Using of aqueous or organic supercapacitor technology in hybrid and electric vehicle?

For hybrid and electric vehicle, high powers are needed for the acceleration, startup and recovery phases. For that, the chosen storage system must insure these high powers. The supercapacitors are powerful storage systems, which can reach more than 4,3kW/kg of specific power, and very high lifetime compared to the other storage components. Until 1957 five generations of supercapacitors are developed by the researcher in the entire world. The deference between these generations depends to the materials used for the electrode and/or the type of electrolyte solution. The use of deferent materials influences directly the behavior of the technology in term of specific power, specific energy, maximum voltage, maximum current and the lifetime. Currently, the manufacturer uses in 90% of the cases the technology with carbon electrodes and acetonitrile like electrolyte. This technology has a high specific energy and good lifetime. On the other hand, this technology is toxic and cheaper compared to the other ones. The aqueous technology can give us the solution for this problem, because of the no-toxicity of the electrolyte and the very high power of this component. Unfortunately, this technology has low specific energy because of the voltage limitation (maximum 1V). This paper deals with the comparison between the two technologies of supercapacitors (carbon electrode + organic electrolyte and carbon electrode + aqueous electrolyte). The characterization and the variation of the ageing of the two technologies according to the number of cycles will be presented.