A Prolonged Discharge Capacitive Energy Storage System

This SBIR Phase I project aims to develop a capacitive energy storage system for UPS applications. The challenge is taken in consideration of the dielectric materials, the design of the capacitor array, and the discharge regulation in the circuit. The innovation emphasizes the development of capacitors with nanostructured dielectrics, in which the discharge process is governed by distributed relaxation times resulting from extremely fine (nanoscale) grain size. With this technology, the discharge time of an individual capacitor can be easily increased over one order of magnitude. Furthermore, the properties of the dielectrics (dielectric constant, resistivity, Q factor, and breakown strength) and hense the volume efficiency and maximum working voltage of the capacitors will be synergistically enhanced with this technology. Another aspect of the innovation is the use of a novel varistor in the circuit to regulate the discharge process, in which the excessive power output of the initial discharge will be depressed, so that the discharge curve will be flatter and the discharge time will be even longer.