't be truly revolutionized until you are totally free of the power grid, for that $1 worth of electricity probably comes with the cost of a hotel room. Till then, you remain best suited for that last mile and an occasional polo game. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Next ride - Aug 11 - 350K (http://www.bostonbrevets.com/350k-2007-08-11.pdf)

bystander

08-04-2007, 03:34 AM

Lemme guess, they have to drive the at precisely 88 mph and catch a wire strung over the street while a lightning bolt strikes it? How are you gonna get that kinda power through a household (hell industrial!) power service, into some kinda wire and into the battery?

Pure snake oil for the suckers that can't do basic math. These guys ought to go into business with Moller.Well, you can double the price and put one of the hypercapacitor banks in your house where it can trickle charge at a low rate then rapidly discharge into the HC bank in the vehicle.

The snake oil part is not the math, it's the ceramic material used for the dielectric. It hasn't been proven to support the necessary dielectric constant at the intense electrostatic field strength required.

A similar problem happened when high temperature superconductors were being deveoped and applied. When they wound a sizeable coil and ran juice through it, the magnetic field was so intense, it altered the superconducting characteristics and lost the effect. So high temp superconductors can not be feasibly used for certain applications. Such as large motors / generators

quade

08-04-2007, 03:47 AM

Well, you can double the price and put one of the hypercapacitor banks in your house where it can trickle charge at a low rate then rapidly discharge into the HC bank in the vehicle.

Note to self; Be certain to have somebody else switch this thing on for this rapid charge. I don't wanna be anywhere NEAR it!

Seriously, what guage wire covered in how thick of insulation is going to handle that kind of power transfer with any kind of safety?

I ain't no math whiz, but just judging from the articles, wouldn't that be somewhere in the neighborhood of 170,000 watts continous for the 6 minute charge? (Actually, I'm guessing significantly more due to losses.)

bystander

08-04-2007, 03:59 AM

Note to self; Be certain to have somebody else switch this thing on for this rapid charge. I don't wanna be anywhere NEAR it!

Seriously, what gauge wire covered in how thick of insulation is going to handle that kind of power transfer with any kind of safety?

On the 120v side, if it's a trickle charge, standard wires are OK. If it's a fast charge, the cables will be like the ones on an electric oven.

On the extreme high voltage side, it'll be like spark plug wires. The conductor doesn't need to be too thick at the high voltage. But the insulation is another story. Going to need a fairly good air gap. Also, there shouldn't be any dust or moisture present to make the air more conductive, so that may be tricky to work out an outdoor, all-weather system that doesn't short out occasionally.

quade

08-05-2007, 01:57 AM

On the 120v side, if it's a trickle charge, standard wires are OK. If it's a fast charge, the cables will be like the ones on an electric oven.

The article talks about a 17kwh system for cars.

If the unit holds 17kwh of energy, then (at least) 17kwh must be pumpped into the system. They claim a 4 to 6 minute charge for this. Being generous (and liking to work in round numbers) I took the 6 minute number as the best case.

17kwh of energy pumped in 6 minutes is 170,000 watts of continous power disregarding energy losses. At 120v that's 1,417 amps of power. At 220v that's equivalent to 708 amps.

That's considerably more than an electric oven. :)

They're going to need MUCH bigger wires. :D

ryan_walters

08-05-2007, 03:23 AM

But with the current segway LiIon batteries, needing appx 1kwh to fully charge, drawing as much as practical from a 15 amp curcuit, would give you about a 1 hour charge time.

The fastest charge rate Saphions can take if I remember right is 2 hours. This would still mean about 600-700 watts. Even that is fairly high. The charge circuitry would probably have to be redesigned.

bystander

08-05-2007, 11:21 AM

The article talks about a 17kwh system for cars.

If the unit holds 17kwh of energy, then (at least) 17kwh must be pumped into the system. They claim a 4 to 6 minute charge for this. Being generous (and liking to work in round numbers) I took the 6 minute number as the best case.

17kwh of energy pumped in 6 minutes is 170,000 watts of continuous power disregarding energy losses. At 120v that's 1,417 amps of power. At 220v that's equivalent to 708 amps.

That's considerably more than an electric oven. :)

They're going to need MUCH bigger wires. :D
I stand corrected, thanks. Looks like I slid the decimal point the wrong direction. I was (incorrectly) figuring the 10 hour rate instead of the (correct) 1/10 hour rate. Sorry for the mis-analysis.

Looks like the 6 minute charge would only be practical at the 3500v operating voltage. This forces a doubling of cost, as the "home charger" must contain a capacitor bank of equal size as the vehicle's. If I calculate correctly, it would take around two hours to charge the 17 kw bank, if one used 240volts at 35 amps - and assuming one's house is wired for 240v, 40a service.

120 volts at 15 amps (a reasonably "safe" value to use on a 20 amp circuit breaker for an extended time) would be around 9 1/2 hours to charge the 17 kw bank, longer if one includes electrical losses. The losses better be small, if they are as much as 5%, that would mean having to deal with 85 watts of waste heat per hour. If more typical 15-20%, that's 250 to 350 watts of waste heat.

Still, I'm making many assumptions about the charging process. Charging a capacitor to such a high voltage may not be a linear process. That is, it may not be practical to keep the amps flowing at a constant rate for the whole time period necessary. At different stages of the process, it may be more effective to different methods of charging. Some methods may bump into the power limits of home wiring and slow the process further.

So a 6 minute estimate, or 2 hour estimate, or 9 1/2 hour estimate is more of a "best case scenario", rather than an estimate that will eventually pan out.

Stan671

08-05-2007, 12:40 PM

These people working on super capacitor technology can quote some very impressive capacity values and short charge times. But practically speaking, as others have calculated here, achiving these energy transfer rates for charging is just not doable in the average home.

Another very important aspect of this scenario is the safety factor. In order to deal with upwards of 700 amps or 3500 volts, enormous safety precautions and interlocks, etc must be used in order for to keep the average Joe 6-Pack (who uses a fork to remove toast from a plugged-in toaster) from killing himself.

So, with all of the safety gadgets required it will probably make the construction cost very expensive and the possible downside of a failure of the safety mechanism (probably the whole house being vaporized) will be too undesireable.

citivolus

08-05-2007, 03:20 PM

bystander

08-05-2007, 05:37 PM

I for one am not certain I want to ride in close proximity with a cap that size. 170,000 watts for 6 minutes!! What goes in must come out and in the event of an accident I want to be as far as possible to the 'soon to be a molten pool of ?' that shorts the cap.

When one puts things certain ways, they sound terrible or dangerous.

How big is your car's gas tank, and how safe do you feel about that?

A gallon of gasoline contains approx. 31,000 kilocalories according to this reference. (http://health.howstuffworks.com/calorie1.htm)

So a 20 gallon gas tank would hold 620,000 kilocalories.

Here's an automatic calculator (http://www.unitconversion.org/unit_converter/energy-ex.html).

Looks like 620,000 kilocalories are equivalent to 0.62 tons (1240 pounds) of explosives. Now, to actually get that yield, you'd have to disperse the gasoline in air, just so, and then set it off in a contained area. 1240 lbs. of explosive is a worst case scenario for 20 gal. of exploding gasoline.

And 17 kilowatt hours are equivalent to 0.014627151 tons (30 pounds) of explosives. Again, the 30 lbs. of explosive is a worst case scenario. If the device in question included emergency venting and break-away construction, the damage of an actual mishap should be much less.

And a pair of Saphions on a PT hold 0.8 kilowatt hours, so that's about 1.4 pounds worth of explosive. As we know, Saphions can't consume themselves in a short enough time to explode due to their chemical composition. Just included as a point of reference.

Put in this perspective, does it seem so bad?

Well, maybe not after all the safeguards are in place. We don't all have to be early adopters at everything - lol.

quade

08-05-2007, 06:12 PM

When one puts things certain ways, they sound terrible or dangerous.

That said, it would be interesting to see what happens if you shoot a deer slug into a fully charged 17kwh battery of theirs.

SEGsby

08-05-2007, 07:32 PM

Or say, something more likely-- like those ground embeded spikes in parking lot exits...

S'plody?

SEGsby

That said, it would be interesting to see what happens if you shoot a deer slug into a fully charged 17kwh battery of theirs.

KSagal

08-05-2007, 07:32 PM

FIrst off, a 1500 amp circuit is not so tough. I have two in my house, one is for the Linear Accelerator in the back yard, and the other is for the air compressor in the cellar. (Man can I fill segway tires to 15 pounds fast!)

All this conversation is very interesting. It surely shows the difficulties in the creation of radically new technologies, if using established technologies.

This whole thread reminds me of the joke of the three blind men describing the elephant. Each was sure of themself, but only knew of a small piece of the whole.

Each of these spectacular failings may indeed be why we do not have this power source so far, or they may have been mitigated by some other thing that we don't know about yet.

As far as the 100 mile per day glide comments, and to tie this back to the potentials for the segway, I would add this...

100 miles at segway speeds is only between 8 and 9 hours on the gliders feet. I stand that long many days, often. It is long, but not so bad that it requires a trip to the hospital. I suspect that exposure may be a larger health risk, depending on the weather.

If I understand the power levels right, the current LiIons are less than 1Kwh. The press release indicated 17Kwh. I would offer that a $500.00 battery set, at 2 to 2.5 KWh would be more than enough, because there are very few who would want to stand longer than that on a segway, anyway.

It would seem to me that if the above mentioned battery were indeed available, it would allow us to keep up with the 57 year old overweight bicyclist long enough that he was either dead from his heart attack, or no longer overweight.

And for JohnM... If you think that the essence of segway is to chase down 57 y.o. overweight bicycle guys, it explains why you have not gotten it so far...

I must add, that even though I have poked some fun here, it is a very interesting thread, and I only wish it was not based on a very old article, that may no longer be valid.

Llarry

08-05-2007, 09:43 PM

I'm with Karl. The numbers they're throwing around for car use are impressive, and more necessary when talking about moving 2000+ pounds of vehicle around. I'll be happy with greater storage for less money. Faster charging would just be gravy...

Five-Flags

08-06-2007, 12:31 PM

I do believe concrete batteries would outlast the product they're in :P

Mmmmmm.....

Concrete battery = aggregate power!

BLAAAGH!

STOP IT! Or you will be punished!!!:rolleyes::rolleyes:

bystander

08-06-2007, 12:48 PM

BLAAAGH!

STOP IT! Or you will be punished!!!:rolleyes::rolleyes:We didn't start it. This EEStor HV battery concept seems to be on the rocks...

quade

08-06-2007, 01:04 PM

BLAAAGH!

STOP IT! Or you will be punished!!!:rolleyes::rolleyes:

Ohm for cryin' out loud . . . don't blow a fuse . . . it's just the current joke making the circuit.

Five-Flags

08-06-2007, 01:35 PM

Ohm for cryin' out loud . . . don't blow a fuse . . . it's just the current joke making the circuit.

Tsk, tsk. All that puntential going to waste...:rolleyes::rolleyes:

hellphish

08-06-2007, 01:51 PM

I think I would rather be electrocuted than be exploded.

citivolus

08-06-2007, 10:05 PM

When one puts things certain ways, they sound terrible or dangerous.
Just trying to point out some aspects that many people often forget.
How big is your car's gas tank, and how safe do you feel about that?
10.8 gallons and I feel very safe since liquid gasoline is fairly benign and takes a large amount of energy in order to detonate.
Looks like 620,000 kilocalories are equivalent to 0.62 tons (1240 pounds) of explosives. Now, to actually get that yield, you'd have to disperse the gasoline in air, just so, and then set it off in a contained area. 1240 lbs. of explosive is a worst case scenario for 20 gal. of exploding gasoline.
As you nicely point out, if you can get it just so. For the metrically inclined, 620 megacalories is 2594 megajoules (MJ), 17 kW-hr is 61.2 MJ and 0.8 kW-hr is about 2.9 MJ. :p
And 17 kilowatt hours are equivalent to 0.014627151 tons (30 pounds) of explosives. Again, the 30 lbs. of explosive is a worst case scenario... Put in this perspective, does it seem so bad?
Capacitors, super/hyper/wonder/? capacitors especially, are designed to minimize the internal resistance to energy flow. This is why they can be charged and discharged in a short period of time. The main problem in making them useful has been capacity. As you point out, batteries trade the typically larger capacity for how fast the chemical reactions can take place and convert chemical energy and they are safer as a result. While gasoline can explode, as can batteries in the right circumstances, it is more like a battery in that there are usually limiting factors to how fast the required chemical reaction can take place and liberate the energy as heat.

Statistically speaking, the 600 lbs ee (explosive equivalent) of highly stable gasoline in my tank I consider a much smaller risk than the 30 lbs ee of highly motivated electrons in a super-cap. ;)

Well, maybe not after all the safeguards are in place. We don't all have to be early adopters at everything - lol.
True dat. :D

bystander

08-06-2007, 10:24 PM

Statistically speaking, the 600 lbs ee (explosive equivalent) of highly stable gasoline in my tank I consider a much smaller risk than the 30 lbs ee of highly motivated electrons in a super-cap. I agree with you here.

Decades of gasoline tank design and refinement have made containment of such a concentrated form of fuel statistically safe.

Hypercap technology is so new, we don't really know the details that we are speculating about. However, it seems to me that the Hypercapacitors may be compact enough to be contained by some kind of high strength (carbon fiber?) safety vessel for applications such as vehicles, where they would be potentially exposed to impact damage.

ps, I had calculated the MJ figures and was going to include them on my earlier post, but was afraid too may eyes would glaze over - lol.