Ultracapacitors store energy in an electric field and have advantages over conventional batteries, including a longer lifespan, resistance to temperature changes, and faster recharge times. Recent advances in carbon nanotubes could make ultracapacitors smaller and more efficient, potentially outperforming conventional batteries.
The ultracapacitor is a new way of storing electrical energy that will eclipse chemical batteries in the near future. Instead of storing energy electrochemically, it stores it in an electric field. Ultracapacitors have multiple advantages over conventional batteries, including a life span of more than 10 years, resistance to temperature changes, shocks, overcharging, and discharge efficiency. They require less maintenance than conventional batteries and are kind to the environment when disposed of because they are free from toxic chemicals.
These futuristic batteries have been around since the 1960s, but only in the last decade have they become convenient for use in electricity-consuming tools, from electric cars to specialized computers. They are popular for “bridge” applications, where backup power is activated when primary systems fail, producing “zero downtime” power schemes. Because they can’t be overloaded, ultracapacitors are ideal for recovering energy from things like braking. And they can be recharged in minutes. The only downside to ultracapacitors is that they need to be larger than batteries to share the same charge.
However, thanks to recent advances from MIT, that will soon change. The amount of charge that an ultracapacitor can hold, per unit of weight, is proportional to its internal surface area. Most ultracapacitors use porous carbon to store charge. This carbon, however, is not perfectly porous on the atomic scale, where it has a more obviously coarse structure. Researchers have shown that using networks of carbon nanotubes, which are only a few atoms wide but tens of thousands of atoms long, it is possible to build structures that maximize surface area that allow the battery volume to be compressed by up to 25 times. Nanotube-filled ultracapacitors have the potential to outperform conventional batteries in a variety of energy storage applications.
Ultracapacitors, if widespread, would mark the first serious departure from the conventional paradigm of electrochemical batteries since they were invented by Volta over 200 years ago.
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