This is exactly what they look like internally, so I'd tend to agree as well. You'll have carbonized copper sheets alternating with aluminum sheets coated with the LiFePO4 dope, separated by the layers of barrier material. Put one of the aluminum sheets into a flame and see if it burns red, indicating the presence of lithium to confirm.
@@greatscottlab If I recall in the early days of the LiFePO4 cells the max charge was briefly 4.6 volts then it was downgraded to 4.2 then to be even safer 3.65 and in some cases they recommend just 3.5 volts for the max charging voltage. LiFePO4 cells act just like this when punctured. I love my LiFePO4 cells. It is a battery not capacitor.
In my opinion the best way to find out if you deal with a battery or a capacitor is to discharge it to zero volts, let it shorted for few days and try to recharge it. Capacitor should survive this test with no problem and no capacity loss at all. Battery would be not able to give You the original capacity but more likely You wouldn’t be able to charge it anymore.
Not necessary so.... I did some tests with NiMh (of which that same is said). I deeply discharged them by applying a resistor of 1KΩ (~1mA) to them, and leave them like that for a year. After that I gave 5x a refresh charge cycle with a low current (0.2x capacity), and their capacity was still above 95% of their original, not very different of just store then charged and recharge them. I repeated that with a few periodes of a half year, same results. It could be that the resistor kept the chemistry polarized or so.
@@erikdenhouter thanks for Your experience. You reminded me of my experience with Li-ion battery. Once I tried to repair my collegue’s scooter battery. There was one palalell row of cells at zero volts. I was still able to recharge them to the full voltage. Even the capacitance did not drop significantly. The problem was different. After this manual ballancing they were very leaky. So after few weeks they self-discharged to zero again.
@@KUBA64official Thanks, I will try to use these cells normally after the next periode of abuse has ended 😜 You could be right that they will turn in something unreliable, that is not checked fully yet.
@@KUBA64officialthose cells where protected and had a internal low voltage shit off. If you discharge a lithium ion cell to zero you won't change that ever again to full voltage
You forgot one downside of supercaps: self discharge is high, can be in the order of half its charge lost in 1000 hours, and is also a function of temperature.
@@NinoJoel I think you're mostly right, and I heard it can be used in cars and other high power situations. HOWEVER, this is an electronics channel, where fast charge and discharge of large amounts of energy is unlikely. I would argue slow discharge is more common in this particular niche
A thousand hours? That's like more than a month... who cares? For most worthwhile applications you'd be charging a lot more than once every couple months, and you have to keep lithium batteries charged every month or two and keep them stored at below 100% charge... so it wouldn't be more of a hassle than those batteries, plus a supercap would charge super fast so there's no concern if it discharges itself
To be honest, the biggest red flag for me immediately that this was almost certainly not a capacitor is that it comes in a flexible plastic pouch form factor. Batteries are chemical devices, so their actual shape, pressure, etc isn't that critical to their functioning, but capacitors are physical devices where each physical dimension actually matters a huge amount. The characteristics of capacitors are highly dependent on the exact separation of the layers from each other, so any squeezing or bending of the capacitor internals will likely dramatically reduce its capacitance, which would be really bad if anyone were actually trying to, you know, use it in a real circuit for anything predictable. There is a reason that all _real_ capacitors come with hard exteriors. Nobody would ever make a capacitor like this, particularly an expensive, state-of-the-art supercap, which could be rendered basically useless just by squeezing it with your fingers in the wrong way.
While I get your point, you are not quite correct there. There are double layer capacitors made that way. AVX PrizmaCap series comes to mind. But they are certainly not the norm.
@@satibelthat's hybrid caps... supercaps are differentiated from "normal" caps by the electrolyte which forms EDL (ellectrolyte-double-layer) physical static electrical syorage against the charged capacitor plates, thus increasing energy storage WITHOUT any chemical reactions. (Brief version: supercaps are NOT electrochemical, the electrolyte just adds "virtual" extra plates, or extra surface area to the plates)
This is actually a Gen 3 ("MpCO") lithium ion cell from Microvast. You can find the "02LCC" prefix from the cell, which indicates that it is a Gen3 MpCO cell from Microvast. The good news is that while it is a lithium ion cell, it can last 4000-7000 cycles according to the datasheet.
@@beanapprentice1687Still has nothing to do with graphene, and I wonder if that company who appears to sell from chemical tanks to super caps is part of the scam or not
@@javierolavarria"Campione fornito solo per valutazione e test" means "Unit provided only for evaluation and testing". It probably was never meant to be sold directly, in fact this was bought on eBay. As for the "Super Capacitor" label, that probably is a straight up lie
Hi, after seeing how it looks on the inside I can tell you Wich kind of battery is this Yes it is a battery, is a carbon-lithium-copper battery They don't like to explode and can be safely dismantled even with full charge, I had chewed on one at some point when I was kiddo It's one of the oldest kind of lithium batteries so yes you got scammed probably have to call some authoritie
Have you tried contacting the manufacturer for comment? A follow up would be really interesting because whatever chemistry this was it looks super safe which is interesting!
it might be one of the new stable lipo that ive seen around... Basically able to handle being cut and damaged and continue to work. But yes not a super cap
@@greatscottlab Ive only seen a few youtube vids on them over the last few years. One was designed by the guy who invented lipo. Honestly right now I dont know the title of it... But in the video they were literally cutting the active pack with scissors. And it just kept working. Only thing in the end they were doing is reducing capacity.
@@greatscottlabhe mentioned battery sounds like a lithium ceramic battery or lcb. It looks like you reviewed these around 4 years back. Prologium sells these as FLCBs, flexible lcb
LTO (Lithium titanate oxide) Batteries are worth checking out as well, may not meet the voltage requirements, but still stable and resistant to being punctured
Seems like the main advantage would be you could charge and discharge capacitors millions of times... at elast unless corrosion or they dried out or some other time based chemical effect degraded their performance.
@@greatscottlab We have some LiPos that can handle enormous currents now though with pretty high energy density. I've got some Spektrum batteries that can do 1.6 kiloamps and they only weigh a kilogram. I'm pretty disappointed in capacitor tech for high current applications compared to these modern high-current LiPos.
@@greatscottlab i dont care what it is does it hold a charge and wont explode. thats whats important. call it what you want i need to see it tested in a ebike please
Probably the discharge curve of a supercapacitor has also to be considered a disadvantage. As shown in the video, the voltage changes a lot during the discharge so, in order to exploit all the stored energy, the devices connected have to work in a really wide voltage range and this is not easy to manage. In my experience, a common solution is to use only a part of the stored energy, thus giving up some capacity. Anyway, as always a really interesting video!
Not difficult at all: start from a higher pack voltage and use a buck regulator. You already need to do this with 3.7V Li-ion to power 1.2-3.3V loads anyway. For single supercaps, a SEPIC converter can do both buck and boost as needed.
@@valtersvasilis that actually might be a good method, at least in combination with a more proper regulator. If you could reliably keep the voltage within +/- a volt or two, then you could get a really efficient regulator that pins that down to something exact. (say 3.3v for a microcontroller) With that said, you'd need a smart-switching circuit, otherwise when it's fully charged you'd get WAAAAAY above the desired voltage. For small devices you'd likely only need some mosfets or something, but for an EV or something you'd probably need full fledged contactors that can rewire the battery pack from series to parallel on-the-fly to keep a somewhat consistent voltage which can then be pinned down by a regulator.
I'm not a battery expert myself but I have dismantled many of them from my early teenage years. Seeing copper in it makes me certain it's some sort of li-ion battery not a super capacitor. Each one I opened had copper sheets in
@@bottlekruiser No! From my experience(the ones I opened) they all had some sort of carbon electrode, both anode and cathode. Don't exactly know what it is for sure though
The capacitor explanation in this episode is pretty good, but the interesting thing about electrolytic capacitors (including most supercapacitors) is that one of the electrodes of the capacitor is actually the *liquid* (usually a saline solution), and the dielectric (polarizable insulator) is actually an *oxide layer formed between the metal strip and the liquid electrode when a charge is applied.* This is why electrolytic capacitors are polarized: If you apply the charge in the wrong direction, the oxide layer breaks down, causing a short which prevents it from re-forming. Most electrolytic supercapacitors are just regular electrolytic capacitors, but with *ludicrous* amounts of surface area across the dielectric layer, which corresponds to ludicrous amounts of capacitance.
The best up side though It can store power for years without discharging 10:42 And if it doesn't explode despite physical damage that is amazing! Literally even if this isn't graphine this is a major improvement in safety!
Nice one GS, thanks for exploring this for all of us. Practical note: you might want to wear nitril gloves over your working (PU dipped) gloves, this gives the same safety, but you keep your working gloves clean of hazardous materials.
Hey there! I was wondering if you would make an AC UPS project. The only ones on youtube are just battery banks but dont support the "uninterruptable" charactertistic that UPS needs. Great video like usual, would love to see more of the aliexpress videos and hope you find my suggestion valid enough to make a video Thanks! edit: would be great if you could also talk about line interactive ups, upsides and downsides compared to a standby one and mention what would be the upsides to the line interactive one. As line interactive is going to use the battery far more, and going to be more expensive. A standby ups would pair up nicely with your garage build and you could make a line interactive ups for housing more voltage sensitive electronics like pc/oscilloscope etc
The easiest solution for smaller devices is to keep a lead acid battery topped up from AC power (since LiIon doesn't handle trickle charging well), and put an inverter on it. That way, you're isolated from the grid, and when AC power fails, the battery just doesn't get charged any more.
It has the discharge curve of a NMC) (specifically LiNi1/3Mn1/3Co1/3O2), which, to be fair is one of the safer options for NMC, but it should still combust afaik. The fact that it marries the mechanical resilience of LFP with the discharge curve of NMC is interesting to me. If this is a new lithium based technology, it would be fun to learn more about it's other electrical properties, operational temperature, relative capacity degradation over 1000 cycles etc.
You should have tried to drain it to zero volts and then tried to recharge it. If it keeps energy inside itself after that and there is no pcb+battery controller it's a super capacitor.
I recall that hybrid supercaps (the lithium based ones specially) didn't play well with full drain, they were even sold already pre-charged like batteries didn't they? Like the one Scott showed in the video with the plastic shell keeping the terminals from shorting.
I had a fan on my workbench that I put an 18650 holder on. I would forget to shut it off and leave it on ALL the time and drain the batteries to 0v. I must have done it 10x on one particular pack and when I capacity tested it again a year later it didn't lose much capacity... I was shocked. It was a 1/2 worn out cell from a laptop pack that only had about 1200mah capacity, and after all that abuse it was at about 1000mah a year later. I used it so much that I wore the brushes out in the fan motor and that's when I had to retire it.
Here's what I would do. 1) Separate the constituent materials as well as I can. 2) Dry them. 3) Do a flame test on each of them. 3.BONUS) Record the flame emission with a spectroscope The colors you see (or emission lines, if using a spectroscope) should tell you fairly accurately what the materials being used here are. Lithium has a characteristic pale red flame. I don't know the flame colors for Fe and P, but they are available online. If you just see lithium, maybe it's a hybrid capacitor. But I'd bet there's no reason for there to be Fe and P if it isn't a battery. If you see none of those, then perhaps it's indeed a capacitor.
I saw some copper in the supposed super cap. That is typical for a lithium ion battery.That is a definite indicator for a batter. For a cap you would use aluminum. Way cheaper
These are not LiFePO4 cells. They are in fact a form of hybrid supercapacitor, with the discharge voltage curve closer to that of a lithium-based cell than a supercapacitor. - 2.7V or 4.2V nominal. - pouch or cylinder form factor - can be tweaked by the manufacturer for energy density vs charge/discharge rate - contains a very small amount of lithium, not enough to be hazardous. Some benefits over lithium-based cells: - many more charge/discharge cycles (up to 100k in some cells vs 1k-4k) before capacity is reduced and therefore has a much longer operational life. - 100% depth of discharge vs 80% - Faster charging/discharging - higher thermal operation range before degradation. - No thermal runaway and won’t explode or catch on fire if punctured or in high temperature (also making them safe for air transport) - higher efficiency Of course even at max energy density (lowest charge/discharge rate), the energy density is still lower than that of most Li-based cells, make them most suitable for stationary applications where weight and volume is less of an issue.
I think that you should've mentioned in the video the self-discharhing rate of the supercapacitors which I think is one of the biggest disadvantage of supercaps. While a typical lithium battery will self-discharge %3 per year, supercapacitor self-discharges %3 charge in the matter of seconds and minutes. So for the ones thinking that supercaps could be a better choice than batteries for their low-power applications after this video, think again.
Looks like a battery to me, especially the internal structure. I'm not a battery expert either, but I can see it has multiple sheets for the electrodes, leads, pads and so on... Edit: Yes, a capacitor would need such layers as well, but as @ladislavseps4801 pointed, it would need 2 layers for anode and cathode in addition to a separator and the electrolyte solution.
@@greatscottlab I believe a cap has 2 sheets that wrap around the available space while batteries have multiple sheets, the shape of it also in my opinion is a give a way, it is not suitable for caps,
I don't know much about super or ultra capacitors. But normal eletrolitic capacitor have solid anode and cathode is the electrolite itself (and chemistry between them makes the isolator for storing the charge) . The green supercap seemed to match this: eletrolite + plastic separator + 1 other material. Accumulators should have 2 distinct solid electrodes + electrolite + separator.
@@greatscottlab The capacitor also has the same structure however there is an electrolyte, so was the supercap wet inside or not? Also maybe compare the grey material from the capacitor and the supercap, are there any chemical reactions to show if its lithium or not? I think lithium reacts when put in water and graphene would not
@@greatscottlab maybe I'm wrong but I was under the impression the defining difference between a capacitor and a battery is that a capacitor only is one layer whereas a battery is multiple? (one cell vs multiple cells?) Otherwise they're both similar in their construction and physical mode of operation I thought... Edit: having looked it up it seems unclear. It seems like generally batteries involve an electrochemical redox reaction whereas capacitors usually do not. I'm not sure if that's always the case though such as with electrolytic capacitors. Whether a single cell battery is the same as an electrolytic capacitor? Idk someone more qualified than me should chime in haha.
Big Clive took apart a jumpstart powerbank that looks extremely similar to your cell. It looks like they just use a lot of layers to get a high amp discharge.
this might just be a LiPo with a graphene layer/graphene ball structure like Samsung and some RC car batteries (Turnigy) have, but it's certainly interesting it didn't react violent at all so i aswell don't know what this thing actually is maybe something based on LiFePo4 with a higher max voltage?
Maybe it has a charge/discharge control circuit mimicking LiPo to make it easier to integrate where LiPo would have been used? It certainly didn't explode like a LiPo, or look like one on the inside, and you gave it a lot of "mechanical stress" that would definitely have caused a LiPo to catch fire. I think it really was a capacitor.
I’m really glad that you verified that this was not a hybrid capacitor. In the future, if you want an additional test you can run to differentiate hybrid caps from batteries, you can measure the internal resistance.
Capacitors rely heavily on their structure to operate efficiently/correctly, this is generally why they are cased in a strong shell, the flexible alloy case is a strong indication this is indeed a battery of some sort (Not sure what battery tho)
I'm Italian, I've been looking for a safe lipo/lithium battery for some time. and where can i find it? from a foreign youtuber :-), as soon as I have some time I call this company and ask for some information, if you want I can tell them about your video, maybe they will write to you, nice video as always, thanks for updating me on this new technology.
@@greatscottlab I do not think you need to burn that much to test, snipping off a corner should be enough to change the flame's color. And of course you should use a respirator just in case.
i remember seeing a video about a battery that can be cut or shorted and and still work... dont remember much, maybe it was ionic materials? using a polymer electrolyte
Its amazing how every battery video in last 5 years fits in 5 min explanation how battery works, and then when I see another one, in it guy takes one apart and be like "no idea what this is". Ironic
Yup, that's a lipo (or li-ion) battery. They don't always blow up, some chemistries are much more susceptible than others, the more stable ones need to be insanely overcharged before they do anything.
RC toys from China have sometimes come with li-ion packs that claim to be supercapacitors for years. It's weird. I've had a couple of those packs here to help them replace the old battery. I just figured they were trying to market them. People who are clueless about battery tech often tell me how convinced they are that supercapacitors would make cars better. It's annoying.
I have been working with Supercapacitors for years, and I have publications on that. The discharge curve for supercapacitor can tell so many things and carry a huge amount of data. From the discharge curve you showed, I can tell you this is impossible to be a supercapacitor. I have found similar product in several online markets they just changed the stickers. Graphene supercapacitor will add around 70% of capacitance on same volume unit. But I believe there will be so much development in the next few years.
It might not be a super capacitor, but how did they make a (assuming, walks like Lithium, looks like Lithium, talks like Lithium xD) Lithium Battery that doesn't explode when damaged?
@@JordanPlayz158 That was rather strange. I have had 18650 cells that just smoked a bit when crushed but no fire and no explosion and yes they were charged, don’t remember what brand tho.
To me it reminds me of the battery of a lithium jump starter. basically there are several batteries in parallel sharing the same electrolyte to achieve an output current much greater than a common lithium battery. and if I'm not mistaken, the fact that it has the same electrolyte removes the need to equalize all these internal lithium cells
Ok so I wrote them an email inquiring about their supercapacitors. Here's a translation of the reply: Good morning, these devices are hybrid supercapacitor that have a higher voltage, capacity and energy density (up to 10 times) when compared to symmetric capacitors. They also have a lower leakage and standby currents. Alternatively, traditional supercapacitors have higher an higher power capacity (?) due to the lower ESR, the operating temperature interval is wider and can be discharged down to zero volts. Hybrid supercapacitors can't be fully discharged. Their structures are very similar, but an hybrid supercapacitor uses a graphene anode interwined with lithium and a different electrolyte. Another advantage is its discharge curve being closer to that of a battery. The fact that it's an hybrid is obvious from the shorter lifespan compared to electrostatic capacitors, but 20000 cycles mean 6 milion kilometers if used in an electric car or over 50 years of duration on daily charge. The differences among our supercapacitors are due to differences in distance between elctrodes and the difference between a cylindrical geometry and a pouch. So yeah, they were hybrids all along. Cheers from Italy.
One option could be to connect to a network analyzer (eg, nanoVNA) and see what it tells you. I don’t know what a battery response looks like, but I imagine it would be different than a cap.
they have a website though, which looks legit enough and would be bizarre to exist as it is just to sell this one. it could be a real company, but it could be a 'real company in .. ehm.. italian sense lets say. there's really strange things about the company if it was an actual legit inhouse made supercap like not putting out the info in english is super strange. on their website these flat pack cells are for 'test only' sourcing. a lot of the products they list for sale seem to just be importing other manufacturers stuff. my hypothesis is that they are a real company but they just import stuff for the italian local market only and this product is just something their source says is what it is and they are not sure what it is hence they sell it for "test only", a bit cheeky. if they were the the actual manufacturer of an actual supercap like this, they would be trumpeting around for some eu money etc in english..
Lithium batteries cannot be charged below 0°C or above 55°C (the freezing limit is more problematic and quickly damage the cell) but super capacitors never have this limitations. So if, you want to test the "super capacitor", just connect two long wires, put it in a freezer and start to do some charging-discharging cycles (a lithium battery shall degrade very fast in this conditions after few cycles).
Capacitors will gladly accept electrons beyond the capacitors rated voltage. You just have to keep pushing them in with a voltage higher than the capacitor has “now”. “Gladly accept” is kind of a misstatement. They will accept them, but they will BLOW UP.
Hello, it is for 100% a simple nmc Li-Po pouch cells the internal look exactly like a li-po, another think if a li-po is discharged it doesn't catch fire... So it is a simple li-po pouch cells ..... With a new stickers... Great video
Given the price, I doubt that the manufacturers were expecting anyone to conduct such destructive testing. Capacitors tend to have high self discharge rates, so charging the capacitor and leaving it in storage for a couple of weeks should see a large percentage of the charge leak away. Batteries by contrast will have a shelf life measured in years. An interesting product but far too expensive and limited at present for use in consumer products.
Appears super safe on the positive note! Price point would be nice to come down. Something like a LIBS, Flame, Plasma and/or Arc style spectrophotomer maybe even of the webcam advance DIY design would be handy to test to see what is actually made of. Might make for some cool DIY or buy videos as well. Maybe even a COTS X-Ray or Gamma Ray spectrometer. The later would be more a gadget since seems there are one or two cost effective ones on the market now and I think there are made in kit forms as well. Wondering if the AsItaly company wanted the supercap back as well to recycle the material? Show is safe for shipping?
I have done extensive testing on this 21000F cell and the 4.2V 4000F radial one of which I built a 4s 6p battery pack that delivered 25Ah with a form factor of 100x150 .... These are indeed graphene capacitors and deliver as advertised from -40 to +70deg C. SO much miss information in the comments section.
Hi, i see that it's italian. I live in Italy and work in the electronics market as well. I try to get you in touch with someone from Asitaly to get some clarification. Keep in mind that they actually only send samples for testing and not actually selling these so probably ebay was a scam ?!
It seems to me that you are gratuitously smearing a perfectly legit product, still clearly labeled as "not for sale - still in developing phase - for test ans evaluation only". This is a hybrid capacitor, combining aspects from (super)capacitors and electro-chemical cells. That's the reason of the unusual discharge profile. You should have asked the vendor for some more details and information, before publishing such a questionable video.
I think the chemistry of it is something safe and around 2.1 volts per cell with it actuallly being built with 2 cells in series to get your 4.2 v . Maybe you can finish pulling it apart to see the 2s multiple parellel configuration. It maybe titanate chemistry
To be fair, no, capacitors won't replace the batteries due to how they store energy (Lithium-ion capacitors come quite close, too bad they're no longer made, been looking for that), but it's great for as a bulk storage at the end of the circuit (ie. car stereo amplifier with a supercapacitor to keep it happy, without any power dips in your car, whenever bass rips). And of course supercapacitors are useful in certain circuits such as a microcontroller to keep data alive and to keep time, to keep time in clocks (some older VCRs had that power loss feature), and finally, in some PCIe SSD enclosures, to buy SSD time to flush its contents from RAM onto NAND flash chips (I have Dockcase PCIe SSD enclosure that has a supercapacitor for PLP feature).
4,2V 21000 F değerine sahip bu kapasitör, 54 Watt gücündeki bir lambayı Maksimum 1 saat çalıştırabilir. 3000 w motora sahip bir elektrikli bisikleti 1 saat tam enerji ile kullanmak istediğinizde bu aküden 55 adet satın almanız gerekir. Bu da yaklaşık 10 bin Euro yapar.
I have blown up quite a few lipo batteries. All that matters is state of charge. If it is lower than 20%, not much will happen. But everything over 60% will definetly result in a rapid runaway. If you want a real nice demonstration, charge the battery (Outside!) to 4.4 Volts. That leads to a massive fire.
Incredibly relevant topic for me. I plan to use supercapacitors for aircraft devices. I have not seen graphene capacitors before - thanks for the review.
The current collectors (the metal foil) are copper and aluminium which is used by Li ion batteries. The supercapacitors using same current collector material on positive and negative electrode. And also the discharge curve looks like from battery.
10:54 "Chemical reaction always come with more heat productions". There are endotherm and exotherm chemical reactions, so producing heat is NOT always the case. A reaction might use the surrounding heat and not produce heat.
Great analysis. I'm not a cap (nor a battery) expert either, but after your tests I would agree that there's no way that's a capacitor. Doesn't pass the duck test.
Having a look at their site I think you just got the only thing that isn't a super capacitor. The other two kinds which they offered (30KF and 100KF) actually looked way more genuine, with peak currents of 200A and 300A and just 5-10 minutes of charge times.
Although I made also a seperate comment, I'll copy the reply here too. Ok so I wrote them an email inquiring about their supercapacitors. Here's a translation of the reply: Good morning, these devices are hybrid supercapacitor that have a higher voltage, capacity and energy density (up to 10 times) when compared to symmetric capacitors. They also have a lower leakage and standby currents. Alternatively, traditional supercapacitors have higher an higher power capacity (?) due to the lower ESR, the operating temperature interval is wider and can be discharged down to zero volts. Hybrid supercapacitors can't be fully discharged. Their structures are very similar, but an hybrid supercapacitor uses a graphene anode interwined with lithium and a different electrolyte. Another advantage is its discharge curve being closer to that of a battery. The fact that it's an hybrid is obvious from the shorter lifespan compared to electrostatic capacitors, but 20000 cycles mean 6 milion kilometers if used in an electric car or over 50 years of duration on daily charge. The differences among our supercapacitors are due to differences in distance between elctrodes and the difference between a cylindrical geometry and a pouch. So yeah, they were hybrids all along. Cheers from Italy.
I also want to say that from the data it is an excellent supercapacitor for some applications thanks to its safety, as you can see from the video, it does not catch fire, and thanks to its 20,000 life cycles, which seem few, but mean over 6 million km for an electric car.
Even with low capacity, fast charging partially offsets that issue in a fully built out EV charging network, where you have a charge station at least every 100km or less.
I love yor channel! It puts things into perspective and straightens out some "innovative" videos in YT. Can you please make a video how to make a 12v battery charger?
The discharge curve told the essentials. It's not a super capacitor, it's a battery. Some lithium batteries do not light up even if they are damaged. Maybe the conductive material is thin enough that the short circuit is not too energetic to ignite. A high-current small battery requires strong conductive materials and thus aggressive ignition
You might be dealing with a capacitor, power bank disguised as a single capacitor. Power banks, like these can consist of multiple capacitors, which act as the cells of a battery, giving it the ability to last longer than a normal capacitor.
so just to point something out, it,s not strictly true when you said the battery cell only lasts 5000 cycles. That's the estimated charge cycles the cell will last before hitting 80% capacity, it even states on the sheet that it'll take a further 2000 cycles to hit 70% capacity. Even though the capacity may be reduced reduced the cell will still be usable for many more charge cycles.
That graphene super capacitor just same as mpco lithium cell, same package, same size and weigh too. I use them for my electric scooter. It has high discharge current and more save than normal lithium cell (NCM)
Taking a weight from datasheet - It is actually 200Wh/kg, that is awesome even comparing with LiIon technology! It is really they have no reaction on puncture. Where the energy than goes? Would be nice to try testing the punctured one for the remaining charge.
I would classify components after their mathematical behavior in circuits. So that formulas that could have been derived for "interesting" frequencies remain valid. Aside of that I see the application potentials for this component very well, especially given its mechanical safety. If I had money I would buy a bunch to try some things.
To determine whether the claim that a 21,000 Farad (F) supercapacitor with a voltage of 4.2V and an energy storage of 75Wh is real or a hoax, we need to perform some calculations based on the given specifications. The energy stored in a capacitor can be calculated using the formula: 𝐸 = 1 2 𝐶 𝑉 2 E= 2 1 CV 2
where: 𝐸 E is the energy in joules (J), 𝐶 C is the capacitance in farads (F), 𝑉 V is the voltage in volts (V). First, let's calculate the energy in joules and then convert it to watt-hours (Wh). Calculating the energy in joules: 𝐸 = 1 2 × 21 , 000
F × ( 4.2
V ) 2 E= 2 1 ×21,000F×(4.2V) 2
Converting joules to watt-hours: 1
Wh = 3600
J 1Wh=3600J Let's do the calculations. The energy stored in a 21,000 Farad supercapacitor at 4.2 volts is: 185,220 joules (J) 51.45 watt-hours (Wh) This is significantly lower than the claimed 75 Wh. Given this discrepancy, the claim that this supercapacitor can store 75 Wh of energy appears to be inaccurate or exaggerated. Therefore, it is likely that the 75 Wh storage specification is either a mistake or a hoax.
That looks like a LiFePO4 pouch cell and they don't always catch fire when punctured. If they do smoke it's less violent than LiPo.
Hmmmm possible.
Lifepo4 is only 3.65 volts so no its not a lifepo4.
This is exactly what they look like internally, so I'd tend to agree as well. You'll have carbonized copper sheets alternating with aluminum sheets coated with the LiFePO4 dope, separated by the layers of barrier material.
Put one of the aluminum sheets into a flame and see if it burns red, indicating the presence of lithium to confirm.
@@greatscottlab If I recall in the early days of the LiFePO4 cells the max charge was briefly 4.6 volts then it was downgraded to 4.2 then to be even safer 3.65 and in some cases they recommend just 3.5 volts for the max charging voltage. LiFePO4 cells act just like this when punctured. I love my LiFePO4 cells. It is a battery not capacitor.
@@greatscottlabhey try @bjn724 ‘s suggestion to put the aluminum side in fire and see if it changed colors to test for lithium.
In my opinion the best way to find out if you deal with a battery or a capacitor is to discharge it to zero volts, let it shorted for few days and try to recharge it. Capacitor should survive this test with no problem and no capacity loss at all.
Battery would be not able to give You the original capacity but more likely You wouldn’t be able to charge it anymore.
Not necessary so.... I did some tests with NiMh (of which that same is said). I deeply discharged them by applying a resistor of 1KΩ (~1mA) to them, and leave them like that for a year. After that I gave 5x a refresh charge cycle with a low current (0.2x capacity), and their capacity was still above 95% of their original, not very different of just store then charged and recharge them. I repeated that with a few periodes of a half year, same results. It could be that the resistor kept the chemistry polarized or so.
This is afaik also true for lithium hybrid capacitors. So it doesn't completely rule out a capacitor type cell.
@@erikdenhouter thanks for Your experience. You reminded me of my experience with Li-ion battery. Once I tried to repair my collegue’s scooter battery. There was one palalell row of cells at zero volts. I was still able to recharge them to the full voltage. Even the capacitance did not drop significantly. The problem was different. After this manual ballancing they were very leaky. So after few weeks they self-discharged to zero again.
@@KUBA64official Thanks, I will try to use these cells normally after the next periode of abuse has ended 😜 You could be right that they will turn in something unreliable, that is not checked fully yet.
@@KUBA64officialthose cells where protected and had a internal low voltage shit off.
If you discharge a lithium ion cell to zero you won't change that ever again to full voltage
You forgot one downside of supercaps: self discharge is high, can be in the order of half its charge lost in 1000 hours, and is also a function of temperature.
That seems like a pretty serious downside, especially since one of the reasons to store a lot of energy is to be able to release it over a long time
That would be no problem for most uses thought
@@NinoJoel Of course, such property will allow for certain applications, it wil find its own ground to be usefull in.
@@NinoJoel I think you're mostly right, and I heard it can be used in cars and other high power situations. HOWEVER, this is an electronics channel, where fast charge and discharge of large amounts of energy is unlikely. I would argue slow discharge is more common in this particular niche
A thousand hours? That's like more than a month... who cares? For most worthwhile applications you'd be charging a lot more than once every couple months, and you have to keep lithium batteries charged every month or two and keep them stored at below 100% charge... so it wouldn't be more of a hassle than those batteries, plus a supercap would charge super fast so there's no concern if it discharges itself
To be honest, the biggest red flag for me immediately that this was almost certainly not a capacitor is that it comes in a flexible plastic pouch form factor. Batteries are chemical devices, so their actual shape, pressure, etc isn't that critical to their functioning, but capacitors are physical devices where each physical dimension actually matters a huge amount. The characteristics of capacitors are highly dependent on the exact separation of the layers from each other, so any squeezing or bending of the capacitor internals will likely dramatically reduce its capacitance, which would be really bad if anyone were actually trying to, you know, use it in a real circuit for anything predictable.
There is a reason that all _real_ capacitors come with hard exteriors. Nobody would ever make a capacitor like this, particularly an expensive, state-of-the-art supercap, which could be rendered basically useless just by squeezing it with your fingers in the wrong way.
While I get your point, you are not quite correct there. There are double layer capacitors made that way. AVX PrizmaCap series comes to mind. But they are certainly not the norm.
Pouch cells are very popular when it comes to packaging devices. Indeed they are the real standard see Amprius, Sion Power, Lyten etc..
@@hmpeter We are not dealing with the norm here though, so you certainly have a valid point.
Usually supercapacitors do both electrostatic and electrochemical storage for their increased capacity.
@@satibelthat's hybrid caps... supercaps are differentiated from "normal" caps by the electrolyte which forms EDL (ellectrolyte-double-layer) physical static electrical syorage against the charged capacitor plates, thus increasing energy storage WITHOUT any chemical reactions.
(Brief version: supercaps are NOT electrochemical, the electrolyte just adds "virtual" extra plates, or extra surface area to the plates)
This is actually a Gen 3 ("MpCO") lithium ion cell from Microvast. You can find the "02LCC" prefix from the cell, which indicates that it is a Gen3 MpCO cell from Microvast. The good news is that while it is a lithium ion cell, it can last 4000-7000 cycles according to the datasheet.
the bad news is that the one on the video won't be able to complete those cycles...
Huh, Microvast looses 200 million contract in US after suspicious ties to China. These batts are now showing up on russian e-bikes.
Great info
So… it actually is a legit technology, but it got mislabelled by a nefarious eBay company to scam people.
@@beanapprentice1687Still has nothing to do with graphene, and I wonder if that company who appears to sell from chemical tanks to super caps is part of the scam or not
Time to test if there's Lithium in the device.
Maybe do a flame test with the electrolyte? Lithium will emit a very red light
Oh boy. I will see what I can do.
@@greatscottlab I'd be happy with even just a UA-cam short of this test!
@@greatscottlab That's the spirit !
Yes please try this, I'm so excited.
Just put it in water (carefully!)
At no point did I think that was actually a capacitor, but I still learned a lot in this video. Thanks!
It is something ;-)
@@greatscottlab Mysteriously it is no longer available for sale on their website and is only available as a studio prototype.
@@javierolavarriathat's sus
Same :)
@@javierolavarria"Campione fornito solo per valutazione e test" means "Unit provided only for evaluation and testing". It probably was never meant to be sold directly, in fact this was bought on eBay. As for the "Super Capacitor" label, that probably is a straight up lie
Hi, after seeing how it looks on the inside I can tell you Wich kind of battery is this
Yes it is a battery, is a carbon-lithium-copper battery
They don't like to explode and can be safely dismantled even with full charge, I had chewed on one at some point when I was kiddo
It's one of the oldest kind of lithium batteries so yes you got scammed probably have to call some authoritie
Thanks for the feedback :-)
Yes most likely, because it does not fit characteristic of LiFePo4 and at 10:14 it is clearly visible that there is a Copper (Cu) layer visible.
gotta pin that
Have you tried contacting the manufacturer for comment? A follow up would be really interesting because whatever chemistry this was it looks super safe which is interesting!
it might be one of the new stable lipo that ive seen around... Basically able to handle being cut and damaged and continue to work. But yes not a super cap
Where can I find such Lipos? Link please?
@@greatscottlab Ive only seen a few youtube vids on them over the last few years. One was designed by the guy who invented lipo. Honestly right now I dont know the title of it... But in the video they were literally cutting the active pack with scissors. And it just kept working. Only thing in the end they were doing is reducing capacity.
@@greatscottlabhe mentioned battery sounds like a lithium ceramic battery or lcb. It looks like you reviewed these around 4 years back. Prologium sells these as FLCBs, flexible lcb
@@greatscottlab maybe he was talking about your lithium ceramic video.
@@greatscottlab maybe u will find more info on videos with caption nail penitrating lab
LTO (Lithium titanate oxide) Batteries are worth checking out as well, may not meet the voltage requirements, but still stable and resistant to being punctured
They are also very good with battery life and discharge rates
Their weird voltage and high internal resistance makes them a no for me
Yeh
Seems like the main advantage would be you could charge and discharge capacitors millions of times... at elast unless corrosion or they dried out or some other time based chemical effect degraded their performance.
Yep. That is pretty much the best advantage. After that follows the big currents it can handle and then safety aspects.
@@greatscottlabIf they can make ceramic caps as great as regular super caps one day it might not really get worse by time
@@greatscottlab We have some LiPos that can handle enormous currents now though with pretty high energy density. I've got some Spektrum batteries that can do 1.6 kiloamps and they only weigh a kilogram.
I'm pretty disappointed in capacitor tech for high current applications compared to these modern high-current LiPos.
@@greatscottlab i dont care what it is does it hold a charge and wont explode. thats whats important. call it what you want i need to see it tested in a ebike please
Probably the discharge curve of a supercapacitor has also to be considered a disadvantage. As shown in the video, the voltage changes a lot during the discharge so, in order to exploit all the stored energy, the devices connected have to work in a really wide voltage range and this is not easy to manage. In my experience, a common solution is to use only a part of the stored energy, thus giving up some capacity. Anyway, as always a really interesting video!
Maybe you would need several contactors for each module in battery pack (connected in series) in order to maintain steady pack voltage. 🤔
Not difficult at all: start from a higher pack voltage and use a buck regulator. You already need to do this with 3.7V Li-ion to power 1.2-3.3V loads anyway. For single supercaps, a SEPIC converter can do both buck and boost as needed.
@@valtersvasilis that actually might be a good method, at least in combination with a more proper regulator. If you could reliably keep the voltage within +/- a volt or two, then you could get a really efficient regulator that pins that down to something exact. (say 3.3v for a microcontroller)
With that said, you'd need a smart-switching circuit, otherwise when it's fully charged you'd get WAAAAAY above the desired voltage. For small devices you'd likely only need some mosfets or something, but for an EV or something you'd probably need full fledged contactors that can rewire the battery pack from series to parallel on-the-fly to keep a somewhat consistent voltage which can then be pinned down by a regulator.
I'm not a battery expert myself but I have dismantled many of them from my early teenage years. Seeing copper in it makes me certain it's some sort of li-ion battery not a super capacitor. Each one I opened had copper sheets in
same and that weird af lithium smell
LiFePO4?
did any supercaps you've opened have copper sheets in them tho?
@@safetyinstructor Mostly Li-ion 18650
@@bottlekruiser No! From my experience(the ones I opened) they all had some sort of carbon electrode, both anode and cathode. Don't exactly know what it is for sure though
We need better super capacitors! I really hope new technology becomes more affordable soon!
I hope so too :-)
it's really hard to beat chemical reactions for energy density.
@@manitoba-op4jxwhat's sla
@@univera1111 Sealed Lead Acid battery
@@univera1111 SLA = Sealed Lead Acid Battery
The capacitor explanation in this episode is pretty good, but the interesting thing about electrolytic capacitors (including most supercapacitors) is that one of the electrodes of the capacitor is actually the *liquid* (usually a saline solution), and the dielectric (polarizable insulator) is actually an *oxide layer formed between the metal strip and the liquid electrode when a charge is applied.*
This is why electrolytic capacitors are polarized: If you apply the charge in the wrong direction, the oxide layer breaks down, causing a short which prevents it from re-forming.
Most electrolytic supercapacitors are just regular electrolytic capacitors, but with *ludicrous* amounts of surface area across the dielectric layer, which corresponds to ludicrous amounts of capacitance.
The best up side though
It can store power for years without discharging
10:42
And if it doesn't explode despite physical damage that is amazing!
Literally even if this isn't graphine this is a major improvement in safety!
Nice one GS, thanks for exploring this for all of us.
Practical note: you might want to wear nitril gloves over your working (PU dipped) gloves, this gives the same safety, but you keep your working gloves clean of hazardous materials.
Hey there!
I was wondering if you would make an AC UPS project.
The only ones on youtube are just battery banks but dont support the "uninterruptable" charactertistic that UPS needs.
Great video like usual, would love to see more of the aliexpress videos and hope you find my suggestion valid enough to make a video
Thanks!
edit: would be great if you could also talk about line interactive ups, upsides and downsides compared to a standby one and mention what would be the upsides to the line interactive one. As line interactive is going to use the battery far more, and going to be more expensive.
A standby ups would pair up nicely with your garage build and you could make a line interactive ups for housing more voltage sensitive electronics like pc/oscilloscope etc
Nice safe capacitor
I can put it on my to do list :-)
@@greatscottlab :D
@@greatscottlabNice! I would love to see a project like that from you
The easiest solution for smaller devices is to keep a lead acid battery topped up from AC power (since LiIon doesn't handle trickle charging well), and put an inverter on it. That way, you're isolated from the grid, and when AC power fails, the battery just doesn't get charged any more.
It has the discharge curve of a NMC) (specifically LiNi1/3Mn1/3Co1/3O2), which, to be fair is one of the safer options for NMC, but it should still combust afaik. The fact that it marries the mechanical resilience of LFP with the discharge curve of NMC is interesting to me. If this is a new lithium based technology, it would be fun to learn more about it's other electrical properties, operational temperature, relative capacity degradation over 1000 cycles etc.
You should have tried to drain it to zero volts and then tried to recharge it. If it keeps energy inside itself after that and there is no pcb+battery controller it's a super capacitor.
I feel like LiPos can do that too up to a certain limit. No?
lipo's dont always come with circuitry. most DIY drone batteries dont have any kind of controller/protection circuit.
@@greatscottlab Yes, to a certain limit. But if after 5-6 cycles of 100%->0% it retains its capacity, it's definitely not a lipo.
I recall that hybrid supercaps (the lithium based ones specially) didn't play well with full drain, they were even sold already pre-charged like batteries didn't they?
Like the one Scott showed in the video with the plastic shell keeping the terminals from shorting.
I had a fan on my workbench that I put an 18650 holder on.
I would forget to shut it off and leave it on ALL the time and drain the batteries to 0v. I must have done it 10x on one particular pack and when I capacity tested it again a year later it didn't lose much capacity... I was shocked.
It was a 1/2 worn out cell from a laptop pack that only had about 1200mah capacity, and after all that abuse it was at about 1000mah a year later.
I used it so much that I wore the brushes out in the fan motor and that's when I had to retire it.
Here's what I would do.
1) Separate the constituent materials as well as I can.
2) Dry them.
3) Do a flame test on each of them.
3.BONUS) Record the flame emission with a spectroscope
The colors you see (or emission lines, if using a spectroscope) should tell you fairly accurately what the materials being used here are.
Lithium has a characteristic pale red flame. I don't know the flame colors for Fe and P, but they are available online.
If you just see lithium, maybe it's a hybrid capacitor. But I'd bet there's no reason for there to be Fe and P if it isn't a battery.
If you see none of those, then perhaps it's indeed a capacitor.
Instead of a flame test, you can also use it as electrodes. An electric arc will give more spectral line than a flame.
I saw some copper in the supposed super cap. That is typical for a lithium ion battery.That is a definite indicator for a batter. For a cap you would use aluminum. Way cheaper
These are not LiFePO4 cells. They are in fact a form of hybrid supercapacitor, with the discharge voltage curve closer to that of a lithium-based cell than a supercapacitor.
- 2.7V or 4.2V nominal.
- pouch or cylinder form factor
- can be tweaked by the manufacturer for energy density vs charge/discharge rate
- contains a very small amount of lithium, not enough to be hazardous.
Some benefits over lithium-based cells:
- many more charge/discharge cycles (up to 100k in some cells vs 1k-4k) before capacity is reduced and therefore has a much longer operational life.
- 100% depth of discharge vs 80%
- Faster charging/discharging
- higher thermal operation range before degradation.
- No thermal runaway and won’t explode or catch on fire if punctured or in high temperature (also making them safe for air transport)
- higher efficiency
Of course even at max energy density (lowest charge/discharge rate), the energy density is still lower than that of most Li-based cells, make them most suitable for stationary applications where weight and volume is less of an issue.
I think that you should've mentioned in the video the self-discharhing rate of the supercapacitors which I think is one of the biggest disadvantage of supercaps. While a typical lithium battery will self-discharge %3 per year, supercapacitor self-discharges %3 charge in the matter of seconds and minutes. So for the ones thinking that supercaps could be a better choice than batteries for their low-power applications after this video, think again.
for phones and cars ? Its cycles that matter
Looks like a battery to me, especially the internal structure. I'm not a battery expert either, but I can see it has multiple sheets for the electrodes, leads, pads and so on...
Edit:
Yes, a capacitor would need such layers as well, but as @ladislavseps4801 pointed, it would need 2 layers for anode and cathode in addition to a separator and the electrolyte solution.
Sure, but a capacitor would require such layers as well.
@@greatscottlab I believe a cap has 2 sheets that wrap around the available space while batteries have multiple sheets, the shape of it also in my opinion is a give a way, it is not suitable for caps,
I don't know much about super or ultra capacitors. But normal eletrolitic capacitor have solid anode and cathode is the electrolite itself (and chemistry between them makes the isolator for storing the charge) . The green supercap seemed to match this: eletrolite + plastic separator + 1 other material. Accumulators should have 2 distinct solid electrodes + electrolite + separator.
@@greatscottlab The capacitor also has the same structure however there is an electrolyte, so was the supercap wet inside or not? Also maybe compare the grey material from the capacitor and the supercap, are there any chemical reactions to show if its lithium or not? I think lithium reacts when put in water and graphene would not
@@greatscottlab maybe I'm wrong but I was under the impression the defining difference between a capacitor and a battery is that a capacitor only is one layer whereas a battery is multiple? (one cell vs multiple cells?) Otherwise they're both similar in their construction and physical mode of operation I thought...
Edit: having looked it up it seems unclear. It seems like generally batteries involve an electrochemical redox reaction whereas capacitors usually do not. I'm not sure if that's always the case though such as with electrolytic capacitors. Whether a single cell battery is the same as an electrolytic capacitor?
Idk someone more qualified than me should chime in haha.
Big Clive took apart a jumpstart powerbank that looks extremely similar to your cell. It looks like they just use a lot of layers to get a high amp discharge.
this might just be a LiPo with a graphene layer/graphene ball structure like Samsung and some RC car batteries (Turnigy) have, but it's certainly interesting it didn't react violent at all so i aswell don't know what this thing actually is
maybe something based on LiFePo4 with a higher max voltage?
Thanks for the feedback. It is a mystery......
Looks like a solid state battery
Maybe it has a charge/discharge control circuit mimicking LiPo to make it easier to integrate where LiPo would have been used? It certainly didn't explode like a LiPo, or look like one on the inside, and you gave it a lot of "mechanical stress" that would definitely have caused a LiPo to catch fire. I think it really was a capacitor.
Never.
At 10:14, When you disassemble the 'SC', you can see copper layers in brown and aluminum layers in silver staggering! That is battery setup.
I’m really glad that you verified that this was not a hybrid capacitor. In the future, if you want an additional test you can run to differentiate hybrid caps from batteries, you can measure the internal resistance.
He definitely did.
he did in the video
Capacitors rely heavily on their structure to operate efficiently/correctly, this is generally why they are cased in a strong shell, the flexible alloy case is a strong indication this is indeed a battery of some sort (Not sure what battery tho)
Whenever I hear you say 'Farads', I always think of bicycles.
Brilliant content as always!
Thanks!
Glad you liked it :-)
Fahrrad 😂🚲🚲
Lol so, microfarad would be a clown bike. Like, that cap is 4.7 clownbikes
@@Pyronimous absolutely 😁
@@rubenstenlund 😁
I'm Italian, I've been looking for a safe lipo/lithium battery for some time. and where can i find it? from a foreign youtuber :-), as soon as I have some time I call this company and ask for some information, if you want I can tell them about your video, maybe they will write to you, nice video as always, thanks for updating me on this new technology.
suggest setting part of battery on fire - red flames indicate perhaps lithium?
Oh boy. That does not sound too safe though.
@@greatscottlabI'd argue it's no less safe than testing the robustness of a LiPo cell using a hammer and nails....
@@greatscottlab you can take some of the layers and set them on fire.
@@greatscottlab I do not think you need to burn that much to test, snipping off a corner should be enough to change the flame's color. And of course you should use a respirator just in case.
@@2darki I just misread that as "Take some of the lawyers and set them on fire........."
i remember seeing a video about a battery that can be cut or shorted and and still work... dont remember much, maybe it was ionic materials? using a polymer electrolyte
I would think that the *"4.2V"* is a pretty major clue.
Yep, supercapacitor cells usually have lower max voltage, around 2.5..2.7 V.
Your channel is brilliant and you are so knowledgable. Please teach us electronics.
Its amazing how every battery video in last 5 years fits in 5 min explanation how battery works, and then when I see another one, in it guy takes one apart and be like "no idea what this is". Ironic
Mom always said, if it's too good to be true..don't buy it. Some of the best advice I ever got from my parents. :)
Bro, your content is one of the best on UA-cam. You are inspiring me not to abandon my passion for electronics 💪
Yup, that's a lipo (or li-ion) battery.
They don't always blow up, some chemistries are much more susceptible than others, the more stable ones need to be insanely overcharged before they do anything.
RC toys from China have sometimes come with li-ion packs that claim to be supercapacitors for years. It's weird. I've had a couple of those packs here to help them replace the old battery. I just figured they were trying to market them. People who are clueless about battery tech often tell me how convinced they are that supercapacitors would make cars better. It's annoying.
Yep. That really sucks.
I have been working with Supercapacitors for years, and I have publications on that. The discharge curve for supercapacitor can tell so many things and carry a huge amount of data. From the discharge curve you showed, I can tell you this is impossible to be a supercapacitor. I have found similar product in several online markets they just changed the stickers. Graphene supercapacitor will add around 70% of capacitance on same volume unit. But I believe there will be so much development in the next few years.
It’s a shame it was a scam, hopefully we get some real capacitor developments soon.
I hope so too :-)
It might not be a super capacitor, but how did they make a (assuming, walks like Lithium, looks like Lithium, talks like Lithium xD) Lithium Battery that doesn't explode when damaged?
@@JordanPlayz158
That was rather strange.
I have had 18650 cells that just smoked a bit when crushed but no fire and no explosion and yes they were charged, don’t remember what brand tho.
@@JordanPlayz158 Lithium titanate
To me it reminds me of the battery of a lithium jump starter. basically there are several batteries in parallel sharing the same electrolyte to achieve an output current much greater than a common lithium battery. and if I'm not mistaken, the fact that it has the same electrolyte removes the need to equalize all these internal lithium cells
Ok so I wrote them an email inquiring about their supercapacitors. Here's a translation of the reply:
Good morning,
these devices are hybrid supercapacitor that have a higher voltage, capacity and energy density (up to 10 times) when compared to symmetric capacitors. They also have a lower leakage and standby currents. Alternatively, traditional supercapacitors have higher an higher power capacity (?) due to the lower ESR, the operating temperature interval is wider and can be discharged down to zero volts. Hybrid supercapacitors can't be fully discharged. Their structures are very similar, but an hybrid supercapacitor uses a graphene anode interwined with lithium and a different electrolyte.
Another advantage is its discharge curve being closer to that of a battery.
The fact that it's an hybrid is obvious from the shorter lifespan compared to electrostatic capacitors, but 20000 cycles mean 6 milion kilometers if used in an electric car or over 50 years of duration on daily charge.
The differences among our supercapacitors are due to differences in distance between elctrodes and the difference between a cylindrical geometry and a pouch.
So yeah, they were hybrids all along. Cheers from Italy.
One option could be to connect to a network analyzer (eg, nanoVNA) and see what it tells you. I don’t know what a battery response looks like, but I imagine it would be different than a cap.
Fake company. The address is some house in the middle of nowhere, which ony Google maps says it is a company that replaces lightbulbs.
No idea why I did not bother to check the address. Well, mystery solved I guess.
they have a website though, which looks legit enough and would be bizarre to exist as it is just to sell this one.
it could be a real company, but it could be a 'real company in .. ehm.. italian sense lets say. there's really strange things about the company if it was an actual legit inhouse made supercap like not putting out the info in english is super strange. on their website these flat pack cells are for 'test only' sourcing. a lot of the products they list for sale seem to just be importing other manufacturers stuff.
my hypothesis is that they are a real company but they just import stuff for the italian local market only and this product is just something their source says is what it is and they are not sure what it is hence they sell it for "test only", a bit cheeky.
if they were the the actual manufacturer of an actual supercap like this, they would be trumpeting around for some eu money etc in english..
Lithium batteries cannot be charged below 0°C or above 55°C (the freezing limit is more problematic and quickly damage the cell) but super capacitors never have this limitations.
So if, you want to test the "super capacitor", just connect two long wires, put it in a freezer and start to do some charging-discharging cycles (a lithium battery shall degrade very fast in this conditions after few cycles).
That certainly sounds like a fun test for next time :-)
@@greatscottlab May not be fun as a flame test, but it should be definitely the coolest one! 🙂
What about the charge curve? Capacitors stop absorbing the energy after reaching their max capacity. LiPo batteries get hot or even can blow
Capacitors will gladly accept electrons beyond the capacitors rated voltage. You just have to keep pushing them in with a voltage higher than the capacitor has “now”.
“Gladly accept” is kind of a misstatement. They will accept them, but they will BLOW UP.
Hello, it is for 100% a simple nmc Li-Po pouch cells the internal look exactly like a li-po, another think if a li-po is discharged it doesn't catch fire...
So it is a simple li-po pouch cells ..... With a new stickers...
Great video
Given the price, I doubt that the manufacturers were expecting anyone to conduct such destructive testing. Capacitors tend to have high self discharge rates, so charging the capacitor and leaving it in storage for a couple of weeks should see a large percentage of the charge leak away. Batteries by contrast will have a shelf life measured in years. An interesting product but far too expensive and limited at present for use in consumer products.
By the way on the capacitor there is written in italian: "Free sample for evaluation and test" it was not supposed to be sold on ebay
I saw your post on Ig and I was so excited for this episode! Keep up the amazing videos!
Yay! Thank you!
Appears super safe on the positive note! Price point would be nice to come down. Something like a LIBS, Flame, Plasma and/or Arc style spectrophotomer maybe even of the webcam advance DIY design would be handy to test to see what is actually made of. Might make for some cool DIY or buy videos as well. Maybe even a COTS X-Ray or Gamma Ray spectrometer. The later would be more a gadget since seems there are one or two cost effective ones on the market now and I think there are made in kit forms as well. Wondering if the AsItaly company wanted the supercap back as well to recycle the material? Show is safe for shipping?
I have done extensive testing on this 21000F cell and the 4.2V 4000F radial one of which I built a 4s 6p battery pack that delivered 25Ah with a form factor of 100x150 .... These are indeed graphene capacitors and deliver as advertised from -40 to +70deg C. SO much miss information in the comments section.
Please make a simple FM TRANSMITTER
I can put it on my to do list. But check out Afrotechmods video about VCOs. That should do the trick.
Hi, i see that it's italian. I live in Italy and work in the electronics market as well. I try to get you in touch with someone from Asitaly to get some clarification. Keep in mind that they actually only send samples for testing and not actually selling these so probably ebay was a scam ?!
It seems to me that you are gratuitously smearing a perfectly legit product, still clearly labeled as "not for sale - still in developing phase - for test ans evaluation only". This is a hybrid capacitor, combining aspects from (super)capacitors and electro-chemical cells. That's the reason of the unusual discharge profile. You should have asked the vendor for some more details and information, before publishing such a questionable video.
I think the chemistry of it is something safe and around 2.1 volts per cell with it actuallly being built with 2 cells in series to get your 4.2 v . Maybe you can finish pulling it apart to see the 2s multiple parellel configuration. It maybe titanate chemistry
To be fair, no, capacitors won't replace the batteries due to how they store energy (Lithium-ion capacitors come quite close, too bad they're no longer made, been looking for that), but it's great for as a bulk storage at the end of the circuit (ie. car stereo amplifier with a supercapacitor to keep it happy, without any power dips in your car, whenever bass rips).
And of course supercapacitors are useful in certain circuits such as a microcontroller to keep data alive and to keep time, to keep time in clocks (some older VCRs had that power loss feature), and finally, in some PCIe SSD enclosures, to buy SSD time to flush its contents from RAM onto NAND flash chips (I have Dockcase PCIe SSD enclosure that has a supercapacitor for PLP feature).
4,2V 21000 F değerine sahip bu kapasitör, 54 Watt gücündeki bir lambayı Maksimum 1 saat çalıştırabilir.
3000 w motora sahip bir elektrikli bisikleti 1 saat tam enerji ile kullanmak istediğinizde bu aküden 55 adet satın almanız gerekir. Bu da yaklaşık 10 bin Euro yapar.
I have blown up quite a few lipo batteries. All that matters is state of charge. If it is lower than 20%, not much will happen. But everything over 60% will definetly result in a rapid runaway. If you want a real nice demonstration, charge the battery (Outside!) to 4.4 Volts. That leads to a massive fire.
Some types of modern lithium batteries allow 4.43 V without any damage.
@@watchmakerful Is that a surge rating however not intended for everyday use?
@@watchmakerful yes, but mostly high performance phone and laptop batteries. I‘m talking about the most popular NCM- type.
Incredibly relevant topic for me.
I plan to use supercapacitors for aircraft devices.
I have not seen graphene capacitors before - thanks for the review.
Well, this is not a graphene capacitor, so you still didn't see one
as always, great stuff from Great Scott. thx
The current collectors (the metal foil) are copper and aluminium which is used by Li ion batteries. The supercapacitors using same current collector material on positive and negative electrode. And also the discharge curve looks like from battery.
10:54 "Chemical reaction always come with more heat productions". There are endotherm and exotherm chemical reactions, so producing heat is NOT always the case. A reaction might use the surrounding heat and not produce heat.
Great video as always, thank you.
Dude just punctured a 200 EUR battery for one video 😂
Thanks for video :)
A note on LiFePo cycle. 5000 seems low. Eve boast 6000 cycles to 80% and calb's new line boast 9000 cycle to 80%.
Great analysis. I'm not a cap (nor a battery) expert either, but after your tests I would agree that there's no way that's a capacitor. Doesn't pass the duck test.
Interessant ausgeführt.
Danke für die Dekomposition.
Having a look at their site I think you just got the only thing that isn't a super capacitor. The other two kinds which they offered (30KF and 100KF) actually looked way more genuine, with peak currents of 200A and 300A and just 5-10 minutes of charge times.
PS: I sent them an email, I'll see if they reply. In case I'll tell you all.
Although I made also a seperate comment, I'll copy the reply here too.
Ok so I wrote them an email inquiring about their supercapacitors. Here's a translation of the reply:
Good morning,
these devices are hybrid supercapacitor that have a higher voltage, capacity and energy density (up to 10 times) when compared to symmetric capacitors. They also have a lower leakage and standby currents. Alternatively, traditional supercapacitors have higher an higher power capacity (?) due to the lower ESR, the operating temperature interval is wider and can be discharged down to zero volts. Hybrid supercapacitors can't be fully discharged. Their structures are very similar, but an hybrid supercapacitor uses a graphene anode interwined with lithium and a different electrolyte.
Another advantage is its discharge curve being closer to that of a battery.
The fact that it's an hybrid is obvious from the shorter lifespan compared to electrostatic capacitors, but 20000 cycles mean 6 milion kilometers if used in an electric car or over 50 years of duration on daily charge.
The differences among our supercapacitors are due to differences in distance between elctrodes and the difference between a cylindrical geometry and a pouch.
So yeah, they were hybrids all along. Cheers from Italy.
I also want to say that from the data it is an excellent supercapacitor for some applications thanks to its safety, as you can see from the video, it does not catch fire, and thanks to its 20,000 life cycles, which seem few, but mean over 6 million km for an electric car.
Even with low capacity, fast charging partially offsets that issue in a fully built out EV charging network, where you have a charge station at least every 100km or less.
Cap-XX makes graphene super caps.
I had one years ago. They do work well, but still quite low energy density compared to a battery.
Ah! Its nice to see you back.
If you pour water on the sheet and it reacts to form hydrogen gas it is 100% lithium or another alkali metal. That’s the easiest way to tell.
New Video, Awesome sauce.... Great Scott, Let's Started.... watching your video now....
Ohh man, you nailed it! Multiple multiple times...
Are graphene super capacitors any better than regular capacitors for eliminating electrical ripple & noise?
I love yor channel! It puts things into perspective and straightens out some "innovative" videos in YT. Can you please make a video how to make a 12v battery charger?
The discharge curve told the essentials. It's not a super capacitor, it's a battery. Some lithium batteries do not light up even if they are damaged. Maybe the conductive material is thin enough that the short circuit is not too energetic to ignite. A high-current small battery requires strong conductive materials and thus aggressive ignition
You might be dealing with a capacitor, power bank disguised as a single capacitor. Power banks, like these can consist of multiple capacitors, which act as the cells of a battery, giving it the ability to last longer than a normal capacitor.
so just to point something out, it,s not strictly true when you said the battery cell only lasts 5000 cycles. That's the estimated charge cycles the cell will last before hitting 80% capacity, it even states on the sheet that it'll take a further 2000 cycles to hit 70% capacity.
Even though the capacity may be reduced reduced the cell will still be usable for many more charge cycles.
That graphene super capacitor just same as mpco lithium cell, same package, same size and weigh too. I use them for my electric scooter. It has high discharge current and more save than normal lithium cell (NCM)
I think that this battery is a part of the future EV car also...
Thanks for the video... was Great :-)
Scott, you can check whether the layers are lithium using the chemical indicators,
Nice informative presentation as usual.
Interesting, the manufacturer website now shows "Not for sale, we only provide prototype samples for study". Not sure when that changed.
thank you for creative video. I liked your approaches to scientific tests and also dumb destruction. nice!
Haha thanks :-)
Copper and aluminium plates in the "capacitor" suggest it is indeed some sort of lithium battery. But not typical LiPo (it would have went violent).
I have same thoughts
Good job, Great Scott!
Glad you enjoyed it
Yes that's how a lipo looks inside..i opened one and it's the same..not the same like yours but a 10000mah one of a power Bank..
Thanks for the feedback :-)
@@greatscottlab (:
Taking a weight from datasheet - It is actually 200Wh/kg, that is awesome even comparing with LiIon technology!
It is really they have no reaction on puncture. Where the energy than goes? Would be nice to try testing the punctured one for the remaining charge.
I would classify components after their mathematical behavior in circuits. So that formulas that could have been derived for "interesting" frequencies remain valid. Aside of that I see the application potentials for this component very well, especially given its mechanical safety. If I had money I would buy a bunch to try some things.
To determine whether the claim that a 21,000 Farad (F) supercapacitor with a voltage of 4.2V and an energy storage of 75Wh is real or a hoax, we need to perform some calculations based on the given specifications.
The energy stored in a capacitor can be calculated using the formula:
𝐸
=
1
2
𝐶
𝑉
2
E=
2
1
CV
2
where:
𝐸
E is the energy in joules (J),
𝐶
C is the capacitance in farads (F),
𝑉
V is the voltage in volts (V).
First, let's calculate the energy in joules and then convert it to watt-hours (Wh).
Calculating the energy in joules:
𝐸
=
1
2
×
21
,
000
F
×
(
4.2
V
)
2
E=
2
1
×21,000F×(4.2V)
2
Converting joules to watt-hours:
1
Wh
=
3600
J
1Wh=3600J
Let's do the calculations.
The energy stored in a 21,000 Farad supercapacitor at 4.2 volts is:
185,220 joules (J)
51.45 watt-hours (Wh)
This is significantly lower than the claimed 75 Wh. Given this discrepancy, the claim that this supercapacitor can store 75 Wh of energy appears to be inaccurate or exaggerated. Therefore, it is likely that the 75 Wh storage specification is either a mistake or a hoax.
Thanks for trying to keep them honest!