It’s not so simple to make faster electric vehicle chargers, because the increased electricity means excess heat, too.
A NASA experiment meant to cool electronics aboard spacecraft could also find its way into EV chargers.
Theoretically, a charging station with this technology could juice up an EV battery in just five minutes.
Today, NASA cools onboard electronics with a single-phase system, a sub-cooled element that stays in a single liquid “phase.” However, the FBCE—designed by Issam Mudawar, a professor of mechanical engineering, and his lab at Purdue University—is a two-phase system. As its name suggests, the system uses two phases, both liquid and vapor, to more efficiently transfer heat.
The experiment’s Flow Boiling Module contains heat-generating devices along a flow channel filled with coolant. As things heat up, water boils near the channel’s wall, forms bubbles, and then “depart the walls at high frequency,” according to NASA. This heated vapor is then replaced by coolant pulled from the interior of the flow channel. The vapor eventually condenses and returns to its liquid form.
After being delivered to the ISS in 2021, the FBCE team conducted tests to see if this cooling technique worked in microgravity, a feature that’s unnecessary for EVs (unless NASA wants to recharge Elon Musk’s space Tesla). While the data gathered from FBCE will improve spacecraft cooling systems on long-duration missions (where more power and improved thermal management are needed), the impact of the underlying technology could be felt much closer to home.
Many modern EV fast-charging stations are rated at 350 amperes due to temperature restrictions. NASA estimates that Purdue’s cooling system could increase that to a whopping 2,400 amperes. To put that into perspective, a charging station supplying a steady flow of electricity at 1,400 amperes alone could fully charge an EV in just five minutes.
