(GoodNewsNetwork) South Korean scientists announced positive results on rapid “quantum charging” of electric cars and even fusion power plants. IQT-News summarizes the discussion below:
Scientists in South Korea have proven that a new technology will cut the time it takes to charge electric cars to just nine seconds, allowing EV owners to ‘fill up’ as fast as their gasoline counterparts. And even those plugging-in at home will have the time slashed from 10 hours to three minutes.Scientists at the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) in South Korea have come up with the solution. Co-author Dr. Dario Rosa said the consequences could be far-reaching. “Quantum charging could go well beyond electric cars and consumer electronics. For example, it may find key uses in future fusion power plants, which require large amounts of energy to be charged and discharged in an instant.”
The concept of a “quantum battery” was first proposed in a seminal paper published by Alicki and Fannes in 2012. It was theorized that quantum resources, such as entanglement, can be used to vastly speed up battery charging.
The researchers used quantum mechanics to model their super fast charging station with calculations of the charging speed showing that a typical electric vehicle with a battery containing around 200 cells would recharge 200 times faster. Current collective charging is not possible in classical batteries, where the cells are charged in parallel, independently of one another.
“This is particularly exciting as modern large-capacity batteries can contain numerous cells.”
The group went further to provide an explicit way of designing such batteries.
This means charging times could be cut from 10 hours to three minutes at home and from around 30 minutes to just a few seconds at stations.
Sandra K. Helsel, Ph.D. has been researching and reporting on frontier technologies since 1990. She has her Ph.D. from the University of Arizona.