As engineering innovations continue to advance ultracapacitors, their enhanced performance capabilities are expected to hasten the convergence of batteries and ultracapacitors—strengthening the combination of both specific energy storage and pulse power design in future applications.
Oct 1, 2003 Youngho Kim, Director of Product Development, NESSCAP Co. Ltd., Korea Power Electronics
As the market strives for lighter, more compact wireless and portable devices with more ingenious features crammed into an ever-tighter space, a related quest ensues for the next power supply innovation — a powerful, compact, long-lasting, economical and safe battery. Although progressing toward this end, current battery technology often compromises the desired space and weight specifications without properly satisfying peak power requirements.
Ultracapacitors, also known as supercapacitors, offer an alternative source that promises to circumvent the battery scramble and extract greater efficiency from existing power sources. Because of high price and manufacturability issues, this electric double layer capacitor (EDLC), also known as a pseudo capacitor, isn't popular among engineers. However, it offers boundless growth potential because it responds to key market and societal needs: It's environmentally friendly, helps conserve energy, and enhances the performance and portability of consumer devices. Ultracapacitors also are free from characteristic battery problems, such as limited cycle life, cold intolerance and critical charging rates.
Why Ultracapacitors?
Ultracapacitors are being developed as an alternative to pulse batteries. To be an attractive alternative, ultracapacitors must have at least one order of magnitude higher power and a much longer shelf and cycle life than batteries. Ultracapacitors have much lower energy density than batteries, and their low-energy density is, in most cases, the factor that determines the feasibility of their use in a particular high-power application.
Available for decades, a conventional electrolytic capacitor is an energy-storage device that can be compared to a container that gradually fills with electrical energy and then delivers it when needed in a sudden burst. Offered just recently, an ultracapacitor is a high-energy version of a conventional capacitor, holding hundreds of times more energy per unit volume or mass than the latter by using state-of-the-art materials and high-tech microscopic manufacturing processes. When fully charged, these robust devices deliver instant power in an affordable, compact package.
Long considered an enigma because of price, the advent of inexpensive, compact ultracapacitors, characterized by an exceptionally high surface area, excellent conductivity, and superior chemical and physical stability, herald a new era of practical usage.
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