Today’s electric vehicles may have much lower carbon footprints than gasoline and diesel powered cars, but the two hours it can often take to charge a lithium ion battery can be a significant inconvenience. In an effort to reduce such charging times a group of South Korean scientists has reportedly developed a carbon battery capable of charging up to 120 times faster than standard batteries.
Currently the lithium-ion batteries in electric vehicles like the Ford Focus Electric and Honda Fit EV take hours to recharge, but according to a Yonhap report, the scientists in South Korea have discovered new technology that will cut the time down to a matter of minutes. Conventional batteries use only powdered nanoparticle materials to form a dense, multi-layered structure that can store and give off energy. The new battery still uses the same type of nanoparticle materials, but they are first resolved in a solution that contains graphite, which later is carbonized to form a dense network of conductors all throughout the electrodes of the battery. The end result is that all the energy-holding particles in the new battery start charging at the same time compared to the particles in conventional batteries which recharge from the outside in.
“The research is especially remarkable in that it overcame limitations of existing lithium-ion batteries,” stated Cho Jae-phil, a professor of Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology. “We will further move closer to developing a new secondary battery for electric cars that can be fully recharged in less than a minute.”
Via Yonhap News