Energy Storage

As it is in automotive, supercapacitors will be providing reliable and cost effective high power for critical applications such as data centers and hospitals. These are the so called UPS (uninterruptable power supply) systems. This article explains why.

A revolution is slicing through the car industry.

In 2025 over $25 billion will be spent on formulations and intermediate materials for wearable technology, as forecast by analysts IDTechEx in the brand new report Wearable Technology Materials 2015-2025.

A memorandum of understanding was signed between the Azerbaijan Investment Company OSJC, Sumgait Chemical Industrial Park LLC , and SouthWest NanoTechnologies, Inc. to begin long-term cooperation on a major carbon nanotube production facility.

Researchers are the first to measure the optical and electrical transport properties of the individual nanoflakes that make up a battery's electrode while it is being charged.

Researchers have reduced the problem of sudden death in lithium air batteries through the addition of water, increasing their energy storage capacity by five times.

Malaysia's first indigenous Hydrogen Fuel Cell vehicle was launched by Education Minister II Datuk Seri Idris Jusoh at The National University of Malaysia.

Recently, the good news has been the continued strong growth of the market for hybrid cars, buses and outdoor forklifts, premium-priced pure electric cars and pure electric vehicles of many other types from the newly popular electric motorcycles to mobile cranes, mobility vehicles for the disabled and microEVs. On the negative side, the oversupplied e-bike/ e-scooter business remained almost entirely loss-making Chinese suppliers of the Chinese market where growth eased and companies left the business. Mainstream pure electric cars remained a failure due to up-front price too high, resale price too low (those short-lived batteries) and range too short. The term "structural electronics" is little known despite being used for several years, notably in terms of specifics such as "structural sensors" and "structural batteries". Google has tens of millions of items on the subject and, more importantly, in 2014, it started to be realised that this is to be something big.

Whilst the industry has reduced its growth in comparison to the previous years (from an estimated 30% in 2014 vs 2013 to 15% in 2014 vs 2013), IDTechEx believes that this is just a temporary stagnation. Indeed, the fact that other companies are investing in manufacturing capacity and challenging the leadership of Maxwell Technologies is a positive sign for the industry and a good signal for the supercapacitor market, which by definition needs more than one major player. We believe that more manufacturer options across the globe will provide the required alternative supply that end user industries are requiring in order to warranty market competition. This article gives an overview of the major events and developments in 2014 and gives the IDTechEx outlook for 2015.

Teijin Limited has announced that it will open the second production line for LIELSORT®, an innovative separator for lithium ion secondary batteries.

Thermoelectric harvesting will be on production hybrid electric on-road vehicles from 2018. It will be commonplace on hybrids in 2020 and almost entirely to charge the battery, or increasingly supercapacitor or supercabattery used for power.

Researchers looking for a better understanding of liquid electrolyte may have found a pathway forward.

A new electrode design for lithium-ion batteries has been shown to potentially reduce the charging time from hours to minutes by replacing the conventional graphite electrode with a network of tin-oxide nanoparticles.

Lithium-sulfur batteries are of great commercial interest because they boast theoretical specific energy densities considerably greater than those of their already-well-established cousin, lithium ion batteries.

At an event in Los Angeles last year, Tesla showcased battery swap technology to demonstrate that it's possible to replace a Model S battery in less time than it takes to fill a gas tank.

Researchers are working to create an electric car battery that is smaller, cheaper and allows drivers to go farther on a charge.

United Chemi-Con is the american subsidiary of Nippon Chemi-Con. The Nippon Chemi-con Corporation was established in 1931. The company contributed for the global development of aluminum electrolytic capacitors. Since 2003 the company has been producing supercapacitors and now it is one of the contenders for the market leadership in large supercapacitor applications.

Nisshinbo Industries is a company founded in 1907. It this is a 450 billion yen (3.7 usd billion dollar) conglomerate with a broad range of product portfolio covering from materials for electronics, automobile brakes, textiles, papers and other chemicals. This company profile is focused on the development of supercapacitor technology by the company.

TOC Capacitor Co., Ltd. manufactures electric double layer capacitor. The company was founded in 2011 and is based in Okaya-shi, Japan. TOC Capacitor Co., Ltd. is a joint venture between TPR Co., Ltd. and Okaya Electric Industries Co., Ltd.TOC Capacitor Co. acquired Nisshinbo's supercapacitor technology in November 2014. This technology was used in Toyota's winner racing car TS040.

Simple things are being applied to reduce purchase price, increase resale price and extend range of electric cars