Bye Bye Batteries & Internal Combustion Engines?

In 1996, General Motors introduced the electric car; in 2003 they killed it -recalling and systemically destroying hundreds of the test vehicles. This might go down as one of the greatest blunders in the history of the automotive industry. With a trillion dollars worth of oil still under the earth's surface, the entrenched status quo mentality of the auto and big oil business prevailed.

But other, more farsighted visionaries believe the death knell for transportation as we know it may soon be ringing.

An innovative new startup company called EEStor is promising "technologies for replacement of electrochemical batteries." Basically, their invention would mean a motorist could plug in a car for just five minutes and drive 500 miles without gasoline. Traditional batteries haven't progressed all that far beyond the basic design developed by Alessandro Volta in the 19th century. But a new patent has caused rising speculation that things are about to change.

"It's a paradigm shift," said Ian Clifford, chief executive of Toronto-based ZENN Motor Co., which has licensed EEStor's invention. "The Achilles' heel to the electric car industry has been energy storage. By all rights, this would make internal combustion engines unnecessary."

Currently plug-in hybrids are in production that would require motorists to charge their cars in a wall outlet overnight and supply only 50 miles of gasoline-free commute. Hybrids now on the road today still depend largely on fossil fuels.

ZENN Motor company bought rights to EEStor's technology in August 2005 and expects EEStor to start shipping the battery replacement later this year for use in ZENN Motor's short-range, low-speed vehicles.

The technology also could help invigorate the renewable-energy sector by providing efficient, lightning-fast storage for solar power, or, on a small scale, a flash-charge for cell phones and laptops.

Skeptics, though, fear the claims stretch the bounds of existing technology to the point of disbelief.

"We've been trying to make this type of thing for 20 years and no one has been able to do it," said Robert Hebner, director of the University of Texas Center for Electromechanics. "Depending on who you believe, they're at or beyond the limit of what is possible."

Previous attempts to improve ultracapacitors have focused on improving the metal sheets by increasing the surface area where charges can attach.

EEStor is instead creating better nonconductive material for use between the metal sheets, using a chemical compound called barium titanate. The question is whether the company can mass-produce it.

EEStor's says its secret material is sandwiched between thousands of wafer-thin metal sheets. Charged particles stick to the metal sheets and move quickly across EEStor's proprietary material, resulting in an ultracapacitor, a battery-like device that stores and releases energy quickly.

Batteries rely on chemical reactions to store energy but can take hours to charge and release energy. The simplest capacitors found in computers and radios hold less energy but can charge or discharge instantly. Ultracapacitors are the best of both by stacking capacitors to increase capacity while maintaining the speed of simpler capacitors.

Hebner said vehicles require bursts of energy to accelerate, a task better suited for capacitors than the batteries used now.

"The idea of getting rid of the batteries and putting in capacitors is to get more power back and get it back faster," Hebner said.

Researcher Joseph Perry at Georgia Tech has used the same material to double the amount of energy a capacitor can hold. Perry says EEstor claim would be an improvement of more than 400-fold, yet increasing a capacitor's retention ability often results in decreased strength of the materials.

"They're not saying a lot about how they're making these things," Perry said. "With these materials (described in the patent), that is a challenging process to carry out in a defect-free fashion."

Perry said nothing close to EEStor's claim is known to exist today. Until EEStor produces a final product that can be verified, energy professionals and enthusiasts alike are waiting to see if the company can live up to its six-word promise and banish the battery to recycling bins around the world.

"I am skeptical but I'd be very happy to be proved wrong," said Perry.

Posted by Rebecca Sato

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Story Links:

Who Killed the Electric Car Video

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/no_more_batteries;_ylt=AhFx7bdq5rMr5n89hC9CcEUjtBAF

http://www.technologyreview.com/Biztech/18086/

http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/energy/2007/09/eestor-update.html

Comments

[Malcolm Dean]

Dear Sirs, (Regarding the Google CVT Encyclopaedia (being attached to my
new US Patent first Page, as - making the "Belt" "conspicuous by its absence".

I am interested in contacting the (Zenn Motor Co people) who have the revolutionary Battery advertised by you with 1996 GM Electric Car "Bye Bye!

I can get them into production, helping us both to get the publicity at the same time as getting the most advanced low cost "High Torque" machines into Production.

Regards Malcolm Dean Brisbane Australia Phone 07 38498240

[everyone else is blind]

Below is a detailed discussion clearly demonstrating the invalidity of EEstor’s claims and targets.

EEstor does not report either a new material, or any data that indicates the ability to store more energy than known titanate dielectrics. EEstor calculates the amount of energy they expect their capacitor to store. A fundamental oversight results in an invalid calculation that is inaccurate by more than a factor of 100! The error is uncomplicated. Simply, energy does not equal ½ CV2 for a capacitor made from a nonlinear dielectric. For all high permittivity ceramics, the dielectric permittivity (K’) decreases markedly with increasing electric field E (dielectric saturation). Energy increases roughly linearly with voltage for these materials, as opposed to with the square of the voltage (ref 2).

Importantly, this is not a case wherein EEstor claims to have made some specific breakthrough regarding this issue. No such breakthrough is reported. There are no energy storage measurements, no permittivity versus field data, and no mention of eliminating or reducing dielectric saturation. Their patent and presentations indicate a complete lack of awareness (or lack of acknowledgment) of this issue. EEstor simply purports to make (or aspires to make) high K barium titanate based material, with a K of 18,000, and ultimately with an incredibly high breakdown strength of up to 300V/um. They then calculate the energy stored as ½ CV2 without comment on the use of this equation.

How large of an error does this cause? Calculated energy density is ½K’E2 when calculated total energy is ½CV2. For K = 18,000, and a field 100 V/um, this invalid calculation gives 800 J/cc. (½K’E2 = (0.5)(8.85×10-12 F/m)(18,000)(1×108 V/m) = 8×108 J/m3 = 800 J/cc). Eight references describing actual studies of energy storage in high permittivity ceramic dielectrics (including barium titanate and BST) are noted below. All of these studies indicate a maximum energy density ranging from about 2 to 12 J/cc, depending on the exact material and the maximum breakdown voltage (which is on the order of 100V/um in most cases). Notably, for the studies involving very high K materials, if the authors had simply calculated energy storage using ½ CV2, as EEstor does, it would have similarly resulted in reported values on the order of 100 times greater than the actual measured values!

Hence there is no basis for concluding EEstor has made any advance in the field, and clear evidence that the sole basis for their claim of unbelievably high energy storage is the simple, invalid calculation. Their aspiration (with no reported results) to triple the breakdown field to 300 V/um in combination with the invalid calculation adds an additional factor of 9, giving an absurd 7200 J/cc (along with all of the corresponding hype and speculation about a new miracle material).

Below are notes regarding the references noted above that clearly substantiate the analysis above (one report of personal measurements, the other seven directly from a Google search on energy storge in ceramic dielectrics). .

1. (My work, unpublished), 1987 – Report to Maxwell Corporation on energy storage potential in high permittivity ceramics. Measurements were made on thin films up to 100V / um on barium titanate and PLZT based dielectrics. K varied as ~ 1/E over much of the voltage range, resulting in an approximately linear increase in energy density with field. Maximum energy storage was 4 – 8 J/cc.

2. Love, Journal of the American Ceramic Society 1990 – Also observed a linear increase in energy with voltage for several classes of high permittivity (up to 12,000) thick film ceramics (barium titanate, PLZT, PMN). Reported up to 5 J/cc at 80 V/um.

3. Triani, et.al, (ANSTO and CSIRO – Australia, 2001 – J. Materials Science and Engineering. They reported 8 – 10 J/cc for PbSr titanate, and noted that the energy densities were similar to those of the best BaSr titanate materials for a given field, but the maximum fields of up to 100V/um (100KV/mm) were superior for the PST.

4. Kaufmann, et.,al, Penn State and Argonne, 1999. DOE Contract Report. They report sputtered BaSr titanate thin films with a K of 500 and a breakdown field of 100 V / um. K decreases to 120, and the energy storage is 11 J/cc. Also reported are data for hot pressed AFE/FE lead zirconate. These had a maximum K of 12,000, and a breakdown strength of 12 V/um, resulting in an energy storage of 3.2 J/cc.

5. Fletcher, et.al, 1996 Journal of Applied Physics D. They report a theoretical analysis based on Devonshire theory of ferroelectrics. Optimal energy density is predicted for materials with Curie Temperatures well below the operating temperatures. Applied to BaSr titanate, the model predicts an energy density of 8 J/cc at 100 V/um. The model was verified in actual materials.

6. Randolf, et. al, (Austria, 1996) – IEEE Annual Report - Studied dielectric energy storage for powders embedded in polymer matrices. They reported using a PbTitanate-PbZnNiobate material with K = 5000, and reported energy densities of 1 – 10 J/cc.

7. Lawless, et. al., Ceramphysics Inc. 1992 report a high permittivity ceramic (K = 8000) for which a maxium energy density of 6 J/cc was observed for samples with optimum breakdown strength.

8. Freim, Nanomaterials Research Corp NASA SBIR Proposal 1998, reports reduced dielectric saturation for nanocrystalline microstructures, and states that “Commercial coarse grain dielectric based ceramic capacitors are ineffective for use in high energy storage and delivery applications since the dielectric’s permittivity decreases sharply when the applied voltage is increased.” They target 5 – 10 J/cc for the proposed new improved materials.

If you aren’t familiar with dielectric saturation, or even if you are and you don’t think back to where ½ CV2 comes from – you miss it. And until you collect information and compare with the calculation, you have no clue it makes a factor of 100 difference in this case. People don’t even realize what EEstor is asserting. If they said, “we are going to use barium titanate based materials, which up until now how only been able to store 8 J/cc, but our barium titanate will store over 1000 J/cc – people would ask themselves how is that possible and what is the basis for that claim.

Then you would find out it’s not just a case of them not providing data or proof of their claims. They don’t even claim to have observed or measured a property indicating their barium titanate would be different. There is nothing left but the calculation. The sole origin for their high numbers is that they simply start with the K of high permittivity modified barium titanate (eg., K = 18,000 not a new achievement), and simply calculate energy = 1/2CV2. Anyone could have done that at any time for any high K material and gotten the same outrageous numbers.

So at that point, one should ask why people get a factor of 100 less when they actually measure it. The answer is well documented and obvious – dielectric saturation. So the only justification for using 1/2CV2 which gives a factor of 100 higher than known and understood measured values, would be if you made a measured observation that you have a fantastic new material that doesn’t saturate at all and stores 100 times the energy.

EEstor has never made any such claim or reported to have made any such obvservation. They just did the calculation. It’s just a mistake.