Self charging car batteries mean you'll never need to plug in скачать в хорошем качестве

Self charging car batteries mean you'll never need to plug in

(21 Oct 2017) LEADIN: Forget plugging in to charge up your new electric car, engineers are now working towards a future where you never need to plug in ever again. That's some time off, but a new generation of batteries is being designed to power the latest electric cars, from high energy cells to power sports models to those that power over long distances. STORYLINE: Electric cars are no longer concepts kept in top secret bunkers at a car manufacturers research unit. Nor are they a seen as four wheeled status symbols of the wealthy elite. Almost every car maker is looking at electrifying its fleet in some way or another and that's why batteries are vital to the evolution of electric cars. This lab is part of the Energy Innovation Centre, the largest battery research centre in Europe. In here that engineers are testing the new generation of storage technologies, that's batteries to you and me. Each of these enormous steel tanks are testing a new design on behalf of a manufacturer, not just for cars but for other industries too. The results feed through to the computers in real time. Each battery cell is put through different drive cycles, they're put in extreme temperatures for hours at a time, so the scientists can test the cells' electrical behaviour, it's thermal and mechanical properties. Charging up car batteries quickly and releasing high amounts of energy have been obstacles engineers and researchers have been trying to overcome. The unit is part of the University of Warwick. Principal research engineer Mark Amor-Segan says:"We get a huge number of customers through our doors ranging from the extreme motor sports companies to mainstream manufacturers such as Jaguar Landrover, Nissan and so on. So you can imagine there are a huge range of customers, there's a huge range of different requirements in terms of testing and characterisation." The life of a battery begins here in the chemistry lab where different ingredients like carbon, sodium and lithium are put into a recipe which produces a thick black liquid which scientists here refer to as an 'ink'. The chemical makeup depends on what sort of battery is being produced. Electrochemical engineer Dr. Emma Kendrik is considering the latest to come out of the laboratory. She says: "If you look at this ink, this ink is a really nice consistency, it's glossy, it's homogenous, it pours really well which means that when we coat it on our coaters downstairs this will give us a really nice consistent electrode." In another part of the centre the ink is being laid onto copper sheets and put through a mangling process called calendering. The project manager of the research unit is Dr. Marcus Jahn. He explains: "The coating machine is the first step, we apply the ink onto the foil and we dry it and then it comes to this machine here which is a calendering machine so essentially we squash down the material to reduce the porosity and that's how we kind of decide whether we want a high power cell, or a high energy cell. So do we want to go very far, or do we want to get there very quickly. " According to Jahn the thickness and density of the inks and the thickness of the metals determines the batteries performance. The research unit here is able to produce batteries of every kind from start to finish. The storage cells aren't particularly interesting to look at in themselves, but the researchers know that a few tweaks here and there can make all the difference, whether the battery is destined to go under the hood of a super sports car, or whether it'll be used to power a bus. Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork Twitter:   / ap_archive   Facebook:   / aparchives   ​​ Instagram:   / apnews   You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/you...