HONDA FCX Ultracapacitor

[wolfgang]

HONDA claim to have incorporated in their FCX Concept fuel cell car, a proprietory ultracapacitor. According to their graph, this module stores up to 2 kWh/kg and delivers 1.7 kW/kg. These numbers look too good to be true, a 20-fold improvement in energy density of the Tesla roadster's battery pack. To store 50 kWh would only require 25 kg of mass!

http://world.honda.com/FuelCell/FCX/ultracapacitor/charging/

Also, NESSCAP are selling 5 kF ultracapacitors with only 1/3 of a 18650's energy density. http://www.nesscap.com/products_capacitor.htm

So how did HONDA do it? Or is there a typo in HONDA's graph?

 

[klausefluoride]

Woah. But if Honda could build this, why bother with the fuel cell at all?

 

[danny]

Woah. But if Honda could build this, why bother with the fuel cell at all?

exactly

 

[tevvybear]

the question is, how much self-discharge would that ultracapacitor have? Self-discharge has always been a noticeable problem with electrolytic capacitors, though i don't know about these ultra-capacitors.
If it discharges itself by even 10% per day, problems of overall energy efficiency arise

 

[WarpedOne]

IIRC maxwel states for their 3000+F ultracaps, that they loose about 1% of charge in a month.

 

[asdar]

I'm not an electrical engineer so I may have this totally messed up.

I believe that there's some kind of problem with scaling up ultracapacitors. The numbers on the Honda were 2 grams/watt I think.

Like I said, I don't know what I'm talking about on this, but the factor that doesn't scale is the K factor, which I think is the dialectric coefficient.

I'm not sure why you couldn't just have 1,000 2 gram capacitors or something along those lines and still get the finished product of 2kg instead of 2 g.

If there's someone that knows more I'd love to see an explanation from an expert.

 

[Roy]

The Honda Ultracapacitor cannot be 2 wHr/g but must be 2wHr/kg as it shows the ultracapacitors as only being marginaly better than standard capacitors. Also I couldn't find any mention of a 5 kF capacitor at Nesscap.