I was working on a controls project where we had large banks of supercaps that would charge up to ~900v. Have to treat those with some respect. However as long as they are kept cool the caps had no trouble being charged and discharged with a couple minute cycle with each bank providing 2kWh of energy. In the particular application I was working on we actually had 17 2kWh banks providing ~34kWh of energy every couple minutes. Would not fit in a cellphone though :)
wow, it sounds like it would make Samsung's Note 7 battery problems seem elementary. Who would want to carry a device like that in their back pocket or hand it to kids to play with? Would a good drop on hard pavement or sheet metal cause this thing to go off?
Comments
Coincidentally they also like to discharge in seconds!
Is that true? All supercaps? This tech in particular?
All supercaps. Shorting a charged supercap is vastly more deleterious than shorting a battery or even a dc power supply.
Shorting batteries is also never a great idea, but supercaps are more dangerous because of their low internal resistance.
This video is a good demonstration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoWMF3VkI6U
I was working on a controls project where we had large banks of supercaps that would charge up to ~900v. Have to treat those with some respect. However as long as they are kept cool the caps had no trouble being charged and discharged with a couple minute cycle with each bank providing 2kWh of energy. In the particular application I was working on we actually had 17 2kWh banks providing ~34kWh of energy every couple minutes. Would not fit in a cellphone though :)
Deleterious or dangerous? (ie, does it hurt the supercap, or the thing shorting the supercap)?
"When first I appear, I seem deleterious / But when explained, I'm nothing serious"
Dangerous. Hurts the thing shorting the supercap and anything in close proximity to that thing
wow, it sounds like it would make Samsung's Note 7 battery problems seem elementary. Who would want to carry a device like that in their back pocket or hand it to kids to play with? Would a good drop on hard pavement or sheet metal cause this thing to go off?
It's not particularly easier to physically rupture than a normal battery. You would have to smash it hard enough to break apart the device.
Probably both. The fraction of energy deposited in each depends on how the internal resistance of the cap compares to that of the load.
Alternatively: All supercaps. They have vastly inferior energy density compared to a battery.
Any capacitor, super or not, has a very tiny internal impedance for DC. So a shortcircuit is liable to max out the current output.