NASA engineers came up with a new way to cool the International Space Station. This method has now been adapted for use in electric cars, which will drastically cut the amount of time it takes to charge the batteries of these cars.
The sophisticated heat transfer system was designed to regulate temperatures in outer space, but a group of scientists just found it might be used here on Earth as well.
Due to the heat that comes from charging strong lithium-ion batteries, electric car chargers are limited to about 30 amps at home and up to 350 amps at “fast charging” stations.
Because of this, the time it takes to charge a battery may range anywhere from twenty minutes to several hours, which is much longer than the amount of time it takes to refuel a gas-powered vehicle.
This new method, which has been given the name “subcooled flow boiling,” is capable of generating 4.6 times the current of the fastest electric vehicle chargers now available on the market. This would make it possible to charge an electric car in less than five minutes.
The technology was used by a group from Purdue University in the United States, which was financed by NASA’s Biological and Physical Sciences Division, to build a Flow Boiling and Condensation Experiment (FBCE), which is designed to safely cool cables that carry high charges.
“This technology may make owning an electric-powered car here on Earth easier and more feasible,” Nasa noted in a blog post.
“Application of this new technology resulted in an unprecedented reduction of the time required to charge a vehicle and may remove one of the key barriers to worldwide adoption of electric vehicles.”
For the purpose of carrying on with the development of the technology, Purdue University is currently looking for more industrial partners.
