Energy levels at the University of Colorado likely often peak somewhere around the football facility, thanks to the addition of Coach Prime in 2022.
But the fully loaded Deion Sanders now has competition from engineering experts. Recent news of a breakthrough in a high-energy supercapacitor holds promise that the technology could one day help recharge a laptop or smartphone in about a minute or an electric vehicle in 10 minutes, according to a lab report from UC Boulder’s Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering.
“The main appeal of supercapacitors lies in their speed. So how can we make them charge and release energy faster? By making ions move more efficiently,” said lead researcher and assistant professor Ankur Gupta.
Supercapacitors store electricity like a battery, although their insides are configured differently. They have nearly unlimited life cycles, but so far they haven’t been able to hold as much energy as regular lithium-ion packs, which limits their application, as AZoNano explained. However, new research is opening doors for the technology. In the state of North Carolina, experts are working on yarn-like versions that are intended to be woven into clothing powering wearable technology, as one example.
Back in Boulder, the team closely watched how charged ions move through porous electrodes, a key process in performance that experts said in the research abstract is “poorly understood.”
The analysis framework they created speeds up numerical calculations by “six orders of magnitude” while maintaining accuracy. As a result, experts can analyze the performance of thousands of interconnected pores in minutes.
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Gupta said this improves research, which is limited to studying one pore at a time.
“This is the leap in work,” Gupta said in the university’s summary. “We found the missing link.”
This allowed the team to better explore the relationships between pore size, charging time and other key metrics. Interestingly, the findings differ from the 1845 concept in an area called Kirchhoff’s law, which involves current flow in circuits. The flow at the pore intersections studied by the researchers differed from the long-standing principle.
The amended law could pave the way for improvements not previously considered viable. The team envisions 3D-printed microscale electrodes used in wearable energy storage, as well as EV and grid use as future possibilities.
If the supercapacitor’s longevity and fast charging capability can be combined with greater energy density, the result could be revolutionary for electric cars.
So-called range anxiety remains a barrier for some would-be EV buyers, though technological advances are already allaying the fear. Supercapacitor technology at this level could turn off worry forever.
When an EV replaces a gas-powered vehicle, about 10,000 pounds of air pollution is avoided each year. This represents a reduced risk of asthma and other health problems related to harmful gases. What’s more, less atmospheric pollution reduces the likelihood of extreme weather and protects agricultural productivity, both of which are affected by rising temperatures.
Colorado is already home to Prime Time, but the development of technology that provides faster charging speeds could prove to be the bigger payoff on campus and beyond if the research lives up to its potential.
“Given the critical role energy plays in the future of the planet, I felt inspired to apply my knowledge of chemical engineering to advanced energy storage devices,” Gupta said in the lab’s summary.
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