Liquid battery could charge electric cars in seconds
ELECTRIC cars could be fully charged up in seconds using a new ‘liquid battery’ system developed by scientists in Glasgow.
Chemists from the University of Glasgow have developed a “flow battery system” that can store electric power or hydrogen gas, releasing power on demand to be used as fuel.
It means material can be used as a pumpable liquid which can charge up cars in seconds instead of the hours the current battery technology takes.
The researchers said it could mean that the battery of an electric car could be “recharged” in roughly the same length of time as petrol cars can be filled up.
The old battery liquid would be removed at the same time and recharged ready to be used again.
The technology has been designed and developed by Professor Leroy Cronin, Dr Mark Symes, and Dr Jia Jia Chen, who is a researcher in the team from the university.
Professor Cronin said: “For future renewables to be effective high capacity and flexible energy storage systems are needed to smooth out the
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“Our approach will provide a new route to do this electrochemically and could even have application in electric cars where batteries can still take hours to recharge and have limited capacity.
“Moreover, the very high energy density of our material could increase the range of electric cars, and also increase the resilience of energy storage systems to and troughs in keep the lights on at times of peak demand.”
The scientists are convinced that this result will help pave the way for the development of new energy storage systems that could be used in electric cars, for the storage of renewable energy, and to develop electric-to-gas energy systems for when a fuel is required.
The research is funded by the University of Glasgow complex chemistry initiative.