Supercapacitors Essay

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Supercapacitors M.Taleb 1. Introduction Supercapacitor and Ultracapacitor are the commercial names of the devices made by Nippon Electric Company (NEC), Japan, and Pinnacle Research Institute (PRI), USA, respectively. In technical terms, it is named as electrochemical double-layer capacitor (EDLC). Supercapacitors or ultracapacitors are being widely used for energy storage in many applications, such as UPS, and electrical vehicles, etc. [4] 2. Brief history The storage of electrical charge in the interface between a metal and an electrolytic solution has been studied by chemists since the nineteenth century, but the practical use of double-layer capacitors only began in 1957, when a patent was placed by General Electric for an electrolytic capacitor using porous carbon electrodes. [4] In 1966, The Standard Oil Company, Cleveland, Ohio (SOHIO) patented a device that stored energy in the doublelayer interface and started research on a disc-shaped capacitor in 1970 utilising a carbon paste soaked in an electrolyte. By 1971, NEC went on the produce the first commercially successful double-layer capacitors under the name “supercapacitor.” Since then, a number of companies started producing electrochemical capacitors. Panasonic eveloped the “Gold capacitor” in 1978. By 1987, ELNA had begun producing their own double-layer apacitor under the name “Dynacap”. The first high-power double-layer capacitors were designed for military applications such as laser weaponry and missile guidance systems. A number of companies around the world currently manufacture EDLCs in a commercial capacity. The U.S.A, Australia, Korea, Canada and Russia produce and sell a wide variety of EDLC modules for applications in power quality, electric vehicles, and for starting internal combustion engines. 3. Principles Conventional capacitors consist of two conducting electrodes

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