Graphene batteries and supercapacitors
 

In May a South Korean group announced a graphene supercapacitor "breakthrough" that could produce very short charging times:
Breakthrough for electric cars: Supercapacitors from miracle substance graphene charges batteries in 4 minutes

And in this older report, a Berkeley group is described as developing graphene batteries: "The Berkeley team is eyeballing the new technology to develop a low cost electric vehicle battery in the 300 mile range, so stay tuned."
Graphene Could Kill Lithium-Ion Batteries | CleanTechnica

I wonder how much of this is hype, and when some of these technologies might make an appearance in cars or even battery products sold directly to the consumer market.

There is so much hype on different battery chemistry types right now. Its very encouraging to see all the research and development going on in that area. Time will only tell which ones will actually prove viable in real world applications.

Hmmm: 10 kwh in my volt pack. 4 minute recharge. Awfully big current numbers to get recharged. Pretty sure it would melt 2/0 cables, and set fire to the li-pos.

That's a good point. There would be a need for new charging infrastructure, wouldn't there?

Batteries get hot when they get charged because of their internal resistance.
The whole point of having graphene or unobtanium or whatever is just to reduce that resistance.
They would not get as hot while being charged; ideally even a full charge could not produce enough heat to trouble them, doing away with the need of forced cooling.

The current episode of EVTV had mention of improvements from 24m (which rose from the ashes of A123) and Samsung. 24m has a way of layering the electrolyte and Samsung had something to do with the electrodes. Now I need to watch it again.

Irrespective of heating, a fast recharge of a massive battery must be like a mini-lightning bolt passing through a cable you can grasp in your hand. :eek:

Can we harness lightning bolts yet? Aren't there some places regularly hit by them?

That wold be like taking the whole fast charging problem, and multiplying by itself.

Edit: The Samsung announcement involves anodes made of silicon instead of carbon, wrapped in graphene sheets because the silicon swells and shrinks through the charge/discharge cycle.

So, something different. It's the usual 2 to 3 years out.

It's all hype until it actually exists and is available to the public.
JJ

10 kWh in 4 minutes is a charge rate of 150 kW. On 240 volt, that would be 625 amps. The typical household service is only 200 amps.

You would want a much higher charging voltage to keep the amps at a reasonable level. Even at 600 volts, it would take 250 amps to supply the 150 kWh rate.

Fun stuff.