New NASA technology could cut EV charging time to just five minutes

Many satellites are now being used to better understand climate change, and a new experimental technology from the US space agency NASA, which has been developed to cool orpem in space, could drastically reduce the charging time of electric vehicles to just five minutes or even less. .

It’s a technique called subcooled flow boiling that improves heat transfer from charging cables, which could dramatically increase the amount of electricity chargers can deliver to vehicles today. This would actually reduce the charging time of electric vehicle batteries and even allow charging from 0 to 100 percent capacity in just five minutes or less.

NASA claims that about 1,400 amps of current should be enough to charge the battery of an average electric car in five minutes. The agency says advanced chargers deliver up to 520 amps and standard chargers less than 150 amps.

The problem with over 520 amps is that the charger will start to generate significantly more heat, making it dangerous for users.

However, NASA has tested technology that can safely cool cables carrying high voltage, a team from Purdue University conducted the Flow Boiling and Condensation Experiment (FBCE) in which two-phase fluid flow and heat transfer experiments were performed in a long-term microgravity environment at The International Space Station. Essentially, liquid-cooled cables were used to test the method. The liquid used to cool the hot cables was in a cooled state, ie. well below the boiling point.

Using FBCE technology, the team achieved 2,400 amperes along the length of the cable using subcooled flow boiling. In the experiment, coolant was pumped through the charging cable where it absorbed the heat generated by the current-carrying conductor.

It should be noted that while this is far more than the 1,400 amps needed to charge a car in five minutes, it is still a controlled laboratory experiment and not the same as a test in a real car in real-world conditions.

However, NASA points out that the new system could be used to deliver 4.6 times more electricity than the fastest available EV chargers by removing 24.22 kilowatts of heat. Therefore, the technology has the potential to solve a major problem in the EV adoption process, all thanks to the fact that it was originally designed and tested in space.