Under 5 minutes

[XCR1250]

Purdue University engineers develop a new method of charging electric vehicles

 

 

Noe Padilla, Lafayette Journal & Courier

Sun, November 14, 2021, 9:47 AM

 

 

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — The idea of an electric vehicle may be a neat concept, but may seem a bit impractical for those facing wait times as their vehicles charge.

Depending on the type of charging station an individual uses, charging times could range from 30 minutes at a Level 3 public charging station to hours at a home charging station.

Earlier this month, Purdue University announced that its engineers may have invented a solution to this specific problem, with their new, patent-pending charging station cable that could fully recharge certain electric vehicles in under five minutes. Although it should be noted that the prototype has yet to be tested on an EV as of Purdue’s announcement.

 

In collaboration with Ford Motor Co., Ford funded the research and development of the project.

“Ford is committed to making the transition to electrification easy,” said Matt Stover, director of charging, energy services and business development at Ford, in a release.

 

The new Ford Mustang Mach1 at the National Drive Electric Car Show in the Robinson Grove at Scissortail Park Saturday, September 4, 2021.

“We are glad to support Purdue’s research, which has the potential to make electric vehicle and commercial fleet ownership more appealing and accessible.”

How fast can it charge?

Issam Mudawar, a professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University, and his students, V.S. Devahdhanush and Seunghyun Lee, were able to create a prototype charging cable that was able to address one of the main hurdles to quick EV charging ­— overheating.

In essence, overheating occurs when there is too much energy being delivered through a cable. The more energy that’s being delivered, the hotter the cable gets, and if it gets too hot it could lead to some dangerous repercussions.

 

Purdue professor Issam Mudawar (center) and his students work on a new charging cable design that could reduce charging times for electric vehicles to under five minutes. (Purdue University photo/Jared Pike)

Now, overheating isn’t a new concept, EV charging stations and other types of electronics usually rely on liquid cooling systems to remove heat from within their wires. By removing the heat, allows stations to increase the current through a charging cable, but there’s only so much this method can do.

Mudawar and his students have tried to address this issue by using an alternative cooling method, liquid-to-vapor cooling.

“For the past 37 years, Mudawar has been developing ways to more efficiently cool electronics by taking advantage of how liquid captures heat when boiled into a vapor. By capturing heat in both liquid and vapor forms, a liquid-to-vapor cooling system can remove at least 10 times more heat than pure liquid cooling,” stated the press release.

Currently, most advanced chargers in the industry are able to deliver currents up to 520 amperes, which could charge an EV in 30 minutes, but most chargers available to consumers support currents of less than 150 amperes, which would take hours to charge an EV.

In a lab demonstration, Mudawar’s prototype was able to accommodate a current of over 2,400 amperes, which is far beyond the 1,400-ampere minimum that would be needed to reduce charging times for large commercial EVs to five minutes

“The industry doesn’t really need EVs to charge faster than five minutes, but we think we can increase the current even more by modifying both the state of the incoming liquid and the design of the cooling space around the conductor wires in the charging cable,” Mudawar said.

The prototype was not tested on an EV but, it mimic all the traits of a real-world charging station: It included a pump, a tube with the same diameter as an actual charging cable, the same controls and instrumentation and it had the same flow rates and temperatures, stated the press release.

Mudawar’s lab intends to work with EV or charging cable manufacturers to test the prototype on EVs within the next two years.

What's next?

For Mudawar, the resolution of this prototype came as no surprise, but despite decades of research on liquid-to-vapor cooling, no industry has begun using these systems yet. One of the main reasons for the lack of interest is due to a lack of studies that demonstrates the use and explore the use of this new technology.

“The industry has a gap in knowledge and expertise needed to switch from pure liquid cooling to liquid phase-change cooling. How do you design the system? What type of equations do you use to optimize it? But we do have this knowledge through our extensive research,” said Mudawar.

“Similar to the EV charging cable prototype, the systems that Mudawar’s lab has designed for aircraft allow avionics to dissipate great amounts of heat, increasing their performance. Mudawar also has projects funded by NASA to boost the cooling capabilities of rocket engines and spacecraft,” stated the press release.

Researchers have filed a patent application for their charging cable invention through the Purdue Research Foundation Office of Technology Commercialization and are seeking additional industry partners to continue the technology’s development.

Noe Padilla is a reporter for the Journal & Courier. Email him at Npadilla@jconline.com and follow him on Twitter at 1NoePadilla.

[Deephaven]

Was wondering when they would go this route.  Nearly 15 years ago I designed a controlled flow cooling mechanism using flourinert to douse computer processors and cool them to allow super computing.  Seemed like a logical transition.

[akvanden]

This is exactly the type of stuff that will make this mainstream. Quicker charging, cheaper and easier built batteries. Innovation is an amazing thing.

 

I don't get this though:

"Mudawar’s lab intends to work with EV or charging cable manufacturers to test the prototype on EVs within the next two years."

How about you just do it now? Get a team together, get Ford or someone with nearly unlimited funds, and just do it. 

[Mag6240]

Just now, akvanden said:

This is exactly the type of stuff that will make this mainstream. Quicker charging, cheaper and easier built batteries. Innovation is an amazing thing.

 

I don't get this though:

"Mudawar’s lab intends to work with EV or charging cable manufacturers to test the prototype on EVs within the next two years."

How about you just do it now? Get a team together, get Ford or someone with nearly unlimited funds, and just do it. 

100% agree - if they are going to keep limiting the amount of fuel they are allowing to travel across the country, get this shit going yesterday already.... Let's get the horse before the cart on this.

[F16 Toad]

Hmm.  I work in maintenance at the university power plant & haven't heard of this.  There's so much going on these days, at our universities, it's hard to keep track of.  I will say this...being a top engineering school you'd think that we'd{the power plant} be used a lot more for testing different fuels/technology.  (good ol EPA gets in the way of a lot of things}

 

[Ez ryder]

So how are they going to keep the battery's from trashing out from injecting that much juice in a short amount of time ? Going to have to have some sort of extreme cooling in the battery's or they won't last a yr 

[XCR1250]

3 minutes ago, Ez ryder said:

So how are they going to keep the battery's from trashing out from injecting that much juice in a short amount of time ? Going to have to have some sort of extreme cooling in the battery's or they won't last a yr 

“For the past 37 years, Mudawar has been developing ways to more efficiently cool electronics by taking advantage of how liquid captures heat when boiled into a vapor. By capturing heat in both liquid and vapor forms, a liquid-to-vapor cooling system can remove at least 10 times more heat than pure liquid cooling,” stated the press release.

[Ez ryder]

6 minutes ago, XCR1250 said:

“For the past 37 years, Mudawar has been developing ways to more efficiently cool electronics by taking advantage of how liquid captures heat when boiled into a vapor. By capturing heat in both liquid and vapor forms, a liquid-to-vapor cooling system can remove at least 10 times more heat than pure liquid cooling,” stated the press release.

This whole thing was about the charging cable . Unless I missed somthing .