Reduce the battery charging time of our electric cars. Engineers have been working on it for some time now. Two teams are today presenting advances that could help bring electric mobility into another dimension. With batteries that charge the time of a full tank of gas.
Everyone knows it: the major drawback of the electric car for its user is the battery charging time. To overcome this difficulty, scientists and engineers are working hard. Today, two teams are presenting advances that could well revolutionize the electric mobility sector.
The first breakthrough could come from a team working to develop an innovative temperature-monitoring technique for future NASA missions. The modulus of Flow Boiling and CondensationCondensation Experiment (FBCE) began to be tested on board the international space stationinternational space station (ISS) a few months ago. It relies on the flow of a liquidliquid subcooled — understand, well below its boiling point — and on its phase changes to improve the transfer efficiency of heatheat.
Another alternative to gasoline would be to run your vehicle on cooking oil. But is it really a good idea? Decryption with Emma Hollen in the Vitamine Tech podcast. © Futura
What is the link with the batteries of our electric cars? The fact that during charging, the passage of current causes the temperature to rise. Especially since the current is intense and the charge is fast, imposing particularly heavy and difficult to maneuver cables on fast charging systems, to integrate a cooling liquidcooling liquid and large conductors supporting the temperature increase.
The engineers of the NasaNasa thus explain that, to hope to charge the battery of a car in only five minutes – the time of a full tank of gas -, it would take systems providing a current of 1,400 ampsamps. But these would generate much more heat even than the most efficient current systems which do not exceed 520 amps. Hence the usefulness of temperature control technology. The researchers tested the one intended for NASA missions and developed a charging cable capable of supplying 2,400 amps!
Temperature regulation at the heart of the problem
It is also to the question of temperature regulation that another team of researchers was interested. With the ambition, this time, to tackle the question… from the inside. Because conventional heating and cooling systems designed to maintain a constant temperature for optimal battery operation are external and cumbersome. They react slowly and waste a lot ofenergyenergy.
The researchers of the Penn State University (USA) therefore worked on a new battery structure. A structure which, in addition to theanodeanodefrom cathodecathode and electrolyte, incorporates a sheet of nickelnickel ultra thin. It is she who self-regulates the temperature and the responsiveness of the battery.
Not only can this new battery be charged to 70% in 11 minutes but, according to the researchers, the process would also make it possible to reduce the size of the batteries of our electric cars from 150 to 50 kWh without having to fear a loss of autonomy. What to limit, in passing, the use of materialsmaterials early reviews and drive down costs. This is quite enough to motivate the industrial partner of this work to work on the manufacture and rapid marketing of this new battery.
