The Innovative Thermal Protecter For Electric Cars Potentially Extends Battery Life

The thermal protector, named Janus Thermal Cloak, can make the battery more efficient. (photo: Twitter @CellPressNews)

JAKARTA - The biggest anxiety of electric car drivers while driving is the fear of running out of battery power. However, those concerns could be resolved soon, thanks to the new thermal shield promised to make the battery last longer.

The protector was the idea of researchers from Shanghai's Jiao Tong University, and was designed to keep electric cars cold summer and warm winter. The best of all, these protectors can do it passively, without requiring external energy.

"This thermal shield is like clothes for vehicles, buildings, spacecraft, or even a place to live in space to stay cool summer and warm winter," said Dr. Kehang Cui, senior author of the study, quoted by MailOnline.

Electric vehicles (EVs) don't like colder conditions and this can limit their performance. This happens because the battery works less efficiently when the temperature drops to one digit and below zero.

The lithium-ion battery in most modern electric cars relies on chemical reactions to store and release electricity, but when temperatures get colder, the process slows down and the battery performance is limited. As a result, the distance that can be reached effectively also decreases dramatically.

As Osprey's public charging operator explains, EV batteries have an optimal temperature of about 20$C to 25$C. Charging as temperatures are much cooler or hotter than this affects chemical reactions and energy transfer in batteries.

This means longer time it takes to recharge the battery, especially at night. To overcome this problem, the researchers designed a thermal shield that could dampen natural temperature fluctuations.

The thermal protector, named Janus Thermal Cloak, has two main components - an outer layer reflecting sunlight, and an inner layer that helps keep the heat inside.

The outer layers are made of silica thin fibers coated with hexagonal nitride boron flakes, a ceramic material similar to graphite. These fibers were woven and woven into fabrics, before attaching to the inner layers of aluminum alloys.

To test how effective this thermal shield is, the research team tested an electric car parked outside in Shanghai. First, they tested the temperature of the car that was not covered, and found that the temperature inside the cabin reached 50.5$C in the middle of the day.

However, when electric cars are covered with a thermal shield, the temperature inside is 22.8$C to 27.7$C lower.

Meanwhile, at midnight, the temperature inside the covered car never drops below 0.8$C - 6.8$C higher than the temperature outside.

"This is the first time we have managed to get a warm-up above a temperature of about 7$C at night," said Dr. Cui. "This is also a surprise to us - there is no energy or sunlight input and we can still get warm-up."

The team said that this thermal shield was designed deliberately to facilitate mass production in the future. However, it is still unclear how much this shield costs, or when it will be available.

"We do not yet have an estimate of how much this shield costs. We are conducting further field tests on a larger scale and analysis to translate the metric and thermal shield performance that we test in our paper to the economic benefits of the real world, such as the percentage increase in battery life that we can achieve, or how much electricity and energy we can save every year if we apply this thermal shield to a building," said Dr. Cui. "We hope to be able to commercialize this thermal shield soon."