Energy Storage Membrane: Is This for Real?

It would be nice if its true but the article is leaning a bit too heavy on the climate change, carbon credits, and enviro nutter BS for me to take with much actual seriousness.

Sounds impressive enough, and seems to be coming from a source who is respectively backed.

Wasn't there something being done with nano tubes also?

"The discovery has also gained the attention of scientific journals worldwide, and was featured in Energy & Environmental Science and highlighted by renowned international journal Nature."

If you doubt the journalists, read the journals and get the real scoop.

Journalists notoriously exaggerate or misinterpret findings. If this technology was 10 times as cost effective as existing batteries or capacitors, is it either:

(a) at such a rudimentary stage of development that the efficiency is a "forecast" or imagined possibility and not a reality

(b) a real advance which is an uncapitalized patent (come on, anyone with this would patent immediately)

What's the catch? Is it too expensive to make?

If I had access to those journals I would read it for you, but I do not.

This'll be great for energy-as-currency. Just fold up a few farads and put them in your wallet!

Actually, it would be a few joules...

You use one Farad to store one Coulomb of electrons using one volt of electromotive force. This stores 1/2 Joule of energy.

Just make sure that there are no holes in your wallet when you place it in your back pocket or even worst if you yse the front one...

They've left voltage out of the "energy storage" discussion but it looks plausible. Remember how amazing super capacitors were when they first came out.

It remains to be seen if it can be developed commercially.

There is a little bit more info here:-

http://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2011/ee/c1ee01841h

and just over to the right of the abstract there's a little piece of the pdf titled "supplementary information" which suggests that they tested it at 6V (but I don't understand much of what is written at the end of the second paragraph so I don't think I'll shell out the £32 ~$50 for the whole article).

Bingo! Found the full article.

It looks real to me, but what do I know?

It's interesting/promising that venture capitalists are getting involved. If it was a sure dud, the US government would be funding it.

It does look good, indeed. Not expensive to make either.

Just don't get any water on em!

I think these guys are for real.

Here's some other stuff that Loh's group is working on.

It would be awesome to see a real game changer in battery/storage technology.

I'm wondering if this is for real

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-U6WxckCptM&feature=player_embedded

I think it's a real idea. The ocean gets real rough, and has some real strong currents too though.

I wonder how they're going to keep them in place and floating.

Thanks kramarat for posting the Polymer Physics article. It's clearly about an improvement in supercaps (chemical mechanisms replacing the double layer effect are mentioned in wiki).

The press release at nanowerk is a little messed up. Capacitance per unit area should be compared to a supercap, not to a standard [electrolytic] cap.

Also cost per Wh should not be compared to a battery. With the additional link by Randall I think a .2 F cap (1 cm2) would have a leakage resistance of about 40 ohms, self-discharging with a 8-second time constant.

The test voltage was 6 V but they suggest operating voltages around 3 V, close to 2.7 V in state-of-the-art ultracaps.

And yes, they have patents (links don't work).

brgds

Snel

IBM has in late 80's patented new, dry batery made out of plastic and graphite. They claimed 1KW capacity per cm2 (but I think that was mistyped and shoud have been cm3). Anyhow, at this time it would made obsolete whole acumulator producing industry so it dissapeared alltogether, obviously suppressed.

This one look quite similar, only it is not dry.

Since fellows at IBM are not jokers it must have been real.

It would nowadays be perfect for electric cars energy storage.

Perhaps it could be found by searching patent records of that period, it must still be there....

Otherwise, knowing that something is possible is half of sucess, so since I posted such informations some 2-3 years back, maybe that fellows got idea where to direct their research :-)

I think it is real, but that So3 I think has smell of rotten eggs, if I am not mistaken?