Maxwell Technologies to boost its BOOSTCAP Ultracapacitor Product Family

BOOSTCAP ultracapacitors are said to deliver up to 10 times the power and longevity of batteries, require no maintenance and operate reliably in extreme temperatures. In transportation applications, they efficiently recapture energy from braking for reuse in hybrid drive trains, reducing fuel consumption and emissions.

They also provide compact, lightweight, “life-of-the vehicle” solutions to stabilize automotive power networks and power new, all-electric subsystems, such as drive-by-wire steering. In mission critical industrial applications, where backup power is critical for continued operation or a soft shutdown in the event of power interruptions, they provide reliable, cost-effective, maintenance-free energy storage.

In wind turbine blade pitch and braking systems and other industrial applications, they provide a simple, solid state, highly reliable, solution to buffer short-term mismatches between the power available and the power required.

Michael Everett, Maxwell’s VP and Chief technical officer, said that the company is leveraging its versatile cell architecture and electrode technology to expand its MC and BC ultracapacitor product families with multiple new cell sizes ranging in capacitance from 140 to 3,000 farads, each available in both Power and Energy cell types and in corresponding fully-integrated multi-cell modules. He said that all of the cells with a capacitance of 500 farads or greater operate at 2.7 volts, enabling them to store more energy and deliver more power per unit volume than any other commercially available ultracapacitor products.

Everett noted that the expanded MC and BC families will offer cells and modules specifically engineered to provide more economical Energy versions for light duty industrial, UPS, telecommunications and consumer electronics applications, and Power versions for hybrid vehicle drive trains, automotive subsystems and other applications that require the lowest equivalent series resistance (ESR) and highest efficiency available with current ultracapacitor technology.