TheEEStory.com

DuffelDorf wrote:

Lensman, Your German is not right.

Daniel R Plante wrote:

... The extrapolated leakage was a little bit higher on average than the purported full EESU leakage specs, but it's still amazingly low in an absolute sense.

Virtually *ANY* current leakage, greater than some infinitessimal small nano-, pico- atto- femto- ... level, at 3500V or 5000V or such, is almost certainly going to result in enough heating to begin a positive feedback avalanche of current that will render the particular cell, "element", "component", "array" or full EESU inoperative. Boom, poof, splat ... badness.

If EESUs are going to work, and be practical, they have to have the paradoxical trait of extraordinarily low self-discharge rate.

As odd as it may seem, in practice, high voltage and low leakage are two sides of a working high voltage electrical energy *storage* system.

Aren't they?

Last edited Thu, 20 Nov 2008, 7:34am by nekote

I should have noticed this before, but that leakage current does not look right.

Distributions of that parameter are log-normal. I went to the lab and reviewed the "leakage current" for that value capacitor, and they all showed order of magnitude, usually two orders, within 10 readings. I asked the test tech if she had ever seen readings as consistent as (the ESU's) and she said "only when the (instrument) was broken"

And incidently, most do not measure "leakage current", they measure "insulation resistance" for these types of capacitors.

Opinions?

FWIW, I think it is another clue as to what is *different*, from known cap. technology.

Or maybe, just a corollary effect of so many 9's of purity?
Comparatively extreme consistency.
Again, another paradoxical necessity, for EESU to be economically mass produced?

Last edited Thu, 20 Nov 2008, 9:47am by nekote

nekote wrote:

Again, another paradoxical necessity, for EESU to be economically mass produced?

CapMan is right. Those low leakage values cannot be correct by an order of magnitude ALSO his statement about ."insulation resistance" is correct. Makes me wonder if they know what industry terms are most accepted, 6 of one half dozen of the other, I know but nontheless. But as I stated before, It would hav been impossible to assemble complete eesu with out an extremely large factory to begin with, its not logistically possible. So it questions if these testings were even done at all.

"paradoxical necessity" are only good for logic areguements such as the Schrödinger cat. Not mass production of known technologies.

DuffelDorf wrote:

But as I stated before, It would hav been impossible to assemble complete eesu with out an extremely large factory to begin with, its not logistically possible. So it questions if these testings were even done at all.

Well using your reasoning I could claim that making a modern CPU in a lab is impossible. They have close to 10^9 transistors!
I don't know whether any EESU has been made, but claiming its impossibility because you would need the equivalent of a complete chip plant seems silly.

And yes, I think the analogy is valid. I don't think EEStor ever planned to assemble an EESU from individual components.

jpo, that is orange to apple. 2 completely different techniques. Lithography is nothing like what they need to do. A cap plant cannot fit inside an 1 level office parke building. Explains?

Quite excellent points here, as to what it would have taken, 4+ years ago, to manufacture 10 full EESUs.

Back on Sept. 7, I took a first cut stab at estimating the time required to produce a single "tray" (pie?) that gets diced up into 6,000 or so "elements" (the 100 dielectric layer pieces).
10 "elements" are "glued" together to form a "component".
31,351 "components" are required for a full 52 KWH EESU.
Production time, per tray

For the WIPO PET / alumina patent application steps that listed a time, assuming worst case all serial steps (nothing overlapping in parallel) I came up with an absolute minimum of 3 hours and 17 minutes, per 100 layer tray. So, something like 4 to 6 hours, per tray, per line. Ugh!

Screen printing and then heating each of the individual 101 electrode layers for 10 seconds and each of the individual 100 dielectric layers for 60 second sure adds up!

So, for a 24 x 7 continuous operation, that might be, oh, as a round number guesstimate, 5 trays per day, per line?

Each 52 KWH full EESU needs 52 trays worth of good "elements".
So, at 100% yield, running 24 x 7, at these back of the envelope guesstimations, it would take each line around 10 days to produce enough (raw) "elements" to make a single, solitary, full EESU.

Say 1 week, 10 days, 2 weeks, per 24 x 7 100% yield line, per EESU.
Pick your own guesstimate.
And, 240 pounds of ultra-pure alumina coated CMBT.
11 pounds of (sub-)micron sized aluminum (the electrodes).
2 pounds or so of very high quality PET.

A good couple of months, laboriously working to make 10 of the very first (pre-pilot?) full EESUs?

4+ years ago

Quite a difficult slog, depending on how many lines (primarily the screen printing and heater ovens) you want to assume.

Guess it all depends on how the time versus money equation got decided.

1 line would have meant maybe 6 months?
10 lines a half a month?

Last edited Thu, 20 Nov 2008, 11:08am by nekote

Nek, a good arguement but the flaw with it is that screen printing of capacitor materials was only freshly being designed in 2006 and as far as I know they have not perfected it yet especially to the requirements of what Mr Wier states. Whats your estimate for conventional Cap manufacturing?

Signed by Richard D. Weir.
August 10, 2004 submission date

page 3 (of 43)
http://www.theeestory.com/files/05812758.0.pdf

Unless I missed an after the submission edit / update / revision, the 10 full EESUs and the 1,000,000 cycle 10 "components" testing was already completed, some (unknown) time prior to August 10, 2004. Coulda' been months (or years) earlier, for all we know!

My assumption is that EEStor has worked very hard, for 4+ years, to improve the production rate / techniques toward more economical / profitable mass production.

Last edited Thu, 20 Nov 2008, 11:50am by nekote

mmmh;

I just thought of something else...check my math (and logic), but if they measured/calculated the leakage current to be about 4x10^-6 amps, at a voltage of (about) 4x10^3, then the R is 10^9. To get that value, they multiplied thier reading by 30 x 10^3, which means they are on the scale of 10^-13, which is what our meters call an "open".

You dont suppose they had opens and didn't know it?
Course that fits with thier construction technique, which I think would cause opens. IMHO.

CapacitorMan wrote:

mmmh;

I just thought of something else...check my math (and logic), but if they measured/calculated the leakage current to be about 4x10^-6 amps, at a voltage of (about) 4x10^3, then the R is 10^9. To get that value, they multiplied thier reading by 30 x 10^3, which means they are on the scale of 10^-13, which is what our meters call an "open".

You dont suppose they had opens and didn't know it?
Course that fits with thier construction technique, which I think would cause opens. IMHO.

Yeah, that ocured to me too because of the magnitude, but then there's the charge/discharge setup and info, so...

Meh. (shrug) :)

From Tyler Hamilton’s Clean Break blog March 29th, 2006:

"Among the various local news flashes is a bit about Cedar Park startup EEStor Inc., which decided on March 25th to hold a five-hour open house to show off two prototypes of a Feel Good Car that runs off one of its super dooper ultracapacitor-based energy storage systems – which, it bears repeating, claim to have 10 times the energy density of lead acid batteries and none of the negative side effects, such as slow charge time, limited cycling and environmental nastiness."

Full text:

http://www.cleanbreak.ca/2006/03/29/eestor-has-...

It would be strange if these cars were transported to EEStor and not tested with EESUs.

Orbit wrote:

From Tyler Hamilton’s Clean Break blog March 29th, 2006:

"Among the various local news flashes is a bit about Cedar Park startup EEStor Inc., which decided on March 25th to hold a five-hour open house to show off two prototypes of a Feel Good Car that runs off one of its super dooper ultracapacitor-based energy storage systems – which, it bears repeating, claim to have 10 times the energy density of lead acid batteries and none of the negative side effects, such as slow charge time, limited cycling and environmental nastiness."

Full text:

http://www.cleanbreak.ca/2006/03/29/eestor-has-...

It would be strange if these cars were transported to EEStor and not tested with EESUs.

Hello there orbit,
You must be a newbie here. I have referred to the blog you have linked to by Tyler Hamilton several times...I was basically told by the believers that is a "BS" blog, and I should not use it as a reference.
Read the following:

Steve321 wrote:

dardog wrote:

Steve321 wrote:

Evidently someone is lying in the article and I don't believe it's Tyler Hamilton that's lying.

Maybe it's the City of Cedar Park that's lying. After all, they are the ones who removed their newsletter from their website.

That's the BS I have been told previously which I don't buy. Why would Cedar Park lie? What reason would they have to lie? They printed specific quotes by Dick Weir:
“This is a very sophisticated electric car, with 250 to 300 miles of range,” Richard Weir, CEO, president and co-founder of EEStor said. “It’ll take a full electrical charge in about the time it takes to gas up a regular car. Just plug it up for a few minutes and you’re off.” Many auto manufacturers experimented with electric cars in the 1980s and 1990s but essentially abandoned the technology for hybrid or other alternative fuel systems due to their high cost of manufacture and maintenance. Weir believes EEStor has overcome those hurdles with their product. “This is just a preview of what’s to come. We have another major announcement for May. But seeing is believing!” he said."
I cannot believe Cedar Park posted the above quote by Dick Weir out of thin air. It just doesn't make sense!

I am still waiting for B, TV or anyone of the believers to answer my questions in the previous post. If B is concerned about the truth, why doesn't he investigate in who fed the "BS" to the City of Cedar Park. I will repeat myself, I cannot believe one day someone in the City of Cedar Park woke up and said we are going to have a press release today about EESTOR EESU out of thin air, and have direct quotes from none other than DICK WEIR.

Last edited Fri, 21 Nov 2008, 8:51am by Steve321

Orbit, I suppose anything is possible.

But, that would, in my mind, qualify as something material to ZENN's business and should have been reported in their quarterly & annual statements, IMHO.

Practically, I'm sure EEStor and ZENN would have wanted a flawless demo, rather than bad press that would live forever about some disaster - say a fire caused by something done hastily.

To demo, all of the important pieces (EESU and power electronics, to name two) would have to be working together, comfortably, with high confidence of all A OK.

Basically, a working prototype.
Shoulda' been real big news.

Last edited Fri, 21 Nov 2008, 8:57am by nekote

Steve321 wrote:

That's the BS I have been told previously which I don't buy. Why would Cedar Park lie? What reason would they have to lie? They printed specific quotes by Dick Weir:
“This is a very sophisticated electric car, with 250 to 300 miles of range,” Richard Weir, CEO, president and co-founder of EEStor said. “It’ll take a full electrical charge in about the time it takes to gas up a regular car. Just plug it up for a few minutes and you’re off.”

Over on the Larry Niven discussion list, we frequently post links to science articles which are obviously written by English majors who are clueless about science, and garble things hopelessly in the articles they write. We have a good laugh and shake our heads at the sad state of science education in this country.

Now, Steve, I have to ask just why you seem so intent on believing that someone "lied" in the misinformation which Cedar Park posted to that website. It seems to me that it's pretty obvious that someone *could* have listened to what Dick Weir was saying, and conflated the facts. I can easily imagine Weir saying something like ~"Our plans are to put our supercapacitor in cars sold by ZENN. ZENN will be demonstrating cars here during our open house."~

It's easy to see how someone with no previous knowledge of EEStor could confuse the two statements, and come away with the impression that ZENN would be demonstrating cars powered by the EESU. The fact that Cedar Park removed the article *should* be a hint that someone realized it was wrong, and took it off the website.

I have to wonder, Steve, why it is that you seem so intent on trying to convince us there was fraud involved. Look what happened to Steorn when it promised a public demo, then failed to come thru with no explanation. Pretty stupid of them, wasn't it? Because after that, no rational person would take Steorn seriously-- and deservedly so.

Dick Weir may or may not have been able to develop the breakthru supercapacitor, as he claims. But we've seen no indication he's stupid, and there's no rational reason to think he promised a public demo of the EESU back in 2006.

So I'd like to suggest, Steve, that in the future you try to consider information regarding EEStor in a more neutral light, and not just automatically assume the worst in every case.

Comment Deleted

Last edited Fri, 21 Nov 2008, 10:13am by DallasBoy

jpo234 wrote:

DuffelDorf wrote:

But as I stated before, It would hav been impossible to assemble complete eesu with out an extremely large factory to begin with, its not logistically possible. So it questions if these testings were even done at all.

Well using your reasoning I could claim that making a modern CPU in a lab is impossible. They have close to 10^9 transistors!
I don't know whether any EESU has been made, but claiming its impossibility because you would need the equivalent of a complete chip plant seems silly.

And yes, I think the analogy is valid. I don't think EEStor ever planned to assemble an EESU from individual components.

One of the reasons we decided to post that "capacitor primer" p://theeestory.com/files/MLC_Capacitor_Primer.pdf) was to answer questions like that. That is a common concept that because electronics has been able to squeeze so much more into so little space, that all components should.

The difference, you see, is that while transistors get "better/faster" the smaller they are, capacitors get "better/able to hold more energy" the bigger they are, it's a bulk phenomena.

And I think you will find in reading their published application, that EEStor very much planned to assemble components, its a big part of thier "breakthrough"

Hope this helps.

CapacitorMan wrote:

One of the reasons we decided to post that "capacitor primer" p://theeestory.com/files/MLC_Capacitor_Primer.pdf) was to answer questions like that. That is a common concept that because electronics has been able to squeeze so much more into so little space, that all components should.

The difference, you see, is that while transistors get "better/faster" the smaller they are, capacitors get "better/able to hold more energy" the bigger they are, it's a bulk phenomena.

And I think you will find in reading their published application, that EEStor very much planned to assemble components, its a big part of thier "breakthrough"

Hope this helps.

Sure, the analogy to transistors on a chip was not about smaller capacitors. What I meant was that you can build a modern CPU without assembling a billion discrete components into one system but make them in place. If EEStor really intends to assemble an EESU from individual components I stand corrected.

Looking twice at the same information may sometimes be useful (as shown in this thread). At least it should not be condemned.

A few days ago, one person here uploaded a document looking exactly like the one I had uploaded only two days before him.*) But I see no reason to blame him for that. Why should I?

If I had no hope for EEStor, I would not spend time visiting this blog.

*) http://theeestory.com/files/WO2006026136A2.pdf

1 EESU = 31,351 components
1 "component" is composed of 1,000 "cells",
1 EESU =31,251,000cells
How long does it take to manufacture 1 EESU?
The electrode layer thickness=1um.
But average aluminum particle size=2.4um
how to change 2.4um to 1um? hot isostatic pressing? right?

encap

Welcome to the party.

You noticed that aluminum particle size oddity, too!
Seems clearly an error in their table of particle sizes, starting at 2.5% - by slipping a decimal point.

Continued all the way into the just issued full patent!

% vol listed corrected?
.12 .05 OK?
.7 .07 OK?
2.5 1.2 .12
17 1.9 .19
59.5 2.3 .23
16 2.9 .29
3.1 3.4 .34
.41 3.9 .39

Guess most all of the eagle eyes missed it!
As corrected, average comes out as .23 µm for me, within rounding errors of the .24 µm reported / claimed as the average size.

.

As to how long it takes to make an EESU, using the screen printing manufacturing technique now patented.
I took a first attempt at it here:
http://www.theeestory.com/topics/268
I came up with a bare minimum, using only *listed* times, each added *serially*, of 3 hours and 17 minutes per finished sheet of 6,000 "elements".
A full EESU would take 52 100% yield sheets.

So, total time would obviously depend on how many parallel production lines there were.

Per line, with a guess of 4 to 6 hours per totally processed and assembled pieces from a single sheet, each line would produce between 6 and 4 sheets, PER DAY!

A week or 10 days, per 52.2 kWh 3500V EESU, per line. ;(

In Jan. of 2007, EEStor decided to forego production with what they already had and accepted the delay to go with some "advanced technology". It is unclear, but that might refer to a higher production rate technique.

Carl Watkins, the head of the LEV group that now has the rights to 2 and 3 wheeled vehicles, said EEStor had a "printing press" type of manufacture. But I fail to find the specifc snippet I'm looking for. May have to revise.

Let's hope that means, at least, a much more rapid method of economical manufacture!

Last edited Wed, 31 Dec 2008, 8:54am by nekote

Thanks, nekote, that makes sense.

WO 2006/026136 and US07466536B1 makes the same mistake in aluminum particle size.