Electricity is the power source of the future and the future is today.
Electricity has a problem, though. It can not be stored easily. While batteries do the job of ‘carrying’ electricity, the hurdle is that they need to be charged for long hours. Enter the Capacitors. Now, these can charge quickly but what they store is only small amounts of power. So, with power hungry devices, electric equipments and electric vehicles around, capacitors may not be the best choice. We will then need the super-capacitors!
Before moving to super-capacitors, let’s look at capacitor a lit bit more. Capacitors use electrostatic electricity to store energy and consist of two metal plates with dielectric (an insulating material) between them. The two plates gain positive and negative charge each and the dielectric stores the energy. Capacitors weigh less than batteries and can be charged multiple times. However, capacitors have low energy storage capacity as pointed out earlier as well. Bigger dielectric or bigger plates can help increase the storage, however the increase has to be really huge to make a difference to the capacity.
What capacitors do not do, super-capacitors do. They hold more charge/energy. The plates of a super-capacitor are larger and the gap in-between is much narrower. The plates of a super-capacitor are made of metal with a coating of activated charcoal giving it a larger area for storing energy. Also, in super-capacitors there is no dielectric. As a substitute, the plates are electrolyte-soaked and have a very very thin insulator of carbon, paper, or plastic in-between. The higher storage capabilities of the super-capacitors come from larger plates and lesser gap between the plates.
We will dig deeper into these concepts in a our blogs. Please do watch this space.
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