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There's been lot of hype about graphene since 2004, when it was first discovered and
hailed as one of the most important breakthroughs in materials since the plastics revolution
a century ago. But since its introduction, graphene still hasn't hit any truly mainstream
products that we can see in our daily lives. But that's starting to change. One
product that was just recently announced could make a big impact in
the renewable energy market. Let's revisit graphene, supercapacitors, and when
and where it's going to start making an impact. I'm Matt Ferrell ... welcome to Undecided. Almost two years ago I produced a video on
graphene, discussing why it was taking so long for it to come to market. About a year ago I
made another video on supercapacitors and if they might be the future of energy storage. I always
try to keep perspective and reiterate that these things take time to go from lab to commercial
and mass produced products. And when it comes to graphene ... we're still waiting. But just
recently one of the companies I highlighted in my supercapacitor video, Skeleton Technologies,
is finally delivering on the graphene promise. But before diving straight into that, it's a good
idea to take a look at what supercapacitors (or ultracapacitors) are, why they're important,
and how graphene plays a roll in all of this. Both batteries and capacitors
are a method of storing energy, but lithium-ion batteries rely on chemical
reactions to store and release their energy. They're made up of a positive and negative side,
which are called the cathode and anode. Those two sides are submerged in a liquid electrolyte and
are separated by a micro perforated separator, which only allows ions to pass through. When the
battery charges and discharges, the ions flow back and forth between the cathode and anode.
During this process the battery is heating up, expanding and contracting. These reactions
degrade the battery over time, giving batteries a limited lifespan. One benefit of battery
technology is a very high specific energy, or what most of us refer to as energy density,
so it can store a lot of energy for later use. But capacitors are different, they don’t rely on
chemical play in order to function. Instead, they store potential energy electrostatically. It’s
basically capturing static electricity. Capacitors use a dielectric, or insulator, between their
plates to separate the collection of positive and negative charges building on each plate. It’s
this separation that allows the device to store energy and quickly release it . One benefit
of this is that a 3V capacitor now will still be a 3V capacitor in 15 or 20 years . They don't
last forever, but they're very consistent. While a lithium-ion battery may lose voltage capacity
over time and with use. And unlike a battery, a capacitor has a much higher power capacity, which
is how much power it can take or give at once. Think of it like water flowing through a hose.
Capacitors have a very wide diameter hose, so they can charge and discharge in a fraction
of the time ... but they have a very low specific energy. It’s good for bursts of power, but
not for storing large amounts for later use. Supercapacitors kick things up a notch
because it’s starting to venture towards a battery’s design and use an electrolyte
on either side of an insulator. When current is applied ions build up on either side of the
insulator and create a double-layer of charge. What makes a supercapacitor truly superior to a
normal capacitor, or even a battery in some cases, is the distance between the metal plates. In a
normal capacitor the distance is around 10-100 microns (a micron is one-thousandth of a
millimeter). But in a supercapacitor that distance is narrowed to one-thousandth
of a micron, and that smaller distance leads to a larger electric field — i.e. more
energy storage. Not to mention, the carbon coated plates on supercapacitors increase the
available surface area for storage capacity by up to 100,000 times. That’s a lot more energy
available for use than a normal capacitor. Companies like NAWA Technologies and Skeleton
Technologies have been trying to take supercapacitors to the next level by incorporating
graphene into the coating of the metal plates. In concept this can expand the conventional
use of supercapacitors into markets like components for electric motorcycles,
spacecrafts and wave energy technology. Graphene provides the next generation
of supercapacitors with an interesting array of improvements. In particular, graphene
offers substantially more surface area, giving supercapacitors even more capacity for energy
storage. It's another step closer to a battery. But in addition to that, graphene is ultralight,
has unique elasticity and is incredibly strong. But to pump the brakes for a second,
what's graphene? To put it simply, it's fundamentally a single layer of graphite
– the material used to make pencils. But instead of having a three-dimensional
crystalline structure like graphite, graphene is basically two-dimensional,
meaning it’s just one atom thick, with the atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice or
honeycomb arrangement – a bit like chicken wire. This structure is important because it allows
each carbon atom to be covalently bonded, that is, sharing an electron pair, to three more
around it, and the strength of these bonds is one of the main reasons why graphene is so strong
and stable . Another reason is because the atoms can move around more freely – and this
is what makes graphene so good at conducting electricity and heat. In fact, it’s the most
conductive material that we’ve ever come across. And that's where Skeleton Technologies
recent product announcement comes in because they're starting to deliver on the
big promise of graphene supercapacitors. It's no longer a question of if a product
like this will come to market ... it is. Before I get to that, I’d to talk about another
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and to all of you for supporting the channel. Skeleton Technologies new line of ultracapacitors
has a 72% increase in Wh/l compared to their non-graphene version in the same form
factor. The new line uses what they call curved graphene. It's a closely guarded secret
for the company, but it was originally developed at Estonia's University of Tartu in the 1990's and
is essentially tiny, crumpled-up graphene sheets. I had a chance to speak to Dr. Sebastian Pohlmann,
the Vice President of Automotive & Business Development at Skeleton Technologies,
about the product. One of the biggest challenges to bringing the new ultracapacitor
to market was producing enough curved graphene. ... these material developments take a long time and they always present unforeseen difficulties.
"What normally happens is it works in the lab and you move from synthesizing
one gram, so that one teaspoon to maybe 10 grams or a hundred grams. So a little
jar of material, and you do that and suddenly, you don't get the same material that you thought you
would get. Your synthesis doesn't work anymore. ...moving from this one gram to the
first kilogram, that is the hardest part. And then it gets easier and easier and easier.
I'm not saying easy, I'm saying easier. Figuring out how to effectively
scale production from 1 gram, to 1 kilogram, to tons of it is a major
undertaking. It's like I mentioned earlier, it takes time to go from lab to mass
market product. The hardest part isn't really figuring out *if* something will
work, but *how* to produce it at scale. ...generally it's easier to come up with concepts
to make things better. What is hard is to come up with concepts that make any technology
better that are commercially and industrially feasible. So you can come up with a thousand
ways to make ultracapacitors better, the same way that you can come up with a thousand
ways to make batteries better, but to find that one way to make it better that is cheap and
effective and scalable, that is the hard part. So why does this matter? You're not going to be
seeing these ultracapactiors replacing the lithium ion batteries in your cars. Their specific energy
is still dramatically lower than a battery, but the power capacity and how much it can deliver at
once is where it shines. And they can pair nicely with lithium ion batteries, like helping to run
the things in a car you normally don't see. Things like the 12-Volt board that runs the lights, the
autonomous driving function, your AC and more. And there, ultracapacitors can help a lot to
make the energy storage that is used there, smaller, lighter, and safer. And that's where
curved graphene ultracapacitors specifically can help because they are already much, much smaller,
they carry more punch in a smaller form factor. So you just make this whole
application cheaper and lighter. Skeleton Technologies current products
can be found helping to power major tram-systems in big European
hubs like Warsaw and Mannheim. The higher capacity of the new curved graphene
products can help save on space and weight. If you look at one specific application that we
have is on top of trains or light rail trains, where you have ultracapacitors that store the
energy when the train breaks and release it when the train accelerates, and that's an application
that can actually save a lot of energy. So in normal operation, that saves around 30%
of energy. So today, you have maybe three strings of ultracapacitors on top. With our curved
graphene solution, you can take one or two out, and that makes the whole solution lighter
and leaves a lot of volume for other things, but also reduces the amount of peripheral
systems that you have on that train. But when it comes to things like
renewables, supercapacitors play a big roll. Their ultracapacitor modules are already being
used in wind turbines to help manage the blade pitch control. The new graphene versions
can provide the same amount of power and control in fewer modules. That means reduced
space, reduced weight, and reduced cost. But supercapacitors also play a very large
roll in grid scale energy storage systems. I asked my colleague who is actually
dealing with all the wind and renewable energy segment and he told me, "Okay, a
lot of wind energy is good, but it's like candy. If you have too much of it, it might be bad
because you actually destabilize the grids. If you have too much solar, too much wind, it's
what we are striving for, to have 100% of it, but if you have a 100% of it and we have
no energy storage, you lack the foundation. Because ultracapacitors are able
to deal with these very short peaks that normally are dealt with by the
huge rotating turbines that we have on coal power plants and nuclear power plants and so on.
The more you take these out and bring renewable energy in, the more you need reactive power
storage, and that's what ultracapacitors can do. So when are we going to start seeing Skeleton
Technologies' new curved graphene ultra capacitors in the market? Commercial production is currently
set for 2023, but they're sending samples to partners, mainly European customers and automotive
OEMs, and getting feedback to make adjustments as they ramp up to full production. But they aren't
stopping there with curved graphene. This is just the beginning for what's to come and Dr. Pohlmann
teased a little bit about what's coming next. ...our next steps are using it in the
so-called super battery technology, which we have developed over the past
five years, basically, which we're now slowly moving out of the lab into the actual
application and industrialization phase, and that is a technology where we increase the energy
density even further by combining the curved graphene with a specifically developed chemistry.
It basically has 10 times the energy density that you have today in ultracapacitors, but it
doesn't have that power. So it's filling the gap between the ultracapacitors and the batteries.
So you can imagine it like a battery with maybe a fourth of the energy that you normally would have
in a battery, but you can charge it in 20 seconds. So it's something that really covers these 20
seconds to five minute gaps that ultracapacitors are not really good at, but batteries are
also not really good at. So you can think about things like supporting fuel cells in the
operation, you can think about any hybridization, a lot of grid applications, where you just need
to cover a couple of minutes of power passing, a lot of applications in industrial grids
where you have 3, 4, 5 minute power peaks that you need to shave off, all these things
can be solved by the super battery technology. When it comes to graphene the media hype got
a little out of control in the beginning, which set some unrealistic expectations of when
we'd start benefiting from its capabilities. Fast forward to today and we're finally
starting to see technologies come to market that have a good chance of making
an impact. I'm really excited to see where Skeleton Technologies takes their curved
graphene products, and how other products like them will help benefits renewables
and other sustainable technologies. But what do you think? Do you think graphene
is still all hype or if it's going to start making an impact? And let me know if there are
other companies doing interesting things with graphene that I should look into. Jump into
the comments and let me know. And thanks as always to all of my patrons and a big welcome
to Supporter+ member, Michael J. McHale. Your direct support really helps with producing these
videos. Speaking of which, if you liked this video be sure to check out one of the ones I have linked
right here. And subscribe and hit the notification bell if you think I’ve earned it. Thanks so much
for watching and I’ll see you in the next one.
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