New Industry Products

JM Energy Introducing Lithium Ion Capacitors

July 29, 2008 by Jeff Shepard

JM Energy, founded as a subsidiary of JSR Corp. in August, 2007, announced that it is working on the development, manufacturing and sales of a lithium ion capacitor (LIC) by utilizing ultrafine coating technology and the new material development capacity of JSR Corp..

A capacitor is a type of electricity storage device. It is different from an accumulator or battery, which store electricity by chemical reaction, because it can charge and discharge instantaneously. Capacitors also have an extremely long repeat-life. According to JM Energy, based on these characteristics, capacitors have reached market and industry requirements for efficiency and the applications for LICs are rapidly expanding into automobiles, power supplies, solar and wind generators, industrial machinery, office equipment and more.

The company states that its lithium ion capacitor has about four times higher energy density than a conventional electric double-layer capacitor and has a voltage of 3.8V, which is said to be much higher than the 2.5V of conventional electric double-layer capacitors. This is said to make higher energy storage and a more compact design possible, as well as dramatically increasing the capacitor’s economic efficiency as a storage device.

Although lithium ion is used in the lithium ion capacitor, the company states that it has been confirmed by safety tests that runaway heat reactions do not occur because the electrode and electrolyte do not react significantly in the LIC.

The company states that, in the past, it has been difficult to make efficient and instant use of large amounts of stored energy using a conventional storage device, which resulted in wasted energy. JM Energy claims that its LIC makes it possible to effectively and efficiently use this stored energy.

The company has commenced business activity with LIC manufacturing at its pilot plant at the Akishima-city office (Production capacity: 10K cells/year). It is now in the process of constructing its Yamanashi HQ plant in Hokutocity, Yamanashi-prefecture, with construction scheduled for completion in October 2008.

The LICs have an energy density of 21-25 Wh/l, a self-discharge of less than 5% after 3 months, and less than a 10% drop in capacity from initial after 100,000 cycles. They currently come in two series based on capacitance, one at 1100F and one at 2200F. Target applications include industrial, consumer, transportation, automotive, and renewable energy.