As fast as refueling! They create a cable capable of recharging an electric vehicle in less than five minutes

By : Dr. Franyi Sarmiento, Ph.D., Inspenet, March 23, 2022

Reducing recharging times is a goal of the automotive industry, which is why companies create faster chargers, while others design with greater capacity. But these engineers found another possibility.

Researchers at Purdue University in the US have invented a charging cable that promises to charge the battery of some electric vehicles in less than five minutes. Practically, such a recharge would be as fast as refueling.

Professor Issam Mudawar and his team of students have made it possible thanks to a simple principle: temperature. And it is that the passage of electrical current in the recharging operation generates heat that accumulates in the charger, the cable and the vehicle battery.

This heat increases in direct proportion to voltage, so higher current loads (faster ones) generate even more heat. Due to this, chargers and some batteries incorporate dissipation systems that allow this heat to be kept under control at the cost of longer charging times.

What Purdue University proposes is to extend this dissipation to the cable as well. Said cable is covered by a flexible chamber that contains a liquid refrigerant, which stores heat and removes it from the current, allowing it to circulate much faster.

According to the researchers, the prototype of this refrigeration currently manages to evacuate up to 24.2 kW of heat energy, which allows a car to be recharged almost five times faster than the most powerful chargers on the market. Making it possible to recharge in less than five minutes.

The project already has the support and technical assistance of Ford, in addition to collaboration in the patent procedures. When it hits the market, it will surpass the technologies of Tesla’s Supercharger V3 or Porsche’s Turbo Charging, which recharge their respective models in half an hour.

Source and photo : https://www.motorpasion.com/futuro-movimiento/cable-capaz-recargar-coche-electrico-cinco-minutos-promesa-este-nuevo-hallazgo-cientifico – https://stories.purdue. edu/electric-vehicles-could-fully-recharge-in-under-5-minutes-with-new-charging-station-cable-design/