Saturday, March 29, 2008

EEstor Future Capacitor

EEStor is a company based in Cedar Park, Texas, United States that claims to have developed a superior type of capacitor for electricity storage, which EEStor calls 'Electrical Energy Storage Units' (EESU). Its CEO and president is Richard Weir, who is also the inventor named on their principal technology patent.[1]

These units use barium titanate coated with aluminum oxide and glass to achieve a level of capacitance claimed to be much higher than what is currently available in the market. The claimed energy density is 1.0 MJ/kg (existing commercial supercapacitors typically have an energy density of around 0.01 MJ/kg, while lithium ion batteries have an energy density of around 0.54–0.72 MJ/kg).[2]

Based on these claims, a five-minute charge should give the capacitor sufficient energy to drive a small car 300 miles (480 km). However, standard household wiring is not capable of delivering the power required for this, so charging times this short would probably require purpose-built high capacity dispensing stations.[3] Overnight charging at home should still be practical[4], as is using a second EESU for the home which could be charged overnight using cheap, off-peak electricity to then charge the EEStor unit in the car in 5-10 minutes on demand.[5]

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