Battery-sized Ultracaps
The brains over at MIT have been trying to come up with a replacement technology to the good old battery. For the most part batteries really haven’t changed much since Alessandro Volta came up with the basic battery back in 1800. Granted there are many new chemistries, new materials, shapes and sizes. Now what MIT has been working on is the Ultracapacitor.
MIT is working on using nanotubes to increase the efficiency of Ultracapacitors. Ultracaps have been around for some time (since the 1960’s) they do however have had a few disadvantages. As I’ve said they have been relatively expensive and they have needed to be up to 25 times larger than a comparably sized battery. With more and more companies researching and improving nanotechnology, the potential for nanotubes are going to begin to be realized. Carbon nanotubes are around 1/30,000 of a human hair and around 100,000 times longer than they are wide. With the carbon structure being vertically aligned and organized they are far more efficient than the standard activated carbon that is currently used.
With a little more playing and advances with this technology we should be able to get the awesome benefits of the Ultracapacitors but retain the energy density of our reliable battery that we’ve come to know and love.
Written By
Ken