Charge2C-NewCap

Charge2C-NewCap (C2C) is a company based in Lisbon, Portugal, and is devoted to the development of SCs. C2C-NewCap is a registered trade mark of Charge2C-NewCap. This company is a spin-off from (2014) from Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) – University of Lisbon, and also involving collaboration with researchers from Instituto Superior de Engenharia de Lisboa (ISEL) and the Instituto Politécnico de Setúbal (IPS). The short-term goal of C2C is to bring to the market its first product called Go-Start, which consist in a series of 3 Nickel Carbon supercapacitor modules (Two 12 V versions and one 24 V) capable to replace lead-acid batteries in power applications in engine starting application. To achieve this goal C2C has been raising the TRL level of its proprietary technology, from TRL3 to TRL8 (status quo C2C supercapacitor product and not the HyFlow developments). The pre-release version of the product is now under testing and several pilots have been performed in Europe, USA and Asia. C2C shareholders includes its two executive managers (CO-CEOs) André Mão de Ferro and Rui Silva, working full-time in the company since March 2016, four researchers from IST, ISEL and IPS and two investors Caixa Capital (Portuguese VC group) and InnoEnergy (supported by EIT). The project HyFlow offers the possibility to investigate new materials and components and to further enhance the existing C2C supercapacitor to be hybritized with a redox flow battery.

C2C has a multi-disciplinary team of 8 person staff (5 engineers, 3 post doc researchers), with background profiles in environmental, materials, corrosion and energy storage engineering, intellectual property and fundamental research in energy storage materials and corrosion. In the last year C2C was able to capture talent in high tech areas of expertise (nationalities include India, USA, Belarus, Spain and Portugal). Today’s team includes initial members and is now working in developing two main projects: TRL6 small-scale supercapacitor cells with graphene based electrodes for high frequency applications (dozens of farad range), and in TRL8 real-scale prototypes for engine starting applications (hundreds of Farad range) which are coupled with batteries (lead-acid or Li-ion) with similar voltage output. C2C areas of expertise include the designing of cells, process engineering, manufacturing strategies of different sized cells aimed for different applications and demoing to potential customers energy storage systems composed of a supercapacitor module and a battery for high power applications. C2C members with expertise in these areas will be directly involved in this project and will participate in this new challenging of having a supercapacitor being coupled with redox flow batteries.