ULTRACAPACITORS FOR BETTER BATTERY PERFORMANCE

Portability in devices is ever increasing as the technology nowadays is moving
forward to be in line with human lifestyles which prefer multitasking in daily
routine. As the portable devices are consuming battery as a main source of
electricity, battery with long lasting performance is preferable. Battery contains
heavy metals such as mercury, lead, nickel, zinc and manganese which are
hazardous to enviroument and humankind. Battery with short runtime will need
for a frequent replacement which leads to more heavy metals waste. Eventually, a
new industrial revolution of nanotechnology has a great impact on the
development of ultracapacitor. Ultracapacitor has been an interest in electrical and
electronic field as its capability has an obvious improvement which can contribute
for further development of electrical devices. Therefore, The objective of this
project is to study the effects of ultracapacitor on the battery performance in terms
of its ability to sustain voltage of the battery over time and provide enough current
to the load for a longer time Throughout this project, the circuit of standalone
battery, battery in parallel with ultracapacitor and battery in series with
ultracapacitor are tested. Ultracapacitors used with the capacitance of 0.5F, l.OF,
1.5F and 2.0F give the different voltage and current at the load over time. The
results in this project will be a comparison of graph of voltage and current for
each circuit arrangement over the time. In conclusion, ultracapacitor with the
capacitance 0.5F connected in parallel with battery give the best improvement to
the battery performance. However, the larger capacitance value of ultracapacitor
is not a factor which will give a better performance of the battery