The team has developed a patent pending electrolyte chemistry that is believed to have the potential to improve the performance of ultracapacitors that are an important, but underutilized component in energy storage solutions. To date, the adoption of ultracapacitors has been limited due to inadequate energy storage performance and high costs. However, a number of technological breakthroughs have made the ultracapacitor commercially viable. Applications are currently dominated by the automotive and electronic industries with large potential in solar and wind energy storage and industrial applications. The demand for ultracapacitor in automotive start-up systems is projected to be the primary source of growth over the next decade. As the ultracapacitor market grows and more firms enter, it will become increasingly competitive. These companies will need to provide technically superior products. The adoption of the proposed patent pending electrolyte will allow companies to easily improve performance with little engineering effort.
The proposed electrolyte has demonstrated promising improvements in proof-of-concept testing that were validated by an independent laboratory. The proposed electrolyte was compared with the current industry standard and showed 19% higher capacitance and 15% high breakdown potential translating into more energy storage, and wider temperature and voltage ranges. Longevity testing has shown that the proposed technology has a lifetime of approximately 100,000 cycles, and these improvements could translate into new applications for electrochemical double layer capacitors (EDLC). The goal of this proposal is to show that the proposed electrolye can be smoothly integrated into existing and future ultracapacitor devices in a "plug and play" fashion. The team will use the I-Corps training to develop a commercial-scale prototype to demonstrate the technology to potential customers and partners and develop a commercialization plan to bring the product to market.
