Arvio 3.5kWh drop-in-battery-replacement supercapacitor on sale

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Re: Arvio 3.5kWh drop-in-battery-replacement supercapacitor on sale

Post by Richo »

Here is more of the same about Kilowatt product.
http://www.greenimagineer.com/super-capacitor.html
So the short answer is NO but the long answer is YES.
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Re: Arvio 3.5kWh drop-in-battery-replacement supercapacitor on sale

Post by weber »

I just learned that even perfect graphene does not have any more surface area per gram than the best activated-carbon (made from pyrolised coconut shells) that has been used in supercapacitors for a decade or more.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphene#Properties

So the promise of graphene supercapacitors is not greater energy storage at all, it is higher power. i.e. getting the energy in and out faster.

Arvio has not been able to demonstrate charge times anywhere near those of existing activated-carbon supercapacitors, let alone the claimed 30 seconds of their claimed graphene supercapacitors.

This post I just made to the Whirlpool forum may also be of interest.
https://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-r ... &p=12#r228
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Re: Arvio 3.5kWh drop-in-battery-replacement supercapacitor on sale

Post by Supercaps »

Hi Everyone, here is a fast change video I made this morning.
https://youtu.be/RBsMo89WrWg
In order to charge faster than 4 minutes I think I need a cell with heavier terminals.
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Re: Arvio 3.5kWh drop-in-battery-replacement supercapacitor on sale

Post by weber »

Thanks Paul, for providing further evidence that this is not a supercapacitor, and that it is in fact a lithium titanate cell. Heavier terminals are not your problem. Not that we needed further evidence. That you can't see this, beggars belief.

I see the surface of the cell got up to 69 °C. What did its voltage settle back to, after it was rested for an hour or so?
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Re: Arvio 3.5kWh drop-in-battery-replacement supercapacitor on sale

Post by jonescg »

At least he called it a cell ;)
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Re: Arvio 3.5kWh drop-in-battery-replacement supercapacitor on sale

Post by coulomb »

Supercaps wrote: Mon, 09 Apr 2018, 07:52 In order to charge faster than 4 minutes I think I need a cell with heavier terminals.
But that just means that these cells, whatever they are, are not designed for 15C operation. There was a claim that the devices inside were capable of charging and discharging in 30 seconds, i.e. 120C.

In fact, the thermal image you show at the end tells the story very well. The cell is quite uniformly hot (67°C is quite hot). If as you claim it was mostly a problem with the leads, I'd expect a hotspot at the end where the leads are terminated, and the rest of the cell would be relatively cooler. That's clearly not what happened.
Arvio fast charge thermal.jpg
Arvio fast charge thermal.jpg (13.15 KiB) Viewed 5598 times

Towards the end of the test, you brought the voltage as shown on the meter down from 3.19 towards 3.0 V. Why was that? It just seems to be to shorten the test, so it fits inside 4 minutes, and to protect the cell from excessive heat. You later reduce the voltage a second time, to 2.7 V, and of course the current plummets and the test is over.

Finally, the shape of the current curve isn't right for a capacitor. The initial current should be quite high, limited mainly by the power source. Instead, it seems to be limited by the internal resistance, which is more battery-like than capacitor-like. After the current limit stops, we should see a sharp exponential decay. Perhaps a more gentle exponential decay if the super-capacitor has battery-like internal resistance. Instead, after an initial rapid drop of current (a few frames shows 52.7 A, then 39.4 A), the current drop is very gradual.

Edit: the bottom right graph is interesting, but I can't read the Y axis very well, and the X axis not at all. Could you tell us what it's saying, please?
Edit 2: added image.
Edit 3: 4C -> 15C and 120C.
Edit 4: More detail on the exponential decay.
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Re: Arvio 3.5kWh drop-in-battery-replacement supercapacitor on sale

Post by kastad »

Product verified by factory visit at Kilowattlabs. Both inside and outside verified. No stickers on internals.
Last edited by kastad on Sun, 15 Apr 2018, 00:11, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Arvio 3.5kWh drop-in-battery-replacement supercapacitor on sale

Post by digsys »

They posted internal pix of their "supercaps" on F/Book - https://www.facebook.com/kilowattlabs/p ... =3&theater
Odd that they copied these from a previous post they did on 26 Jan 2016, over 2 yrs earlier ! So many more questions :-)
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Re: Arvio 3.5kWh drop-in-battery-replacement supercapacitor on sale

Post by weber »

digsys wrote: Tue, 10 Apr 2018, 19:36 They posted internal pix of their "supercaps" on F/Book - https://www.facebook.com/kilowattlabs/p ... =3&theater
Odd that they copied these from a previous post they did on 26 Jan 2016, over 2 yrs earlier ! So many more questions :-)
I referred to those images back in this post. The devices in those images probably are 3000 F supercapacitors, but they are the size of soft-drink cans—more than 20 times the volume (and cost) of the finger-sized cells inside the Sirius module, that are claimed to be 3000 F supercaps but are really 1.3 Ah LTO batteries. So I suspect those images are just a clever bit of misdirection.
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Re: Arvio 3.5kWh drop-in-battery-replacement supercapacitor on sale

Post by weber »

kastad wrote: Tue, 10 Apr 2018, 16:26 They have told us that we may have a test version of the smallest capacitor and I am sure ready to open it.

Any tips on what we can do today to try to figure out if this is a scam or not? Physically opening it may be difficult today.
There's not much point in opening up one of the cells unless you intend to get it chemically analysed. The physical structure of a lithium ion capacitor is very similar to a lithium ion battery. Both can have anode (negative plate) material that is either graphite/hard-carbon or lithium titanate. So the anode material is not definitive. The electrolytes are also the same. The only necessary difference is in the chemistry of the cathode (positive plate) material. For a supercapacitor it will be mostly carbon, in a form that has high surface area, such as activated carbon or graphene. For a battery it will be mostly transition-metal oxides such as manganese oxide, cobalt oxide, nickel oxide or some combination of these. Unfortunately, both the carbon and the transition-metal oxides are just black to look at.

I suggest plotting voltage versus time for constant-current charge and discharge at 1.3 amps (1C) between 1.5 V and 2.8 V. Then its capacitance can be readily determined (by the volts per second between 1.5 V and 1.8 V), and the shape of the curve can be readily compared with published 1C curves for various battery types.
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Re: Arvio 3.5kWh drop-in-battery-replacement supercapacitor on sale

Post by digsys »

weber wrote: I referred to those images back in ..... So I suspect those images are just a clever bit of misdirection.
Missed that .. what confused me is that this seems to be a "new" post that popped up, as the Jan 2016 is still there, and both have Jan 2016 dates ???
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Re: Arvio 3.5kWh drop-in-battery-replacement supercapacitor on sale

Post by weber »

This graph (blue curve) is for the first constant voltage charge test that Paul posted—the one done at 2.72 V that took 15 minutes. Paul kindly provided graphs for all subsequent tests, but for this one I had to freeze-frame it and type the numbers into a spreadsheet. I've corrected for the zero offsets on both the ammeter (0.2 A) and the stopwatch (7.68 s).

The red curve is what we would expect if this was a 3000 F supercapacitor. As you can see, it's nothing like what we got. I've used the minimum ESR consistent with the fact that we never see the 90 amp power supply in current limit.

2.72vCvTest.png
2.72vCvTest.png (8.33 KiB) Viewed 5455 times
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Re: Arvio 3.5kWh drop-in-battery-replacement supercapacitor on sale

Post by weber »

Paul has kindly posted video of his presentation at the Smart Energy Conference and Exhibition in Sydney this week.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlwFkagsjd4

In addition to the usual false claims, we have a new "graphene supercapacitor" device that can be seen from 11:25. This is a pretty neat product. I wouldn't mind a few myself. But for some inexplicable reason ;) I was suspicious of the "supercapacitor" claim, and googled "LTO USB charge AA battery" WOTQ.

And look what came up in the image search! I have added the yellow ellipse to highlight the text "Lto".

USB AA LTO.png
USB AA LTO.png (627.15 KiB) Viewed 5330 times

From: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/10000-C ... 53855.html

"But", I hear you ask, "how can an LTO have a nominal voltage of 1.5 V?"

That had me worried at first, so I did some more digging. Remember I explained how, in an LTO battery, the lithium titanate replaces the carbon anode that we find in other types of lithium-ion battery. In doing so, the voltage is reduced by about 1.5 volts. It turns out, you can instead keep the carbon anode and have the lithium titanate replace the nickel/cobalt/manganese oxide cathode instead, and thereby get a 1.5 volt battery. It's like this:

-             + -             +
C <--1.5 V--> LTO <--2.4 V--> NMC
C <----------3.9 V----------> NMC

For more info see:
http://www.lithiumion-batterypack.com/l ... ttery.html
https://patents.google.com/patent/US20140079625

If you pause Paul's video at 11:49 and single-step with the comma and full-stop keys, you can see that all the text and symbols that are not hidden by the Kilowatt Labs sticker are exactly the same Chinglish as on the E&J brand LTO battery on the AliExpress page above.

So Paul, how about peeling that sticker off and showing us what it says underneath. In particular, just above where it says:

Warning: To reduce risks from fire or
burn,donot attempt to open,
disassemble or service the battery
pack.Do not apply any external 
forces,short with any external objects, 
or place in water or fire.Do not
expose the battery pack to temperature 
above 60°C(140 ° F).
Executive standard IEEE 1725-2006

                  MADE IN CHINA
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Re: Arvio 3.5kWh drop-in-battery-replacement supercapacitor on sale

Post by TCryptos »

Nice sleuthing there, @weber.

And (Oh, for goodness sake) you can actually see the 'h' on the end of '1000mAh' showing, as the sticker doesn't fully cover it.
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Re: Arvio 3.5kWh drop-in-battery-replacement supercapacitor on sale

Post by weber »

TCryptos wrote: Sat, 14 Apr 2018, 07:56 Nice sleuthing there, @weber.

And (Oh, for goodness sake) you can actually see the 'h' on the end of '1000mAh' showing, as the sticker doesn't fully cover it.
Thanks @TCryptos. You can indeed see the "h".

So Paul (@Supercaps), assuming you didn't put that Kilowatt Labs sticker there yourself, surely when you lift the sticker and see that "Lto" is printed there, and the word "capacitor" is nowhere to be found, it should at least give you pause to think that maybe Kilowatt Labs aren't being entirely straight with you. But I suppose they will easily come up with some explanation that will be good enough for you. "There is no god but Supercapacitah and Paul Wilson is his profit[sic]." :-)
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Re: Arvio 3.5kWh drop-in-battery-replacement supercapacitor on sale

Post by whysomean »

Found this online which describes non aqueous, hybrid supercapacitor (C-LTO) cells using an AC cathode from 2012.
Sounds exactly like what @supercaps has been describing and the paper is 6 years old. I'm sure they would have developed to a lot further by now.
We describe in this work the synthesis and the characterization of homogeneous, carbon-coated lithium
titanium oxide micro spheres and demonstrate their use for the fabrication of an active negative electrode
combined with a high surface area, activated carbon positive electrode to form an advanced non
aqueous, hybrid supercapacitor
. We show that this activated carbon/carbon coated-Li4Ti5O12 device
retains 95% of its initial capacity after 1000 cycles with a maximum volumetric energy and power density
of 57 Wh L-1 and 2600 W L-1, respectively. Due to this unique performance, the hybrid supercapacitor
developed in this work is expected to be a very promising energy storage device suitable for applications
that require high energy levels and fast charge and discharge cycles, such as those requested in the
EV sector.
http://escml.hanyang.ac.kr/eveboard/dow ... oc_num=338

And what do you know, they even use the word supercapacitor :o
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Post by weber »

whysomean wrote: Sun, 15 Apr 2018, 08:00 Found this online which describes non aqueous, hybrid supercapacitor (C-LTO) cells using an AC cathode from 2012.
Sounds exactly like what @supercaps has been describing ...
That's simply false. They sound nothing like what Supercaps has been describing. Paul has never once mentioned lithium titanium oxide (LTO), or activated carbon (AC). He has always insisted they use graphene. The word "graphene" doesn't even appear in the article you linked.
and the paper is 6 years old. I'm sure they would have developed to a lot further by now.
They sure would have had to develop a lot further, because that paper describes a device with only one third of the required energy density and a life of only a few thousand cycles (somewhat short of the claimed million).
And what do you know, they even use the word supercapacitor :o
I don't understand why you are surprised that an article about supercapacitors would use the word "supercapacitor".

But this, and all similar articles, are irrelevant. It doesn't matter how plausible it might be that supercapacitors (or hybrids) could exist now with the claimed properties (and it is not at all plausible). Paul has shown quite clearly that his devices are not them. His devices cannot be supercapacitors of any kind (or even supercap/battery hybrids) because the steepness of the voltage/time curve between zero volts and about 1.8 volts, shows that their capacitance is less than one farad—nothing like the claimed 3000 F. They display nothing but battery-like behaviour—in fact exactly that behaviour expected of an LTO battery.
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Re: Arvio 3.5kWh drop-in-battery-replacement supercapacitor on sale

Post by whysomean »

As @supercaps said in the 21st post in this thread, there is indeed a lithium based electrode.
Re: Arvio 3.5kWh drop-in-battery-replacement supercapacitor on sale
Post by Supercaps » Sat, 10 Mar 2018, 19:43

Hi. There are no lithium ion cells in the modules. There is a lithium electrode in the graphene super capacitors. There are no electrochemical reactions in the unit. What makes you think. Capacitor would need a lithium ion cell in it?
And while that article doesn't directly say it. This one does. :oops:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.10 ... 013-0334-6
There is a growing demand for hybrid supercapacitor systems to overcome the energy density limitation of existing-generation electric double layer capacitors (EDLCs), leading to next generation-II supercapacitors with minimum sacrifice in power density and cycle life. Here, an advanced graphene-based hybrid system, consisting of a graphene-inserted Li4Ti5O12 (LTO) composite anode (G-LTO) and a three-dimensional porous graphene-sucrose cathode, has been fabricated for the purpose of combining both the benefits of Li-ion batteries (energy source) and supercapacitors (power source). Graphene-based materials play a vital role in both electrodes in respect of the high performance of the hybrid supercapacitor. For example, compared with the theoretical capacity of 175 mA·h·g−1 for pure LTO, the G-LTO nanocomposite delivered excellent reversible capacities of 207, 190, and 176 mA·h·g−1 at rates of 0.3, 0.5, and 1 C, respectively, in the potential range 1.0–2.5 V vs. Li/Li+; these are among the highest values for LTO-based nanocomposites at the same rates and potential range. Based on this, an optimized hybrid supercapacitor was fabricated following the standard industry procedure; this displayed an ultrahigh energy density of 95 Wh·kg−1 at a rate of 0.4 C (2.5 h) over a wide voltage range (0–3 V), and still retained an energy density of 32 Wh·kg−1 at a high rate of up to 100 C, equivalent to a full discharge in 36 s, which is exceptionally fast for hybrid supercapacitors. The excellent performance of this Li-ion hybrid supercapacitor indicates that graphene-based materials may indeed play a significant role in next-generation supercapacitors with excellent electrochemical performance.
And this one.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf ... .201300186
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Re: Arvio 3.5kWh drop-in-battery-replacement supercapacitor on sale

Post by whysomean »

But this, and all similar articles, are irrelevant
Why....because they contradict your opinions and interests?
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Re: Arvio 3.5kWh drop-in-battery-replacement supercapacitor on sale

Post by jonescg »

So there's a mountain of evidence to suggest the Kilowattlabs product is in fact a lithium titanate battery, and not a capacitor (super or otherwise) and yet you maintain that it's perfectly okay to call it a supercapacitor?

I might hop on my hoverboard* and ride to the shops.

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Re: Arvio 3.5kWh drop-in-battery-replacement supercapacitor on sale

Post by weber »

whysomean wrote: Sun, 15 Apr 2018, 10:12 As @supercaps said in the 21st post in this thread, there is indeed a lithium based electrode.
Show me where he said "lithium based electrode" as opposed to "lithium electrode" as you quoted above. And he quickly changed it to "lithium-ion electrode" when I pointed out how dangerous lithium electrodes are.

There's a big question about what it could possibly mean to have an electrode made of lithium-ions, but we'll leave that to one side. In any case "lithium based" is a long way from "lithium titanium oxide".

I say again: Paul has never once mentioned [that his devices might contain] lithium titanium oxide (LTO), or activated carbon (AC).

I (and several others on this and other forums), have been claiming that his devices contain LTO (because they are LTO batteries). He has never once admitted they contain LTO.

So that's going to be the new story now, is it? Ready for when someone chemically analyses one and finds LTO inside? :roll:

That's the thing about scams. The story has to keep changing.
And while that article doesn't directly say it. This one does. :oops:
...
And this one.
So other research groups added a little graphene to the LTO and carbon. A far cry from Paul's claimed "acres" of graphene. And they still have nowhere near the required energy density. Don't forget that these papers give energy density in terms of the active materials only, not the complete cell—divide by 7.

I hope you noticed that the devices in these papers can do a complete discharge in 36 seconds and 20 seconds respectively. Paul's devices can't even do it in 240 seconds without overheating.

And the devices in these papers are only in labs, not in production. Have you looked at the price of graphene? Sure it has been coming down, but it's nowhere near the required price yet.

I note that Samsung have added some "graphene balls" to lithium-ion batteries to increase their charge rate. But these are pure batteries, not supercapacitors or hybrids.

But, as I say, this is all irrelevant, because Paul is still claiming his devices are supercaps (or hybrids) when he has clearly demonstrated that they have no capacitance to speak of. 99.9% of their energy storage is in the battery-like region of their voltage/charge curve, just like any other battery.
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Re: Arvio 3.5kWh drop-in-battery-replacement supercapacitor on sale

Post by weber »

whysomean wrote: Sun, 15 Apr 2018, 10:44
But this, and all similar articles, are irrelevant
Why....because they contradict your opinions and interests?
Wow. Are you 15 years old? You edit off the rest of the paragraph that explains exactly why they are irrelevant, which has nothing to do with my opinions or interests, and then you write that?

Up until now I have done my best to treat you as if you were arguing in good faith. Although I admit it was difficult. :)

Since you raised the subject of vested interests. I have reason to suspect you may be a certain young internet software developer who has in the past been paid by Arvio.

I'm not hiding behind anonymity. My true identity is there for all to see. I have a real-world reputation to keep or lose. Here's my personal website http://dkeenan.com (yeah the photo's a bit out of date :D ).
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Re: Arvio 3.5kWh drop-in-battery-replacement supercapacitor on sale

Post by whysomean »

What would a hybrid super capacitor graph look like then?

Could there be more than one type of curve that they could produce?
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Post by reecho »

Didn't think I would see sockpuppeting on the AEVA forum...

But there you go then...
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Re: Arvio 3.5kWh drop-in-battery-replacement supercapacitor on sale

Post by E-STATION »

LTO Car being developed by Hirman Motors in India: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYONsB8r_vs

https://auto.economictimes.indiatimes.c ... y/62618710

Claimed 200 km range. Charge in 10 minutes on DC apparently.
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