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Maxwell in Agreement for Large-Scale Ultracapacitor Production in China

Maxwell Technologies, has formed a manufacturing alliance with Belton Technology Group, a major Chinese manufacturer of precision components, flex circuits, circuit boards and other products, to meet the forecast growth to multi-million-unit annual volumes for its BOOSTCAP ultracapacitors and multi-cell modules.

Maxwell sees the increase in demand being driven by automotive, transportation and industrial electronics applications.

Dr. Richard Balanson, Maxwell’s president and CEO, said that the offshore manufacturing alliance enables the company to tap into Belton’ss large existing factories, supply chain operations and 20,000-person production workforce to ensure that Maxwell can ramp ultracapacitor production as required to keep pace with the rapidly escalating ultracapacitor demand it expects in coming years.

Maxwell will continue to produce its proprietary carbon powder electrode material internally and deliver it to Belton plants for assembly into finished ultracapacitor cells and modules.

Maxwell recently introduced more than 30 new BOOSTCAP products based on common architecture, components and assembly processes, and is now working closely with Belton engineering and manufacturing personnel to completely shift production of those products to high-volume facilities in China by the end of 2006.

Comments

shaun

yeah, i like ultracaps. apparently, EEStor's ESU is an ultracap. but, instead of operating at 48 V like maxwell's, it operates at 3500 V.

the advantage of Maxwell is that you can actually buy their products today, you can charge them with pretty generic tools, and 48 V will barely even cause a tingle.

Andre

Shaun you have to understand that Maxell`s cap will only
store about 45 w/h... You see the formula to calculate the stored energy is Energy in joules = Capacity in farad * (Voltage * Voltage) / 2. Divide the result by 3600 to get the Watt/Hour. The key to store a large amount of power is to increase the voltage... Presumably
EEstor has developped a dc-to-dc converter to provide
a practical voltage supply. The Maxell ultracap is not
designed to replace a EV battery.

jackmastbrook

Is anyone familiar with the new capacitor electrode technology, Reticle Carbon©?. (USPTO 6,350.520. This is a process for coaxing extremely large surface areas (and conductivity) from activated carbon.

Reticle’s revolutionary high surface carbon technology offers significant advantage over currently available technologies. Therefore, for most applications, the company’’s competition promises to come from other companies developing high surface carbon capacitive deionization related technology. Most of these are using Aerogel carbon, developed by Lawrence Livermore Labs. The current surface of aerogel is approximately 400 m2/g as compared with 2,000 m2/g for Reticle Carbon©©. The current quoted cost for aerogel carbon is approximately $150/kg as compared with production cost of $10/kg for Reticle Carbon©©.

Capacitors are direct power storage devices. At present, metal-carbon composites are being manufactured in the automotive industry as a means of leveling the power draw in future electric cars. Such materials combine aluminum sheets and activated carbon in various configurations. The best in class capacity demonstrated to date is rather inefficient, storing a mere 7-10 kilowatt hours per kilogram of material. Given the cost of such materials, supercapacitors based on those materials are simply out of the question from an economic perspective, and the internal combustion engine continues to reign until the supercapacitor problem is solved.

Reticle Carbon has in laboratory studies produced 7.5 kilowatt hours per kilogram of material in a 2 cubic inch capacitor (rather minuscule in size by Reticle’’s standards). This was accomplished with a modest surface area grade of Reticle Carbon by Reticle standards (1200 square meters per gram). Reticle has manufactured much higher surface area carbon monoliths (2100 square meters per gram), and that higher surface area carbon has a higher power storage capacity. Because of the lightness in weight of Reticle Carbon, supercapacitors built from Reticle Carbon are considerably lighter than metal-carbon capacitors and therefore are ideally suited for mobile and transportation applications in which onboard weight is a prime consideration. This is not to be discounted. One of the primary markets for supercapacitors is the automotive market, a market that absolutely craves lightness in weight. Another is the airframe market, which craves lightness in weight even more.

We are presently working with overseas investors on desalination, and will soon be working with overseas electric and hybrid vehicle developers. We are still open to new investors in certain technological areas/

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