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A Battery Beyond Belief?
A secret, fast-charging, powerful battery.
By Tyler Hamilton

The first peek at a much-hyped new battery technology will come courtesy of electric cars made by Zenn Motor of Toronto.
Credit: Zenn Motor

Is EEStor of Cedar Park, TX, for real? The secretive company announced earlier this year that it plans to begin shipping a 15-­kilowatt-hour electrical-energy ­storage system that can propel a small electric car 322 kilometers and takes just minutes to charge.

The first customer: Toronto-based Zenn Motor, which makes electric vehicles. EEStor says its technology is a cross between a battery and an ultracapacitor (which quickly stores and releases energy) and is based on mysterious ­barium ­titanate powders.

Company documents claim that the new storage system has better energy density than lithium-ion and nickel-metal hydride batteries, that it charges more quickly, and that it's cheaper and safer. The implications are enormous and, for many, unbelievable, but the company says it's all true. "We're well on our way to doing everything we said," says ­Richard Weir, EEStor's cofounder and chief execu­tive.
http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=18330&ch=energy



Comments EEStor hype by Emosson 3/12/2007 12:44 AM


I repeat my comment from January 22, 2007 at http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=18086&ch=biztech

Unfortunately EEStor never made and will never make the supercapacitor described in the patent

http://www.google.com/patents?vid=USPAT7033406&id=cjx3AAAAEBAJ&printsec=abstract&zoom=4&...

because they ignore a well known physical effect, called “dielectric saturation”.

Barium titanate has been used in capacitors for decades, due to its high dielectric constant:

http://www.avxcorp.com/docs/techinfo/mlcmat.pdf

However, the dielectric constant drops as the electric field strength increases:

http://www.nap.edu/books/NI000488/html/49.html
http://prola.aps.org/abstract/PR/v71/i12/p890_1

At a hypothetical field of 3500 Volts over a thickness of 12.76 micrometers, as proposed in the patent, the dielectric constant of barium titanate would be orders of magnitude lower than the claimed 18500, reducing capacity and energy density by the same factor…

This has been discussed in more detail by Anatoly Moskalev on December 24th and 26th, 2006 in
http://www.teslamotors.com/blog1/index.php?p=43

with an update on January 20th, 2007:
http://www.teslamotors.com/blog1/?p=46