Reply #42: Well, it's looking better and better [View All]

[krispos42]

A completely different approach is being pioneered by EEStor, who claim to have developed a dramatically improved insulator based on barium titanate that improves the permissivity of the insulator by several orders of magnitude, improving energy density not through electron capacity but via much higher potentials. EEStor claims that their capacitors can operate at extremely high voltages, on the order of several thousand volts.


Ragone plot showing energy density vs. power density for various energy-storage devicesIn terms of energy density, existing commercial electric double-layer capacitors range around 0.5 to 10 W·h/kg, with the standardized cells available from Maxwell Technologies rated at 6 W·h/kg. Experimental electric double-layer capacitors from the MIT LEES project have demonstrated densities of 30 W·h/kg and appear to be scalable to 60 W·h/kg in the short term, while EEStor claims their examples will offer capacities on the order of 200 to 300 W·h/kg. For comparison, a conventional lead-acid battery is typically 30 to 40 W·h/kg, modern lithium-ion batteries are about 120 W·h/kg, and in an automobile applications gasoline has a net calorific value (NCV) of around 12,000 W·h/kg operating at a 20% tank-to-wheel efficiency.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultracapacitors

(boldface mine)

We'll see if Big Oil can surpress this or not.