EEStor Update #8

FOXNews.com has a Sept. 2 article on Austin-based EEStor, a reclusive ultracapacitor startup, that has generated lots of interest, but little substance.  If the company can deliver on its promises, the auto industry could see a paradigm shift in how vehicles are powered, making engines unnecessary.  The article contains little, if any, new information about the company, but does a good job of summarizing the known information which can be boiled down to these points:

• Investments of about $4 million by ZENN Motor and a $3 million investment by the venture capital group Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, who have made extensive amounts of due diligence" on EEStor's innovation, indicate that there is likely to be a great deal of truth about EEStor's claims.
• Patent No. 7,033,406 reveals some information about their device.
• EEStor's founders have a track record. Richard D. Weir and Carl Nelson worked on disk-storage technology at IBM Corp. in the 1990s before forming EEStor in 2001.
• EEStor claims an improvement of more than 400-fold over conventional capacitors, while increasing a capacitor's retention ability.
• EEStor's is a parallel plate capacitor with thousands of wafer-thin metal sheets, like a series of foil-and-paper gum wrappers stacked on top of each other.
• EEStor has created breakthrough technology in a novel formulation of a nonconductive material (dielectric) for use between the metal sheets, using a chemical compound called barium titanate. The question is whether the company can mass-produce it.
• ZENN still expects to receive shipments later this year for use in ZENN Motor's short-range, low-speed vehicles.

More posts on EEStor can be found here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here,

Comments

[marcus]

This year is fast running out. If we don't hear from ZENN soon its going to start looking a little suspicious....

[Luigi_Aronson]

From what I read, there are many skeptics saying their claims won't work at the voltages they need.

Nevertheless, the hype does make one wonder. If their improved processes advance ultracapacitors 15% the 7 mill investment is sound.

[risa]

Which is a long way from 400-fold. But I keep hoping to hear more. It's one of those things one looks for, like the pavement-as-solar-cells thing.

[Stephen Boulet]

Only a little longer to wait now. One can hope.

Stephen

[CY]

Feel something against fundamental physics but can't tell exactly what it is.

[Beek]

CY, EESTOR has ignored the quantum tunneling effect. You are on the right track.

All the 7 points above are utterly uninteresting.

#1) $3 million by Kleiner Perkins is loose change and shows their lack of confidence.

#6) if the issue is mass production, then how come they can't even demonstrate a single capacitor?

[H. Ohlke]

I stand optimistic that practical cross-country 'personal' electric transportation may be available in the near future. In whatever form this may happen, a small stumbling block to this dream would be our government's eventual concern on how to collect highway taxes from cars charging off the electric grid or otherwise. This could explain why so much government grant money seems to be available to research only the technologies that require one to fill up at fueling stations (methanol, hydrogen, etc) where taxes could easily be collected.

A suggestion to address this would be to tax tires for highway taxes in lieu of fuel. This way no matter what provides the energy, taxes on the amount of highway used by an individual vehicle could be (fairly ?)collected. Government should be happy that the money keeps rolling in for highway maintenance.

If this was seriously considered, it would be interesting to see the debate over what amount should be levied per tire. Should a motorcycle tire be taxed the same as a car or 18 wheeler tire ? What about the loss of tax money from gas used by lawnmowers and other non-highway vehicles ?

Definitely should make for an interesting discussion....

[Rick Cavaretti]

It's now October 8th, 2007. Let's see a working prototype please.

[doesnt anyone get it??]

Below is a detailed discussion clearly demonstrating the invalidity of EEstor’s claims and targets.

EEstor does not report either a new material, or any data that indicates the ability to store more energy than known titanate dielectrics. EEstor calculates the amount of energy they expect their capacitor to store. A fundamental oversight results in an invalid calculation that is inaccurate by more than a factor of 100! The error is uncomplicated. Simply, energy does not equal ½ CV2 for a capacitor made from a nonlinear dielectric. For all high permittivity ceramics, the dielectric permittivity (K’) decreases markedly with increasing electric field E (dielectric saturation). Energy increases roughly linearly with voltage for these materials, as opposed to with the square of the voltage (ref 2).

Importantly, this is not a case wherein EEstor claims to have made some specific breakthrough regarding this issue. No such breakthrough is reported. There are no energy storage measurements, no permittivity versus field data, and no mention of eliminating or reducing dielectric saturation. Their patent and presentations indicate a complete lack of awareness (or lack of acknowledgment) of this issue. EEstor simply purports to make (or aspires to make) high K barium titanate based material, with a K of 18,000, and ultimately with an incredibly high breakdown strength of up to 300V/um. They then calculate the energy stored as ½ CV2 without comment on the use of this equation.

How large of an error does this cause? Calculated energy density is ½K’E2 when calculated total energy is ½CV2. For K = 18,000, and a field 100 V/um, this invalid calculation gives 800 J/cc. (½K’E2 = (0.5)(8.85×10-12 F/m)(18,000)(1×108 V/m) = 8×108 J/m3 = 800 J/cc). Eight references describing actual studies of energy storage in high permittivity ceramic dielectrics (including barium titanate and BST) are noted below. All of these studies indicate a maximum energy density ranging from about 2 to 12 J/cc, depending on the exact material and the maximum breakdown voltage (which is on the order of 100V/um in most cases). Notably, for the studies involving very high K materials, if the authors had simply calculated energy storage using ½ CV2, as EEstor does, it would have similarly resulted in reported values on the order of 100 times greater than the actual measured values!

Hence there is no basis for concluding EEstor has made any advance in the field, and clear evidence that the sole basis for their claim of unbelievably high energy storage is the simple, invalid calculation. Their aspiration (with no reported results) to triple the breakdown field to 300 V/um in combination with the invalid calculation adds an additional factor of 9, giving an absurd 7200 J/cc (along with all of the corresponding hype and speculation about a new miracle material).

Below are notes regarding the references noted above that clearly substantiate the analysis above (one report of personal measurements, the other seven directly from a Google search on energy storge in ceramic dielectrics). .

1. (My work, unpublished), 1987 – Report to Maxwell Corporation on energy storage potential in high permittivity ceramics. Measurements were made on thin films up to 100V / um on barium titanate and PLZT based dielectrics. K varied as ~ 1/E over much of the voltage range, resulting in an approximately linear increase in energy density with field. Maximum energy storage was 4 – 8 J/cc.

2. Love, Journal of the American Ceramic Society 1990 – Also observed a linear increase in energy with voltage for several classes of high permittivity (up to 12,000) thick film ceramics (barium titanate, PLZT, PMN). Reported up to 5 J/cc at 80 V/um.

3. Triani, et.al, (ANSTO and CSIRO – Australia, 2001 – J. Materials Science and Engineering. They reported 8 – 10 J/cc for PbSr titanate, and noted that the energy densities were similar to those of the best BaSr titanate materials for a given field, but the maximum fields of up to 100V/um (100KV/mm) were superior for the PST.

4. Kaufmann, et.,al, Penn State and Argonne, 1999. DOE Contract Report. They report sputtered BaSr titanate thin films with a K of 500 and a breakdown field of 100 V / um. K decreases to 120, and the energy storage is 11 J/cc. Also reported are data for hot pressed AFE/FE lead zirconate. These had a maximum K of 12,000, and a breakdown strength of 12 V/um, resulting in an energy storage of 3.2 J/cc.

5. Fletcher, et.al, 1996 Journal of Applied Physics D. They report a theoretical analysis based on Devonshire theory of ferroelectrics. Optimal energy density is predicted for materials with Curie Temperatures well below the operating temperatures. Applied to BaSr titanate, the model predicts an energy density of 8 J/cc at 100 V/um. The model was verified in actual materials.

6. Randolf, et. al, (Austria, 1996) – IEEE Annual Report - Studied dielectric energy storage for powders embedded in polymer matrices. They reported using a PbTitanate-PbZnNiobate material with K = 5000, and reported energy densities of 1 – 10 J/cc.

7. Lawless, et. al., Ceramphysics Inc. 1992 report a high permittivity ceramic (K = 8000) for which a maxium energy density of 6 J/cc was observed for samples with optimum breakdown strength.

8. Freim, Nanomaterials Research Corp NASA SBIR Proposal 1998, reports reduced dielectric saturation for nanocrystalline microstructures, and states that “Commercial coarse grain dielectric based ceramic capacitors are ineffective for use in high energy storage and delivery applications since the dielectric’s permittivity decreases sharply when the applied voltage is increased.” They target 5 – 10 J/cc for the proposed new improved materials.

If you aren’t familiar with dielectric saturation, or even if you are and you don’t think back to where ½ CV2 comes from – you miss it. And until you collect information and compare with the calculation, you have no clue it makes a factor of 100 difference in this case. People don’t even realize what EEstor is asserting. If they said, “we are going to use barium titanate based materials, which up until now how only been able to store 8 J/cc, but our barium titanate will store over 1000 J/cc – people would ask themselves how is that possible and what is the basis for that claim.

Then you would find out it’s not just a case of them not providing data or proof of their claims. They don’t even claim to have observed or measured a property indicating their barium titanate would be different. There is nothing left but the calculation. The sole origin for their high numbers is that they simply start with the K of high permittivity modified barium titanate (eg., K = 18,000 not a new achievement), and simply calculate energy = 1/2CV2. Anyone could have done that at any time for any high K material and gotten the same outrageous numbers.

So at that point, one should ask why people get a factor of 100 less when they actually measure it. The answer is well documented and obvious – dielectric saturation. So the only justification for using 1/2CV2 which gives a factor of 100 higher than known and understood measured values, would be if you made a measured observation that you have a fantastic new material that doesn’t saturate at all and stores 100 times the energy.

EEstor has never made any such claim or reported to have made any such obvservation. They just did the calculation. It’s just a mistake.

[supercapman]

I think if barium titanate is 100% purity,dielectric saturation would not happen.
So EEstor may be right.

[Brian OH]

Their claim is a massive advance.
They are under no obligation to tell us
anything. We will just have to wait and see.
Until then there will be the believers, the
unbelievers, and the agnostics. Speculation
is understandable, but non-productive. Any
comments with good scientific knowledge
would be good. Preferably stating why it
may work, because i'm an optimist. Brian

[Jim Johnson]

I saw a very interesting post on the ultracapacitors.org site that shows how EEstor's technology cannot work and is a result of a miscalculation.

http://www.ultracapacitors.org/ultracapacitors.org-blog/zenn-eestor-what-has-happened.htm

[Frank del Mar]

Regardless of what has been discovered about ultracapacitors in the past, we cannot dismiss any new and possible improvements of new materials and applications of the supercapacitor that EESTOR is working on at the present time.
Fact is , they have no obligations to tell us what their labs have with their new ultracapacitors. Why would a private company Eestor corp and a public company like Zenn corp. promise to deliver the cityZenn for fall of 2009, if they don't have the capability of doing so?
Why would Lockheed Martin sign a contract with Eestor corp. to use their technology for defense related applications?
If these company's promises fail to materialize, then I could see big pies on the faces of the CEO's of these companies.

I am an optimist by nature and we should wait and see for these companies to deliver the goods. I sure hope so .

[aaron]

I find the whole eestor thing very unlikely as Weir has made the claim that there is a production facility currently under construction in the Cedar Park area.
A PI was hired to dig into this and found absolutely nothing, kind of hard to hid a factory on 200 to 300 acres.
http://aaron-allaboutoil.blogspot.com/

Also, I've discovered that Richard S. Wier, the son of Richard D. Weir runs an internet marketting company, well what more would you need to start a pump and dump internet scam than an internet marketting professional? I tried pointing this out on www.theeestory.com but they quickly tried to erase all evidence that I was member on the site. my motto was find the building, find the proof. I suspect that the admin of www.theeestory.com with their anonymous dns hosting information and anonymous contact info and eestor are one in the same entities.
Its a shame that so much attention has been given to this snoke oil technology, when legitimate science like the silicon nano-wire battery holds a much greater promise.

[Ken]

Well its been years now of this going on and still nothing. Is Ian Clifford ever going to be held accountable for swindeling millions from investors? Will Weir ever just come out with his fraud?

[Brendan]

THE EESCAM CONTINUES.