Donut Lab Goes for All the Marbles

Dean Sigler Batteries, Electric Powerplants, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

We’re Back We’ll get to Donut Lab and its controversial announcements in the next segment, but first: Following several weeks of medical treatment for a gangrenous toe, angioplasty to open blood vessels in the leg, and doses of antibiotics, the threat to your editor’s foot seems diminished, and things seem to be tending slowly toward health and wellness.  All praise to modern medicine and caring physicians. Meanwhile, In Finland Facing more pain than your editor has experienced in the (moderate) throes of illness,  a battery maker making world-class claims contends with world-class skepticism. Donut Lab, a small Finnish company, claims to be accomplishing something few of its much larger competitors have not, coming out of relative obscurity with a full range of advanced electric and electronic products.  In January, at the latest Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada, they unveiled their latest breakthrough: solid-state batteries with 400 Watt-hour energy density per kilogram – double that of many competitors. …

HyPoint and Hydrogen Flight

Dean Sigler Batteries, Electric Powerplants, Fuel Cells, Hybrid Aircraft, Hydrogen Fuel, Sky Taxis, Sustainable Aviation 2 Comments

Their web site proclaims, “HyPoint, Inc. is developing the next generation hydrogen fuel cell system with zero CO2 emissions and game-changing energy performance for the air transportation and urban air mobility market.”  Pointing out a “fundamental barrier at a chemistry level” for lithium-ion batteries, the fuel cell maker launches some seemingly outrageous claims. HyPoint states, “Our patented technology increases operational time and utilization rate while decreasing TCO (total cost of operation) of any flying platform.”  They claim “5X operational time, 10X utilization rate, 20X faster charge,” and a TCO 90 percent of equivalent battery-powered systems. As we have reported here, demonstrated outputs for lithium-ion cells are around 350 Watt-hours per kilogram, and about 260 Whr/kg at the pack level.  HyPoint says it can already demonstrate a system-level specific power of 1,000 Watts per kilogram and an energy density of 530 kW-hr/kg.   The company points to its next generation of “turbo air-cooled” units to produce even more power and show better energy density. These improvements would make the …