News - Researchers create algorithms to fast-charge lithium-ion batteries

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Who would have thought pure mathematics could be completely practical?

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Read more.

It should be noted this research won the Department of Energy grant for research into faster charging electric vehicles' batteries. The grant was in sum of ~9.6 million USD and the remaining ~9.14M USD was split between Bosch and Cobasys, both present in the automotive industry. Not sure this actually applies to smaller electronic devices' batteries as well. Just saying ;)

Anything that helps make electric cars cheaper, and recharge quicker (i.e., in the typical time you're taking a whizz in the service station and complaining about the prices in the food court) is good by me.

Although I do note that electric cars are mostly only as good as the power source that is generating the electricity that is charging them. Coal plants merely move the pollution generation elsewhere. Although cleaner air in the cities is still a benefit.

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Originally Posted by sykobee

Although I do note that electric cars are mostly only as good as the power source that is generating the electricity that is charging them. Coal plants merely move the pollution generation elsewhere. Although cleaner air in the cities is still a benefit.

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Coal plants generally tend to be more efficient than your average vehicle petrol engine though, so there is still some benefit in that regards, even if it could be more.

Producing the batteries is in incredibly polluting process though, to the point where electric cars are probably worse for the environment than a petrol equivalent.

Also, on the subject of the power grid, it would need to massively increase in size in order to cope with providing energy for vehicles, and considering its already predicted to struggle in the near future, largely because of all of the money being sunk into greenwashing nonsense...

I'm somewhat scepticle about the article though, it's all well and good saying it's all mathematics or whatever, but nowhere seems to have any information on how it actually works. Does it charge with pulses or something? You can get a decent charge in half the time anyway, by skipping the CV charging stage which only adds an extra few % anyway depending on CC rate, but it takes time, hence why phones etc seem to get to 80% or so fairly quickly then slow right down and hang around 99% for ages.

I still don't understand why so much effort is being put into electric "battery" cars when we should really be pushing towards hydrogen fuel-cell powered ones; switching from oil-based infrastructure to hydrogen based will be expensive, as any changeover is, but it's better to do it now whilst there are still reasonable amounts of crude oil reserves, rather than when we start running out. And it's not just cars that we have to think about, in this regard, huge amounts of food and materials are shipped by sea; if they don't get converted to using another fuel source, then we'll be having to resort to sail-power once more. Also, ships converted to hydrogen power plants could, potentially, reduce the size of their fuel tanks by having their own hydrogen production systems on board.

You still need energy to produce the hydrogen via electrolysis, although the cheapest/most common way today, believe it or not, is cracking of fossil fuels...

Hydrogen isn't a complete solution by itself, it's just another way to store energy, like a battery.

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Originally Posted by watercooled

Producing the batteries is in incredibly polluting process though, to the point where electric cars are probably worse for the environment than a petrol equivalent.

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Source?

Search for it, there are enough studies on it. The batteries alone involve refining tons of lithium and shipping it around the world several times for various manufacturing stages. A lot of the damage is done before they hit the road, and then a lot of the power is still from burning stuff ATM.

I'm just making the point that electric cars aren't some epic dream machine that will save the world, like some people incapable of thinking more than one step seem to think.

With plentiful, clean power on the grid, and 'greener' batteries, sure, but not the way things are ATM.

On the subject of efficiency, coal-fired power plants aren't necessarily more efficient than a 4 stroke petrol engine, they're both around 30%, but you have to include extra losses in an electrical system; transmission losses, battery losses, and motor efficiency probably (it would vary depending on power station design/load and of course the engine) add up to make a petrol engine more efficient, not to mention petrol burns more cleanly than coal. However, refining/shipping of petrol will offset that to some amount, but there's really not much in it. Combined cycle gas turbine plants are far more efficient though, and much cleaner burning, but gas is relatively expensive.

What we need is a Mr fusion. A few bits of potato peel some stale beer & can and away you go .