Details are still secret but we could be charging a car capacitor in seconds shortly and then driving it for 150 miles. This follows supercapacitor research by scientists at the universities of Surrey and Bristol in England. The secret sauce is contact lens technology applied to polymer material
Polymer as Used In Lithium Batteries
Previously developers had some success by using polymer as electrolyte although other lithium developments proved more successful.
Thus nowadays we are more likely to find it enclosing a lithium battery in a flexible shell.
Sometimes polymer gets a bad name when the battery inside it overheats. Polymer itself is relatively stable when used as electrolyte.
The Technology behind Charging a Car Capacitor in Seconds
The polymer material comprises ‘large organic molecules composed of many repeated sub-units, bonded together to form a three-dimensional network.’ That is about all the scientists are willing to reveal at present.
We can safely assume they are probably deploying the network as electrolyte.
Beyond that, we are not really much wiser how they plan to go about charging a car capacitor in seconds.
The weakness of capacitor energy density has been their downfall as far as large applications are concerned. That said, supercapacitor research has been progressively changing the rules. The latest polymer development does not only have electric vehicle applications. We could also be charging mobile phones, laptops and other mobile devices in just a few seconds soon.
Last Word on the Subject from Elon Musk
The Tesla CEO has always had his finger on supercapacitors. We could be charging a car capacitor in seconds but ‘we need a breakthrough in energy density,” he says. We could not express the exciting future better than Dr. Brendan Howlin of the University of Surrey. ‘This new ultra-capacity supercapacitor has the potential to open the door to unimaginably exciting developments,’ he says.
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