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Home Made Supercaps
Home Made Supercaps
Hi everyone,
I decided to register on this forum because I noticed that there are a few people contemplating to build their own
supercaps and I think that I may be able to help.
Unfortunately I don't have the time to go into all the detail, but I am happy to answer any specific questions
regarding my supercap work.
My initial prototypes contained about 1g of AC and yielded capacitances up to 25F with maximum voltage of 1V.
My favorite electrolite is Potassium Hydroxide (KOH) at a concentration of 5M.
The first picture shows some leftover bits from my early experiments. Ont he top row there are two
sets of current collectors. The first set is made from nickel plated steel (recycled alkaline battery
can). It worked very vell.
The second set is stainless steel and is ok for starters.
The round black patches are the carbon electrodes, about 1.2mm thick each.
The second picture shows an assembled cell without the electrolyte. The spring clips are needed to
maintain electrical contact between the collectors and the AC electrodes.
The carbon electrodes are made from a mixture AC, Teflon and Carbon Black.
OK, here is my electrode making procedure:
1. Put 8g of Activated Carbon granules (the size of rice grains) and 4g of Virgin Teflon into a coffee
grinder and grind the mixture for about 10 minutes.
2. Add 1g of Carbon Black (Lamp Black) to the mixture and grind for a couple of minutes more.
3. Take out 4.5g of the mixture from the grinder and set aside.
4. Add 4.5g of new AC granules to the mixture in the grinder and grind for 10 minutes more.
5. Take out the 9g of mixture from the grinder and repeat point 4 with the other 4.5 grams of
mixture.
At this stage you should have a total of 18g of carbon mixture ready to be pressed into electrodes.
I turned up a simple brass cylindrical press tool for compressing small amounts of the dry mixture.
For the press I used a toolmakers vice with smooth parallel jaws. Not much force is needed.
The Teflon breaks down into microscopic fibres that bind the carbon grains together.
If you can get fibrillating Teflon powder then you can start with AC powder, rather than AC granules.
The Carbon Black increases electrical conductivity between the carbon grains and it is NOT essential.
No need for heat. The fibrillating properties of Teflon is what binds the carbon together.
But don't expect to get something very hard. The electrodes crumble or break quite easily.
My electrodes were (as seen on first picture) 22mm diameter and 1.2mm thick and this arrangement
produced over 20F capacitance.
With two such units in series I could light an LED for several minutes.
I made a 1.088V power supply. A complete improvisation, but it works very well.
The impedance mismatch between the transformers limits the output to 140mA, which is perfect for
charging small caps.
I had to unwind some of the secondary of the second transformer until I had the right output voltage.
The two diodes across the output act as a zener diode and I had to try many different types until I
The relevant literature gives AC a capacitance of more than 70F/g in aqueous electrolyte. Much less
in organic electrolyte but still the organic wins when it comes to energy density due to the higher
working voltage.
My latest capacitor contains 6g of AC and has a capacitance of about 150F. The carbon pellets have
a diameter of 50mm and weigh about 3g each.
I work out (roughly) the capacitance by measuring the time it takes to discharge the capacitor into a
resistive load and then plug the numbers into the formula that gives the capacitance.
For example, my 150F capacitor takes 91 minutes to drop from 1V to 0.5V when connected to a
resistor of 68 ohms.
Carbon supercaps don't use a physical dielectric for storing the charges, you must be refering to the
separator.
As I said before I use copy paper but I tried thin cardboard as well with good results.
I guess I still don't fully understand the basics of ultracaps. How does charge separation occur if you
use a separator that is porus? Wouldn't paper soaked in a liquid electrolyte be conductive? I know in
electrolytic capacitors a porus separator is used, but the dielectric is formed by running a current
through the device till an oxide layer forms on one plate. So in an aluminum electrolytic the dielectric
is a tough layer of aluminum oxide on one plate. Which is why they are polarized.
Why do ultra caps have a polarity?
If you take two non-reactive metal plates and partially immerse them into an electrolyte you get
yourself a ‘supercapacitor’ that can be charged to just below the breakdown voltage of the
electrolyte. EACH metal plate forms an Electric Double Layer Capacitor. If charged, such a capacitor
will instantly discharge if the two metal plates touch. Of course this ‘supercap’ would have a small
capacitance due to the small surface area of the electrodes (metal plates). Now if we apply a layer of
activated carbon to the metal plates we increase the surface area of the electrodes by something
like a million times, but the condition of the electrodes not touching remains, hence the need for a
separator. One gram of AC has a surface area of hundreds of square metre. Also remember that a
unit supercap always consists of two EDLCs connected
in series by the electrolyte.
I can think of two reasons for ultra caps being polarised. One being non-symmetrical construction
and the other is probably ionic intercalation that occurs after the first charging.
Your capacitor is built by :Making two currency collectors made from nickle-coated steel.
1. attaching an electrode made from activated carbon, teflon, and carbon black to each collector.
Are the electrodes attached to the collectors in any way (glue)?
Why must the thickness of the electrodes be no more than 1.5 mm?
Putting the two collectors together with the electrodes facing each other and separated by a piece of
copy paper.
2 Inserting the device into a small plastic bag.
Is there anything else that goes in the bag? Like a solution of some kind?
Clamping the entire thing with clips to maintain contact between the electrodes & the collectors.It seems
very simple to me. Is there anything I'm missing?
Joe
Your understanding is correct. Indeed you need an electrolyte in the small plastic bag.
My favourite one is Potassium Hydroxide at 6M concentration.
It takes a while for the electrolyte to be fully absorbed and it also deteriorates by reacting with CO2
from the air.
If you can, make a sealed cell.
Also by "copy paper" I realy mean tracing paper.
Any paper like product is ok if it is capable to absorb the elecrtolyte and it does not desintegrate.
Normal paper is made of cellulose fibers and it falls apart in alkaline electrolyte.
i only just found out about these capacitors and i am quite interested in making one but i have quite
a few questions,
1) In your step by step guide you cut the separator the same size as the electrodes, wouldnt
electicity leak around this and cause electrolysis on the two plates.
2) Is there a substitute for the teflon because this is the most expensive bit, i thought about grinding
the AC into a powder and then adding the electrolite to this mix to make a paste, then you could roll
it like a normal capacitor, would this work.
3) Whats the best type of metal for the backing plates for the electrodes, you used nickel and
stainless and that is good for starters and thats 18g mix wih about 20F. You said that youve got 25F
with just 1g of AC what metal is those electrodes or what are you doing differently.
4) Does the concentration make much of a difference because i have some KOH flakes from an
electrolysis project and i can make any concentrate, it would be great to know the best
concentration.
5) Does the thickness of the electrodes make much of a difference and why no more than a thickness
of 1.5mm.
Thanks for sharing this with us, it would also be great if you could show us some more pics of other
caps youve made.
I never thought that batteries might be replaced by a simpler and safer solution.
1) I cut the separator a bit larger that the electrodes to make sure there is no physical contact
between the electrodes. The separator has to be ‘leaky’ for ionic conduction. Electrolysis
starts above 1V and that is what limit’s the usable voltage range.
2) I only know of another usable binder and that one is even harder to get than Teflon. It is
called PVDF.
You can certainly experiment with Teflon powder but if you want it to act as a binder you
have to fibrillate it mechanically.
3)For the collector plates you need metals that do not react chemically with the electrolyte
that you use.
I don’t know how you associate 18g of electrode material with 20F. I get about 25F per
gram.
4) I don’t know what the best concentration is but from information I found on the internet
5M or 6M
is ok.
5) The thicker the electrode the higher the internal resistance of the capacitor and that is
what determines how fast you can charge or discharge it.
I have posted some images on this site that have disappeared along with some of the
explanations I provided. I think this site had some sort of a crash and lost some of the
material.
So here is again my 150F sealed super cap containing 6g of active material driving a super
bright LED through a DC toDCconverter. It can do so only for about two and half minutes
because the circuit stops working below about 0.85V and it is not very efficient either.
Stefan these caps of yours are great. Working on my own, will post results when I have'em. A couple more questions
for you: Do you happen to know if copper reacts with KOH electrolyte?
I'd love to know what kind of max amps you see across a short. I want to work toward multi-cell caps capable of a
couple hundred amps at frequencies above roughly 2kHz, single pulse.
My first very quick'n dirty cap with water electrolyte, saran wrap separator, and copper plates does about 45
microamps at 0.5 volts. I just wanted to see some carbon store a charge, so I call it a success. Now I'll move to a
little more rigorous manufacturing. The caps you've posted have been hugely helpful in providing a simple, easy to
produce starter model.
BTW, anyone looking for teflon of the diy variety might try your local hardware plumbing department. Look for
teflon washers, fittings, etc. Maybe somebody can figure a way to effectively shred teflon tape.
Oh yeah, almost forgot. I used a very little bit of concrete mix to bind my carbon, no teflon. Resistance through
copper plate and carbon layer, about 18 kOhm. Completely unoptimized, I'm sure this could be greatly improved.
Will post as I learn.
Copper does react with KOH electrolyte so it is not suitable for collector plate.
To get an idea of the internal resistance I measure it across the collector plates with the (dry)
elecrodes pressed into contact (NO separator) and WITHOUT electrolyte.
Usually I get several ohms.
Max current is a bit more complicated than that though.
Thanks for your response, Stefan. And your patience with someone who's forgotten all of high school
chemistry.
When I get to testing my own caps I think I'll measure peak amps with timed discharges through a
single resistor, repeated with resistors of decreasing value until heat becomes a problem. Calculate
current for each discharge cycle, plot, and extrapolate.
Have you tried charging one of your caps before adding electrolyte? With a suitable separator you
could use higher charging voltage and see how capacity is effected. I will be trying this with my own
caps as soon as a busy schedule allows. I realize you may have zero interest in trying this - but I
gotta ask to find out.
Another quick question, I know this was mentioned by a previous poster, I'm hoping for greater
detail. I'm curious about teflon-bound electrodes, somehow I can't see them having any structural
integrity at all. So I guess I actually have two questions on this: What kind of handling can the
pressed carbon/teflon electrodes survive, and how thin could you make an electrode of this type
before it's too weak to be manipulated in hand-assembly of a cap?
I'm finding that handling/controlling/integrating the AC is *the* first real hurdle in building these
things...
I’m located down under in Melbourne, Australia (originally from Transylvania). I certainly hope to
make units well over 4KF as my interest is in power storage for general use and I will need very large
cells for that. Low ESR is not important for me at this stage as charge/discharge time would be
measured in hours.
CJ,
Indeed, a timed discharge into a resistive load is the way to go when determining capacitance at
various discharge currents.
Without electrolyte you have a normal capacitor and I don’t expect the internal surface area of the
AC to play a role - but don’t let me hold you back.
The AC electrodes with Teflon binder don’t have much structural integrity although they are not too
bad if the binder is well fibrillated. When the Teflon is fibrillated it becomes invisible even at high
magnification.
What I don’t like about Teflon is that it is very hydrophobic and it makes electrolyte impregnation of
the electrode rather difficult.
I will try to make binderless electrodes by vacuum sintering of AC powder and hope to get a material
with much less electical resistance and good structural integrity that will allow me to make thick
electrodes.
Sintering, yes! Would be great to hear your ideas on that, or maybe you could point to a good info
source? I've also been thinking that some kind of sintering process is probably the way to go.
Tried a primitive version, one of those 'what would happen if...' little experiments. I tried to mix AC
powder with liquid (hot) solder. No joy, it looked like the oxide layer on the solder - fast oxidation at
that temp - prevented the AC from absorbing any of the the liquid metal. But in a vacuum... perhaps
the evacuated pores of the AC might soak up some of the solder. Other thoughts I have on this are
higher temps or doping (borax is an option) to lower viscosity of the solder. Dunno.
Thanks I won't I can't completely agree with your statement. A 'normal' capacitor still does not
have the surface area advantage provided by AC. A 'dry' supercap would function the same as a
normal cap - non-polar and no electric double layer (assuming insulating separator). But I suspect
that it would still have far greater capacity than a typical cap, due to the AC.
There is one major catch here, I think, that could prove you right. I now understand how ions are held
in place within the AC, and I'm not sure the same forces apply to single electrons. Given the
difference in size between a gigantic ionic molecule and an electron, it might be that the AC simply
can't 'grab' those unstable little electrons. Anyway, I do intend to make and test various dry caps to
find out what the real deal is. But first there's the electrode construction problem to sort out, and at
the moment all I have time for is the occasional long-winded post here.
From: http://greenpatentblog.com/2009/04/15/reticles-carbon-consolidation-process-produces-high-capacitance-
electrode-material/
This text:
QUOTE:
Reticle’s manufacturing process and resulting carbon material are protected by a family of four U.S. patents: U.S.
Patent Nos. 6,350,520 (claims granular active carbon material made by a high temperature and pressure process),
6,511,645 (claims a process for producing carbon material by consolidating amorphous carbon using elevated
temperature compression), 6,544,648 (claims a processed carbon material consolidated under elevated temperature
and pressure) and 6,787,235 (claims a processed carbon material consolidated in a hot isostatic press under elevated
temperature and pressure).
Hi guys,
I’ve finally decided to register and to get hot news about your progress.
Stefan, did you have tried sintering? What are results?
You can use polyaniline (PANI) as a binder. It is a conductive and pseudocapative material, but you
have to use acidic electrolyte.
Thanks for the binder sugestion.
At this stage I want to get away from binders tough. Besides I'm not a chemist.
My vacuum plant will become operational in a couple of weeks, so I will start my sintering
experiments after that.
Hey guys, what’s going on, no one is experimenting any more?
So I went back to using binders and made some good progress in using epoxy resin as a binder.
See attached pic for some examples. The thinner disc is made from fine AC powder and it contains
33% resin. The thicker ones are made of a mixture of grit sizes and contain 20% resin.
So far I only tested the material with the 33% resin content and found it to have about 1/3 of the
specific capacitance of the material described earlier in this thread - that used Teflon as binder. Not
Now i realy want to build a big supercap"battery, that happens if I stack AC/resin plates with tracing paper in
between each layer?
breakdown voltage on ac/resin cap?
Hi guys,
Stefan,
We have similar problems with vacuum and very fine particles materials.
We are using a tube furnace for sintering in CO2 or nitrogen. So you can try sintering in the inert
atmosphere, not in the vacuum
We have tried different kinds of binders (silver and carbon paste, conducting glues), but PTFE seems
to be best for common experiments. There are some interesting results with conducting polymers,
but I will have some reliable results in several months.
I have one tip for you, AC and carbon blacks are very hydrophobic materials. Try to boil them in the
water with alcohol or hydrogen peroxide. After that add binder etc.
your idea sounds great, but it will be very hard to build supercap with energy and power needed for
you car.
For testing our materials, electrolytes and separators we have bought nice “toy” http://www.el-
cell.com
Don’t get carried away, my epoxy bonded material is very low performance stuff.
I just started testing a cell to see how a thick electrode made of this material behaves. Preliminary
measurements indicate a rather disappointing 100F for 18g of AC content. Mechanically the material
is very good being a real solid that can be bonded to the collector plate and no contact pressure is
needed afterwards.
PetrDvorak,
Thanks for your suggestions. I will certainly try the boiling to improve wetability.
My vacuum system is for optical coatings and I’m not going near it with AC materials ever again.
What I don’t like about the PTFE-bound AC is that it seems to require external mechanical pressure
for optimum performance and I don’t think it can be used in the form of thick electrodes.
Please keep us up to date with your progress.
I have a hydralic press i thing I´l try to do a couple of plates myself and press out as mutch epoxy as
possible and see what happens.
how can i connect these in a series? If I have got everything right I need too isolate every "cell" from
each other because it will not work if the electrolyte is in contact in meween each "layer" of "cell"
Edit: why did I not think of boiling my self? I know for a fact that AC works a helluva lot better then
you want to purify alcohol if you boil it first
Is it possible that the epoxy is affecting the performance of the AC because it's encapsulating at least
some of the granules completely?
I was discussing this with a friend of mine, and he had what I thought was a novel idea. Apparently
you can get hardened epoxy to soften with a little heat. What about mixing hardened epoxy dust
with AC and pressing it under heat? His specific suggestion, which I thought was really neat would be
to use the leftover dust from carbon fibre cuttings - you get epoxy granules with a bonus of exposed
conductive carbon fibre at each end.
Another one that just occurred to me when I was eating lunch - what about mixing the ground AC
with something like gelatin and casting the plates? This would form a collagen matrix that's ion
permeable, but I have no idea how it would stand up to the various electrolytes.
Maybe not gelatin, but I know there are a lot of other types of naturally derived polymers (guar, agar,
etc) that could be used.
Any thoughts?
Or cornstrch, chiting, etc. But After doing a little reading, it seems that many of these may degrade
over time and in the chemistry.
What about a silica gel to bind the AC, plus an acid electrolyte, the same as a gel-cell lead acid
battery?
Thank jndale for your suggestions.
There are many things that can be tried but the bottle neck is in the testing of the various materials.
Take for example my thick electrode test cap with 20% epoxy binder. After two days of soaking in
the electrolyte I measured it at 100F, after another two days of soaking it came in at 200F and today,
after 6 days total soaking I measured it to be 230F.
Wow, very interesting stuff!
I wanted to ask if there is a standard way for measuring the internal resistance of an electrode?
I mixed up some gel based electrodes based on purified water, AC, and gelatin. It seems to be
holding up well to 5M KOH, which was surprising to me, but I cannot tell how good of a conductor it
is.
I measured the resistance with my probes based 1mm apart into the gel, and it's far more
conductive than pure gelatin with no AC, but not nearly as much as if I just stick the probes into pure
AC powder.
Is there a standard technique to measure the internal resistance of the electrodes so that I can
communicate any findings in a way that's useful to others?
Yes,there is method to measure resistance - Impedance measurement
but I'm not sure, if it is possible to measure it at home
For testing various dry state AC materials a Four-Point resistivity meter should be useful but I think
that would be an expensive toy.
Anyway my thick electrode capacitor is up to 380F and that is more than 60% of what I would expect
from PTFE-bound electrodes of the same weight.
Of course the ESR is quite high. I did the test with 11mA average discharge current. It took 3 hours
and 42 minutes to drop from 1V to 0.5V.
I know this is not quite in the spirit of what I set out to do (use only common materials) but the result
I got with my latest binder is so good that I might consider using it if I don’t come up with something
equally good but less exotic.
It is a thermopolymer powder called HALAR 8014 used for powder coating. I used it in a proportion of
28.5% and it produced a nice hard material that seem to retain much of the micro porosity of the AC.
The small device in the attached picture contains 3g of the material and it came in at 90F after two
days of
conditioning. That is better than what I got with my PTFE-bound material.
Similiarly, for both the epoxy and Halar 8014 mixtures, was the amount of binder just trial and error,
or is there a way to calculate this? Or did you just start by mixing it until is "just looked right"? Also,
are you using fine AC particles, or a mix of different sizes? I've found that the large granules make
processing to be a pain if you need to cut or shape the electrode, but having only small particles
seems like it would raise the internal resistance since there is less contact between the granules
(based on the few that I've made so far).
Also (last question, I promise) when you formed these electrodes, were you applying pressure, or
doing anything else to force the AC particles to be in better contact with each other?
No method to my madness I’m afraid.
More than a year ago I was trying to get some PTFE micro powder through a powder coating
business,unsuccessfully, and the man gave me some DYKOR 830 which is a PVDF powder and the
HALAR 8014 because that is what he had in stock. I read somewhere that PVDF can be used as
binder but I had no success with it so far.
I don’t think there is anything special about the HALAR 8014. Simply it is the first thermopolymer
binder that worked for me and I think there are many more that would work. I will try to get some
FBA powder which is just dry epoxy. It probably will be just as good as the HALAR considering that
my normal epoxy bonded test cap reached 440F today with a discharge current of 20mA.
For making the electrodes I weighed 5g of AC granules and added 2g HALAR, then I ground them
together for 60 seconds total grinding time in 10 sec intervals. The ratio was just a guess intended to
be a starting point.
I have a 50mm diameter compression mold that I made. It is a very simple thing that consists of a
10mm thick base plate, a short cylindrical ring with a 50mm ID and a piston with a flange. Up to 12
screws (M6) can be used to bolt the whole thing together.
I used aluminium foil at the bottom of the mold, and between the piston and the powder to stop the
material from sticking to everything. I used 6 screws to compress the powder and I heated the whole
thing to 250 degrees Centigrade. Afterwards I had to use emery paper to grind off the aluminium foil
from both sides of the disc.
Ok, I have a dumb question for Stefan, Petr, or anyone.
I've been experimenting with different electrolyte solutions and metal collectors, but have not having
much luck doing what I believed would be a simple test. I'm sure I'm making a basic mistake, but I
can't figure it out.
To avoid difficulties with making binders, I've simply made small bags out of some stretchy polymer
netting, and used a nylon zip-tie to hold the granules of AC inside the bags, and tight to the metal
electrode (see the picture). In this example, there are 5g of AC granules being held tight to a nickel
rod in each electrode, and they are separated with tracing paper.
I used an ohmmeter to verify that there was electrical contact between the nickel rods and the AC on
the furthest part of the bag (it was about 170 ohms at most).
I covered the electrodes with 0.1 molar KOH solution (100 ml distilled H20 and 5.62g KOH) and
applied 1.0V to the electrodes.
I know this is not the best setup, since the AC granules are fairly large - I just want to see some
charge being stored. But I don't seem to be storing any charge at all! There does seem to be current
flowing into the unit though. In all of the previous experiments I've done, that means that there is a
chemical reaction taking place - usually the carbon is destroying whatever metal I've decided to use
as a current collector.
In fact, I was having such bad luck with the carbon reacting with the metals, that I decided to just so
a simplified version of Stefan's example to make sure I could do a basic experiment - but it's not
working!!
Any thoughts? I'm sure it's something obvious, but I can't tell what!
Thanks in advance.
All I can suggest is that you increase the concentration of the electrolyte and also the charge time. It
can take days for the electrolyte to properly penetrate the nanopores of the carbon. Until that
happens self discharge can be very high. I don’t even bother taking meaningful measurements
without at least one overnight charge.
I made a new test cap yesterday using HALAR bonded carbon molded directly onto the nickel current
collectors. The electrodes weigh 7g each and I expect it to achieve about 420F. This morning, after
overnight charging, it delivered 20mA for about one and a half hours by the time it dropped to 0.5V.
That means a capacitance of about 290F, well within expectation. By tomorrow it should be close to
400F. It can already deliver 250mA into a 2ohm load at a voltage of 0.75V, meaning that the ESR
can’t be more than 1ohm.
I agree with Stefan, you have to use KOH with higher concentration (5 or 6 molar). Try to make thiner
electrode. You don't need separator in this configuration, leave small gap between electrodes. Or,
pull electrode and separator together.
I just remembered - cover your supercaps. CO2 can be accumulated in the electrolyte and reduce
conductivity.
Thanks for the thoughts guys, and congrats on your capacitor, Stefan! One day I'll be building nice
ones like that.
I think I found the problem, or at least *a* problem. When I built the electrodes, I may not have
rinsed the AC granules off well enough, and there was a little bit of carbon dust floating in the
electrolyte. I don't think it was a problem until it started settling on the bottom and forming a
conductive path between the electrodes. A little filtering seems to have improved things greatly.
I didn't show it in the picture, but the entire apparatus is inside of a plastic bag to prevent interaction
with the CO2 from the air. Also, I had to use the tracing paper because it's a tight fit and the
electrodes are pressed against each other (which is what I wanted).
Unfortunately, I only bought 30g of lab grade KOH because I wasn't expecting to use KOH chemistry
for my real device, this is the only reason I was skimping on the moles. I just bought it to verify that I
could build a known working device. It seems to be working much better now
I wouldn't think that too weak of a mixture would cause problems though - it just wouldn't be as
capacitive if all the ions were pulled into the AC, right?
I don't recommend you to use organic electrolytes (non-aqueous) at home. It is little bit danger and
expensive. It is also better to operate in dry and clean atmosphere. We are using the dry box with
argon atmosphere...
usable solvents:
propylene carbonate (PC), acetonitrile, ethylene carbonate ...
salts:
LiClO4, TEABF4 ...
Cheapest way is 0.5 M LiCLO4 and PC.
Be careful with acetonitrile !!!
you can use Ni or Al collector - same as in the KOH electrolyte.
my motivation using organic is the energy boost (14 times more then hydro), since we can use 3V
instead of 1V.
is there a hydro way to get 3V per layer?is there a cheaper and easy to manage electrolyte with
more than 1V limit per layer?
I understand to your motivation. I'm using only organic electrolytes.
There is no way how to get 3 V with aqueous electrolytes. In my opinion the highest usable voltage
at electrode in aqueous electrolytes is in lead-acid batteries. You can get potential about 2 V per cell
I tried making several supercaps with chemistries based on the ones from electrolytic capacitors
(there are lots of books available on this, unlike supercaps), but they all failed because of their
aluminum electrode. I found that in this situation, carbon behaves like a very noble metal and
22corrodes the aluminum. Likewise, I have not found any aluminum material that will resist the
effects of KOH over a significant length of time.
Perhaps there is a technique to do this with heavily anodised aluminum, but if the oxide is thick
enough to resist the chemical attack, it may no longer be conductive enough to make a good current
collector? The insulating alumina is ideal for an electrolytic cap, but seems to be the opposite of what
you would want in a supercap.
I would much prefer to use aluminum than the nickel coated steel sheets I made. If you can enlighten
me as to what I might be missing, or what I did wrong, I'd appreciate it very much.
I can't see why shouldn't it work.... :\
Maxwell is using Al foil.
http://www.ansoft.com/firstpass/pdf/CarbonCarbon_Ultracapacitor_Equivalent_Circuit_Model.pdf
it works fine for me. as i said there may be a need to squeeze the layer. if you tried it you should see
if that aluminum foil is truly aluminum. if it is, there might be a problem with the electrodes or
electrolyte.
I use a one time baking plate cut collector - more thick, which for robust liking people like me is
better than Al foil. foil is used at the industry so no bad choice in that.
BTW - there's no better than nickle except gold. if you don't want to coat a collector with nickle, just
recruit a few nickle coated coins - like, how unsurprisingly, the American Nickle.
another tip for you coating people - its uneconomical to coat a whole surface with nickle - the carbon
is conductive enough at these dimensions. just coat a net (1 cm wide gap/mesh is good enough) and
have it as a collector.
still waiting for Peter's answers and insight
I can see how this may work in an organic electrolyte (like the ones I assume Maxwell is using), but in
an aqueous solution, my aluminum always ends up destroyed. What are you using for an electrolyte?
I've tried KOH, sodium borate, boric acid, and sodium bicarbonate.
all that is not KOH has some disadvantage - i use only KOH.
Maxwell uses organic but other companies that uses aqueous are using Al or conductive PVC.
try the baking plate material i think it'll solve your problems.
Sorry guys,
Al in KOH isn't good idea But it is used in nonaqueos electrolytes because of price.
Why are organic more "voltable" ?
I don't know why, some organic solvents have higher decomposition voltage, you can find it in some
tables.
Methanol - I don't know, I have never read about using it as a solvent in supercaps. It is also a little
bit useless-you work on the air, which contain H2O and I'm not sure, if you can buy methanol without
water. This water always decrease the potential.
So, if don't operate in the dry atmosphere, don't think about other electrolytes.
Oh, I think it's a great idea! I've filled large balloons with hydrogen this way (actually NaOH, but it
works the same in this case). Tie a fuse to it, light it, and let it fly! Who says you don't learn anything
useful in college!
I figured KOH + Al could be used in a non-aqueous situation, because the Al isn't really reacting with
the OH-, it's just that the OH- allows the Al to react with the H2O by disrupting the formation of the
protective oxide layer. The bigger problem is with galvanic corrosion from the carbon though. I think
it rules out using aluminum completely in an aqueous situation, but my mind is open if anyone has
any ideas!
> I'm not sure, if you can buy methanol without water
Yes, you can buy anhydrous methanol and ethanol, but it's very hygroscopic and won't stay
anhydrous for long unless you can work with it outside of the air, like Petr says.
vapor combustion - this is electrochemistry, I've heard about people, who used old frying oil in their
cars
I can see 3 problems with "your" organic solvents (don't discuss watter).
1. Ionic conductivity (connected with salts)
2. Evaporation at room temperature
3. Potential window
I did a little bit of googling, and it seems that alcohols electrolyze even easier than water. It looks like depending on
the ion concentration and pH levels, ethanol and methanol start electrolyzing between 0.6V and 1.1V
I was not able to find any information about acetone though. Ndor, maybe you could find this and enlighten us!
Unfortunately, I'm not sure about acetone as a solvent after I found this page:
http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/chem03/chem03689.htm
But maybe there are other polar solvents that would work?
Maybe it's time to start some threads for electrolytes and collector materials.
I have tried to calculate the energy density of Stefan's capacitors. It is between 3 and 4 Wh/kg.
1st. electrode 150 F / 6 g
2nd. electrode 380 F / 18 g
Thanks PetrD for clearing that up. Indeed if I take into account the weight of current collectors,
electrolyte and packaging I’ll be lucky to achieve 1.5 to 2 Wh/Kg.
1. AC stands for Activated Carbon and, yes, it is the stuff you find in water filters.
2. Yes, Carbon Black is purified soot and it also used to be called Lamp Black.
3. Yes again, electrolyte decomposition is the only problem limiting the voltage.
In the beginning of the post there are photo and say that alkaline battery has nickel plated can. I
search the web and found that alkaline batery has SS can. What's true. On the other hands I have a
bunch of NiMh cells (death) and can be recycled. But I can't find what material can is. The term NiMh
say's nickel but seems that this is not metalic nickel but oxides and is in + pole. Can is - pole and I
don't know the material.
I realy want to try that.
Is anybody try to substituted KOH with NaOH? If I know correct then we can use cooper collector
plate.
... yet another question...
I'm not god in chemistry and don't have clue how to make 5M KOH. I can get KOH pellets from
http://tinyurl.com/ydcd8e9
and don't know how much pellet for just right concentration? Is someone good in chemistry there I
just think about binder. And Laser printer toner come into my mind. As I remember correct that stuff
is conductive too. Of course need to be warmed up to about 200 degres celsius when electrodes are
pressed.
And second one idea.
Stefan say that capacitance increases over days. Now I think why. I found two reasons. One is
"weetability" of AC. So not all pores are wet on start. I think that if (wet) cell is put in vaccum
chamber and do few cycles of moderate vacuum (mean refrigerating compressor) the electrolyte will
be forced to all cavity.
Other reason can be that there maybe is some oxide make on AC after initial current flow. If I
understood there are two capacitors back to back. So One electrode is AC and other is electrolyte.
and another one is electrolyte and AC. So if I look there should bee some dielectric too. And that
should bee betwen AC and electrolite! So what dielectric is? Is it some oxide created during 1st
charge (and need time to create itself) or it is just some "magic" of ion interaction?
Hi,
I recommend you 6M KOH
1l 6M KOH: 336,66g KOH and 835 ml H2O
I agree with your idea of wetting and pores. It is good to use alcohol during boiling of caron (don't
drink )
Oxide - I don't think
NaOH electrolyte has worse conductivity than KOH.
I could be wrong about the metal can. When I used stainless steel for current collectors I noticed that
one of them, can’t remember which one (anode or cathode), survived with very little signs of
corrosion. So it may be possible that alkaline batteries use a SS can.
As far as electrolyte penetration goes vacuum is used in mass production of Supercaps.
The dielectric is formed as you suspect by “some magic of ion interaction”
I put to job my old coffe grinder. As wish to duplicate Stefan recipies I start with 8g of AC and 4g of
Teflon (I make flakes from PTFE rod with knife) Then I start the grinder and dust come out in all
dirrections! What a mess... So I abandon the original recipies and put all AC inside grinder and seal
Finaly I made my 1'st cap. So I plug it on and calculating capacitance. So I search for formula and
test it with known design.
Stefan say 91 minutes and 68 Ohms discharging from 1V to 0.5V to give 150F?!?
My formula say 56F Who is right?
Em I miss something?
For my 1'st cap I just reuse stuff from previous post (AC*PTFE). I take 3.5 g of mix and add 0.6g of
laserprinter toner. And after that I divide this 4g to 2 pieces and put it separatly into mold. I heat up
mold to 200 degres Celsius and still hot put into 6 tons press. Electrodes are solid as rock
I think I can use even less toner.
And here are 1'st results
In all cases I use 68 Ohm resistor and discharging from 1V to 0.5V
I put half discharged capacitor into chamber and observe voltage during vacuuming. It's slightly
dropped. The funniest is as I notice that electrolite start to bubbling. What the fu.... ... then I
realise that I'm just do a little to much vacuum and electrolite start to boil (at room temperature). So
I do few cycles with vacuum and atmosphere presure and start charging after that. Seems that I got
2F more in that way. And electrodes are already soaked near two day's. But other thing popup.
Before vacuuming when I remove power supply the voltage drops very fast to aprox 0.85V. After
vaccuming seems more better. I charge capacitor to 1.05V and when I removed supply It's droped to
1.048 after few minutes. I will check what self discharge rate is tomorow.
Do you think that changing the ambient air pressure changes the electrolyte's resistance at all?
NO. Just more AC come weet and average voltage comes lower