Recharge your EV in under a minute?

It could be possible.

Taken from here. http://green.autoblog.com/2012/08/23/ultimate-fast-charging-tech-could-refill-li-ion-battery-in-a-min/

If you're planning on investing in a DC fast charger to get your electric vehicle battery 80 percent juiced up in 30 minutes, you might want to stick with your Level 2 charger for a while longer. Korean scientists at the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) have developed a lithium ion battery that can be recharged 30 to 120 times (!) faster than li-ion batteries on the market today. What's your guestimate on how long a li-ion battery using that technology would take to recharge? How about this one: less than a minute!

These ultra-fast charging batteries aren't expected to be cheap, which is a problem since the li-ion battery packs currently used in EVs are already too expensive for most car shoppers. The research paper that describes the technology, "Carbon-Coated Single-Crystal LiMn2O4 Nanoparticle Clusters as Cathode Material for High-Energy and High-Power Lithium-Ion Batteries," sounds much too PhD-level and dry for anyone to read, but they show the technology moving forward. As cool as it is, if this innovation takes hold, many consumers will continue to look for EVs that carry this type of battery and have competitive market pricing. Don't expect to see that anytime soon.

Something like this just might make EC viable for the rest of us.

"Hello, UNIST? This is Boeing Aircraft calling. We need some of your fast charging Li-ion batteries ASAP. How soon could we get them? Yes, we will pay cash."

They sound more like capacitors than batteries. Neat stuff.

I wonder how hot they get when charging.

I've been reading some posts on the Locosts UK forum about the lithium batteries burning up during charge. They act like it's a well known fact and very common.

There are a variety of different Lithium batteries - some chemistries do indeed have a self-destructive tendency, but others are much, MUCH more stable.

A lot of the new batteries do have some fire issues. I think is takes a smart charger to keep them from burning up. That isn't anything that technology can't solve.

Boeing supposedly did 1.3 million hours of testing on the batteries they are having problems with and found no faults. Unfortunately the real world is a little different than a lab. They'll figure it out and solve the problem and technology will take another step forward.

Having a battery that can be charged as fast as you can fill a gas tank will do wonders for the viability of electric vehicles. They'll be stupid expensive for a while yet, but prices will come down as supply goes up.

Li-polys (the type used in recent RC aircraft) are much more dangerous than li-ions (the type used in laptops and most cell phones). In fact the RC guys insist that li-polys should be charged in a bucket of sand for safety. AFAIK there are no production EVs that use li-polys but there are a few DIY li-poly EVs out there (like that electric S2k).

To make a battery charge faster you need an improvement in charging efficiency to keep the battery temp down, or possibly some active cooling during charging. Most of the latest EVs can do an 80% quick charge in half an hour.

Toyman01 wrote: ... Boeing supposedly did 1.3 million hours of testing on the batteries they are having problems with and found no faults. Unfortunately the real world is a little different than a lab. They'll figure it out and solve the problem and technology will take another step forward. ...

This.

Interesting that the faults are clustering around 1 year of in flight service. With only about 50 787's in service, how many of the problematic batteries are from the same manufacturing lot?

Basing your reliability and in service testing on prototype batteries, and hoping that they are representative of real world production devices is a bit 'pollyanne-ish' IMHO

The combination of real-world thermal, pressure, load/charge, and vibration cycles have likely differed from what the testing program used.

But I would still fly a 787 in a heartbeat.

Carter

The question is: where would you get that kind of current availability? For example, the Chevy Volt has a 16.5 Kwh battery. That means it can deliver 16,500 watts for an hour. If you wanted to charge that battery in one minute that would mean providing almost a megawatt of power for that minute. At 220v that's 4,500 amps.

Can someone sanity check my calculations there? I feel like it's impossible that the power and current would be that high.

dculberson, you're dead on. You are still trying to fill a pool with a hose. Even if a battery had the ability to be charged quickly you still dont have enough current capacity in homes, gas stations, etc to accomplish this feat.

What we need is a flux capacitor

I've got some mostly empty beer cans and a few banana peels....

That was exactly my thinking. Recharge capacity would be outstripping transfer capacity. Recharge stations would have to have an attached power plant.

Now, on the OTHER hand, you could use regenerative braking a lot more - you wouldn't be bumping into any current transfer issues. Assuming of course that this is currently (sorry) a problem.

Knurled wrote: That was exactly my thinking. Recharge capacity would be outstripping transfer capacity. Recharge stations would have to have an attached power plant. Now, on the OTHER hand, you could use regenerative braking a lot more - you wouldn't be bumping into any current transfer issues. Assuming of course that this is currently (sorry) a problem.

Hah!, got a 'charge' out of that.

dculberson wrote: The question is: where would you get that kind of current availability? For example, the Chevy Volt has a 16.5 Kwh battery. That means it can deliver 16,500 watts for an hour. If you wanted to charge that battery in one minute that would mean providing almost a megawatt of power for that minute. At 220v that's 4,500 amps. Can someone sanity check my calculations there? I feel like it's impossible that the power and current would be that high.

Which is why, short of swapping batteries like propane cylinders, EVs will never fly.

Here's a photo of the charging connector

jg

I read about this a while back. Really intresting stuff.

What voltage do the batteries output(and I presume also charge) at? If you look at electric forklifts as an example, when the battery voltage is lower than the AC supply you can use transformers to step-down voltage - which also has the benefit of stepping up curent proportionately.

Yes, you would need more than 220ac single-phase, and the conductors to plug it in would be quite large; but current travels along the outer layer of a conductor, therefore they can be hollow, and that hollow space can have coolant circulated through it, which will allow even more current for a given diameter of conductor.

We're not there yet, but I think we will be in the near future.

Why is everyone thinking so 1900s, wireless recharging, just have to wear a lead lined suit while you fill up

petegossett wrote: What voltage do the batteries output(and I presume also charge) at? If you look at electric forklifts as an example, when the battery voltage is lower than the AC supply you can use transformers to step-down voltage - which also has the benefit of stepping up curent proportionately.

Stepping up the voltage would step down the current, but you would still need to move a megawatt of power for a minute and entire neighborhoods don't have power feeds like that.

Kenny_McCormic wrote: Which is why, short of swapping batteries like propane cylinders, EVs will never fly.

These are in beta-test in a few locations globally....of course the manufacturers have to do some standardization.

http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/31/israel-gets-its-first-ev-battery-swap-station-makes-charging-st/

Knurled wrote: That was exactly my thinking. Recharge capacity would be outstripping transfer capacity. Recharge stations would have to have an attached power plant. Now, on the OTHER hand, you could use regenerative braking a lot more - you wouldn't be bumping into any current transfer issues. Assuming of course that this is currently (sorry) a problem.

this makes sense.. you could still do a "slow" charge overnight from the charging station at your house that runs off peak while you sleep, and use more regenerative braking to fill it back up... you could probably keep the batteries pretty much topped off at all times if you drive nice and don't crank the stereo and heater..

dculberson wrote:

petegossett wrote: What voltage do the batteries output(and I presume also charge) at? If you look at electric forklifts as an example, when the battery voltage is lower than the AC supply you can use transformers to step-down voltage - which also has the benefit of stepping up curent proportionately.

Stepping up the voltage would step down the current, but you would still need to move a megawatt of power for a minute and entire neighborhoods don't have power feeds like that.

I didn't check your exact math, but yes, you are right. Regardless of how fast the battery can deal with being charged, it is always going to take some combination of amps x volts. At some point, this will get prohibitively dangerous, even if you have a 1 ft diameter cord to carry that kind of current and some sort of a super station to transfer it without browning out the whole county while you fill up.

JG Pasterjak wrote: Here's a photo of the charging connector jg

"Hey...uh buddy...make sure you're wearing this while you charge that thing."