SBIR Phase I: The Development of Higher Voltage, Longer Life and Lower Cost Activated Carbon Materials for Supercapacitors

这项小型企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目旨在解决双电层电容器（edlc）的电压、能量密度和寿命有限的问题。这些问题在很大程度上导致edlc未能成为储能领域的重要组成部分。多年来，许多不同的努力都集中在开发用于edlc的新型碳材料上，包括那些专注于碳纳米管、碳化物衍生碳和石墨烯等稀有和昂贵的材料。到目前为止，这些材料都没有成功地达到15年前商用碳材料的能量密度、寿命或电压范围。该项目将试图证明这与碳表面的官能团有关，当在EDLC中组装并带电时，这些官能团具有氧化还原活性，可以在电解质中形成水。该研究的目标是通过对活性炭的精确控制热处理，消除这些物质和其他表面官能团，同时保持高电容所需的极高表面积。这将导致当前EDLC产品的电压，能量密度和寿命的急剧增加。该项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力将涉及将超级电容器的价值大幅扩展到各种应用并增强其社会影响。超级电容器未能满足市场增长的预期，主要是由于高成本、过早失效、低电压（匹配锂离子电池电压需要两个设备串联）和低能量密度，并且在过去十年中技术进步很小。我们的技术将提高能量密度、寿命和电压，使其能够在目前仅限于电池的应用中得到更广泛的应用。额外的社会影响和直接相关的商业优势将源于这样一个事实，即这项技术可以消除对稀有和昂贵的碳生产前体的需求，从而首次允许使用廉价的水过滤碳。更低的成本和更高的性能将扩大EDLC在混合动力汽车、公共汽车、风力涡轮机间距控制和电网存储等应用中的应用，所有这些都具有巨大的社会影响，成本是EDLC制造商进入的主要障碍。

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I Project seeks to solve the problems of limited voltage, energy density, and lifetime in Electric Double Layer Capacitors (EDLCs). These issues have largely lead to the failure of EDLCs to become a significant part of the energy storage landscape. Over the years, many different efforts have focused on developing new carbon materials for EDLCs, including those focused on exotic and expensive materials such as carbon nanotubes, carbide derived carbons and Graphene. None of these have so far succeeded at matching the energy density, lifetime, or voltage range of 15 year old commercial carbon materials. This project will attempt to prove that this is related to functional groups on the carbon surface that, when assembled in an EDLC and charged, are REDOX active to form water in the electrolyte. The objective of the research will be to eliminate these species and other surface functional groups, while maintaining the exceptionally high surface area necessary for high capacitance, through precisely controlled thermal treatment of activated carbon. This will result in dramatic increases in the voltage, energy density, and life of current EDLC products. The broader impact/commercial potential of this project will involve dramatically expanding the value of ultracapacitors to various applications and enhancing their societal impact. Supercapacitors have failed to meet expectations for market growth largely due to high cost, premature failure, low voltage (matching Li-ion battery voltages requires two devices in series) and low energy density, and have seen minimal technical progress over the last decade. Our technology would increase the energy density, lifetime and voltage to levels that would enable much more widespread adoption in applications currently restricted to batteries alone. Additional societal impact, and directly related commercial advantage, would stem from the fact that this technology could eliminate the requirement for exotic and expensive precursors for carbon production, allowing, for the first time, the use of inexpensive water filtration carbons. The combined lower cost and improved performance would expand EDLCs use in applications like hybrid cars, buses, wind turbine pitch control and grid storage, all of which have tremendous societal impact and where cost is the primary barrier to entry for EDLC manufacturers.