If they can make this work on a commercial scale this could lead to a drastic reduction in the size of a battery pack for both conventional and plug-in hybrid applications. In short, a vehicle like the Chevrolet Volt could benefit from switching to a ultracapacitor battery pack instead of the battery packs now planned for the Volt.

True about ultracapacitors' energy capacity, EEStor and flying pigs notwithstanding.

StephenB

Henri Gibson

The best Ultracapacitor have a energy dnsity storage of 12Whrs/Kg, so this invention will bring it in the 20Whrs/Kg, a lead-acid battery is about 30Whrs/Kg so not bad, then you would need a 25Kg module to replace the battery of the Prius, with a much better efficiency in braking recovery than a NiHydride battery and an unlimited lifetime. Ultracap associated with a battery can make increase the life of a battery by a factor 4.

So better than what you think

Also don't forget that a capacitor can use its entire charge window (100% soc) without impact on its life. So 20kw/hr is comparable to a battery with an energy density of 40kw/hr but is limited to using a charge window of 50% (much like the battery in the
Prius and the upcoming Volt)

Well who is going to fund this to market and how long before we see any benifit. The problem is as the US economy slips into the toilet we need a new catalyst to bring it back from the dead. If this can be made real in 12 months there is not a moment to loose.
Otherwise whats out there thats real right now?
GM made the Volt look like a wind up toy and priced it
out of the middle class reach. So there will not be a huge volume of sales.

@ clett:

The Altairnano unit has most of the qualities required except the $2K+/Kwh price tag.

However, since it can be fully (100%) discharged four times more often,i.e. 10 000 times intead of 2500 times at 50% for the other $500/Kwh lithium units, the Altairnano is, by far, the lowest cost long term unit, if you keep your car for 30+ years.

How many will be prepared to pay (up front) about $100K for a battery pack for the next 30 years? Rolls-Royce owners did. The population at large did not.

my understanding is that voltage drops as an ultracap is discharged. so you can't use the full stored eenrgy as the votage quickly drops below the narrow band that the powere electonics are expecting. this limits the usefulsness somewhat. can someone please confirma and explain?

ABC

Yes, that's true. Q= C*V. Since I = dQ/dt, that means I = C*dV/dt. So dV/dt = I/C. So people either use only a portion of the discharge range, or they add some power electronics to maintain the output voltage during the discharge.

It's definitely easier to get all the juice out of a battery or ultracapacitor when the voltage range you have to accommodate isn't too wide. That's one of the reasons I brought up the LIC, which is a special hybrid of a Li-ion battery and an ultracapacitor but functions as the latter. Almost, except that the bias field that the battery layer makes, which is apparently superimposed on the dielectric space of the capacitor, shifts the working voltage swing (which is unfortunately a very low 0 to 2.5 volts on a standard ultracapacitor) to go from something like 2.2 volts minimum to 3.8 V max (JME's parts). Since the energy you can squeeze into a capacitor is proportional to the square of the voltage, that's how you get so much more energy into them. And the voltage swing is less than 2:1, which is not dramatically worse than what you have to accommodate with most batteries. The worth of the LIC concept (not to be confused with a battery in series or in parallel with a capacitor) is all the more if you have new ways to boost the ultracap part's density.

My understandng as a interested amateur is that capacitors function as low resistance high efficiency components capable of handling the high voltage / high current fast transients that are important to efficiency savings they also offer extended cycle life.
Batteries, are traditionally deficient in these regard.
We hear of great improvement in battery technology both in storage and also and as importantly in the low resistance extended life aspects.

Capacitors are improved as the storage capacity and higher voltage withstand make for increased utility.

These different aspects of power storage, delivery and conditioning have always been handled by the component most suited to each part of the task. For efficiency it is necessary that energy storage and delivery be able to operate at as high frequency, low resistance environment with as much store as possible.

Ideally we would like to see these qualities in the one component but this is not currently available.

Hybrid battery capacitors are a way of bringing the two aspects together to achieve advantage greater than the sum of the parts.

They have repeatedly said they will manage to produce their cells for less than $500 per kWh when ramped up to volume production.

Altair makes lots of claims but very few batteries. Companies who started years after Altair (e.g. A123) ramped production years before them. If you can't deliver in this environment, with virtually unlimited funding, you are either galactically incompetent or you have show-stopper technology problems. Perhaps both.

Anyway, until Altair delivers something to someone you pretty have to classify them with EEStor, PolyPlus and the other wannabes.