Today’s Popular Posts
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Popular Posts
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Tag Archives: battery
Energy density: Improving the lithium-ion battery
The cost and weight of batteries is the Achilles heel for electric vehicles. Today’s lithium-ion batteries used in cars such as the GM Volt are serviceable but expensive, up to 60% of the cost of the car. This has provided a major incentive for science and industry to chase large-scale battery improvement for decades. The [...]
Posted in News: Energy Storage Also tagged anode, carbon threads, cathode, electric car, energy density, Envia, GM, GM Volt, lithium-ion, manganese, silicon, U.S. DOE Leave a comment
Another graphene application – supercapacitors
While everybody knows about batteries, supercapacitors seem like a well kept secret. The reason is fairly simple. While capacitors have been used for a long time in electronics, capacitors and their souped-up cousins, supercapacitors, have only recently become candidates for competing with the common rechargeable battery. Supercapacitors store electricity as batteries do, but there are [...]
Posted in News: Energy Storage Also tagged energy storage, graphene, lithium-ion, Nanotek Instruments, supercapacitor Leave a comment
Advancement: Ultracapacitors as batteries
Call it ‘better batteries’ or simply fulfilling the need to store electrical energy for use ‘off line,’ the technology to improve energy storage goes on apace – step by step. In this case, the step is to solve a problem with ultracapacitors. These are the supercharged versions of capacitors – the long used technology for [...]
Posted in News: Energy Storage Also tagged capacitor, energy chip, energy storage, ultracapacitor, voltage Leave a comment
Toyota preps hydrogen-hybrid vehicle (FCHV) for production
Toyota FCHV (fuel-cell hybrid)…Credit: Masaru Kamikura When it comes to clean transportation – the proof is in the performance. There are literally scores of ‘green’ vehicles on the drawing-boards (actually, in a computer model) or in a prototype. Few, if any, of these will be seen on a public road. So when a major automobile [...]
Posted in News: Clean Transportation Also tagged electric car, FCHV, fuel cell, Honda, hybrid vehicle, hydrogen, Toyota Comments closed
For real: A new way to produce electricity
It’s not every day that a new way to produce electricity is discovered…although it does seem there is a multitude of approaches. This one involves carbon nanotubes, those jacks-of-all-trades in the nanotech business, nanometer sized tubes of pure carbon. (In this case, think of them as ‘wires’ one-hundred thousandth of the thickness of human hair.) [...]
Posted in News: Energy Storage Also tagged electricity, lithium-ion, nanotechnology, nanotube, Seebeck effect, thermopower wave Leave a comment
Nanotech ink plus a piece of paper: A novel(ty) battery
The search for a better battery is endless. The underlying physics present limitations that are hard to surpass, but there’s seemingly no end to human ingenuity when it comes to finding new ways of storing electrical energy. Try this one: Scientists at Stanford University (California, USA) have created an ink compounded with nanotechnology materials, dipped [...]
Posted in News: Energy Storage Also tagged capacitor, nanotechnology, nanotubes, supercapacitor Leave a comment
Algae-paper battery
Yes, paper can be made from algae (“pond scum”); and now it is possible to store electrical charges in such paper – that is, make a battery of it. Here’s some of the report in the Economist: Albert Mihranyan of Uppsala University in Sweden and his colleagues have built a battery that is, in essence, [...]
New lithium-ion battery: It’s a stretch