Electric and hybrid technology may be prevailing in automobile industry but the charging of batteries is quite a huge problem. A fully drained out battery can take hours to charge. Ultra-capacitors are an alternative but they cannot hold charge as much as Li-ion batteries can and are not feasible to be used in cars or buses.
But researchers in Dayton, Ohio are busy in renewing the technology and have made grapheme electrodes. These electrodes will lead ultra-capacitors to store five times more charge than already existing commercial devices. The tests carried out by Nanotek Instruments show that grapheme electrodes can store up to 86 watt-hours of energy per Kg. This is a considerable increase as an ordinary ultra-capacitor can store 28 watt-hours of energy per Kg. There is still a performance gap as nickel metal batteries can store up to 100 watt-hours of energy per Kg. and Li-ion batteries can store up to 12 watt-hours of energy per Kg.
But these conventional batteries take a lot of time to charge and have to be replaced from time to time as their cells lose their ability of storing charge over time. Ultra-capacitors on the other hand can last for millions of charge cycles and will practically have unlimited life. They also get charged in a few minutes as they story the charge electro-statically.
The researchers are confident that they can develop an ultra-capacitor with carbon nano-material technology that will be capable of storing charge on performing on a large scale. These ultra-capacitors can be an ultimate choice for vehicle manufacturers in the near future due to their quick charging and long life.
