Energy Storage

The efforts of a Holst Centre and NXP collaboration were presented last month in the form of the CoolBioTM. This low power biomedical signal processor is designed to efficiently monitor essential body parameters during the patients' daily lives at home.

A spongy substance that could be mistaken for packing material has the nanotechnology world buzzing.

These thin, scalable devices aim to provide a fast recharge, long cycle life replacement for batteries in certain applications, and can be built into the roof or door panels to save space and weight in electric vehicles or into building structures for networked, massive energy storage on the grid.

Great amounts of energy could be stored in the aerogel, increasing the capacity of lithium batteries or supercapacitors used to store energy generated from renewable resources such as wind and the sun.

Faced with increasingly onerous pollution legislation, manufacturers of on-road vehicles are finding that making their vehicles switch off if stationary for more than a few seconds is something of a quick win.

Avnet Electronics Marketing Americas, a business region of Avnet, Inc. has announced that it will carry the complete line of rechargeable solid state batteries and evaluation kits from Cymbet Corporation.

IDTechEx recently visited GS Caltex in Seoul, Korea, who have developed a solid state lithium thin film battery.

This advanced battery technology has three times the energy density of current li-ion batteries, costing less than half the price per kilowatt-hour.

Printed electronics has its origins in conductive patterns printed as part of conventional electronics, forming flexible keyboards, antennas and so on.

Marine electric craft have recently entered a phase of rapid market growth and radical change. A new IDTechEx report "Marine Electric Vehicles 2011-2021" is the world's first comprehensive report on marine electric vehicles with latest ten year forecasts and assessment of important new projects such as submarines that will fly.

IDTechEx recently visited Korea to learn more about the progress with Printed Electronics there - find out more.

Taiyo Yuden in Japan and others have recently announced lithium supercabatteries with improved properties. However, before considering these combinations of supercapacitor and battery technology it is worth tracking improvements in the basic supercapacitor technology.

By a big margin, Toyota is number one in hybrid car sales and indeed in sales of electric vehicles overall thanks to such things as sales of its electric forklifts, where it is in the top three in most countries.

Malaysian engineers have discovered that bamboo, coconut shells and durian fruit skins can be converted into an activated form of carbon used to make the components of electric batteries known as 'supercapacitors'.

A new way of splitting layered materials to give atomically thin "nanosheets" has been discovered by a Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) funded research team.

An entirely new type of nanomaterial developed at Rensselaer could enable the next generation of high-power rechargeable lithium (Li)-ion batteries for electric automobiles, as well as batteries for laptop computers, mobile phones, and other portable devices.

Skeleton Technologies, an energy-storage start-up based in Tartu, Estonia, has been awarded a US patent on its nanoporous carbon powder supercapacitor material.

BBOXX is a young start-up intent on creating new and sustainable energy solutions in developing countries.

City Labs is the first company in the betavoltaic battery industry to be granted a Product Regulatory General License to manufacture, sell, and distribute betavoltaic batteries.

Cars that glow in the dark and have far more passenger space, aircraft and submarines that monitor their complete outer surface, military vehicles that destroy missiles that hit them. The common factor here is smart skin.