New Lithium-Ion Battery Allows Charging A Car In 10 Minutes For A 350Km Drive

Mechanical engineers from a university say that they have created a lithium-ion battery that a 10-minute charge is enough to power a car on over 350 kilometers of driving.

The key here is to elevate the temperature to raise the reaction rate then cool it during discharge, the team says.

Currently, the temperature at which lithium batteries are charged then discharged remains the same to avoid lithium plating, which is when lithium deposits build up on the anode surface decreasing cell capacity and causing electrical spikes.

But the engineering team discovered that they could avoid the issue if they push the temperature to 60 degrees C for some minutes.

Team member Chao-Yang Wang said hat the key here is to realize rapid heating, or the battery will remain at the elevated temperature for too much time, which causes severe degradation.

For this to be done, a self-heating nickel structure was developed, which preheats in under 30 seconds. The team tested it by charging three graphite pouch cells that were designed for electric vehicles at 60, 49, and 40 degrees, along with a control at 20 degrees.

They noticed the batteries that were pre-heated to 60 degrees were able to sustain 1700 cycles of super-fast charging while the control cell was able to sustain for 60 cycles. With the average charging temperature from 49 to 60 degrees, they didn’t spot any degradation.

Wang says:

According to the researchers, we can scale up this technology as the cells are based on electrodes that are currently available in industries; and they have already illustrated its use in large-scale modules, cells, and battery packs.

With the use of nickel foil, the cost for each cell rises by 0.47 percent, but since the design doesn’t need external heaters, it overall reduces the cost for making each pack.