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posted by martyb on Saturday June 03 2017, @12:59PM   Printer-friendly
from the positive-development dept.

Current electric cars need convenient locations built for charging ports.

"Designing and building enough of these recharging stations requires massive infrastructure development, which means the energy distribution and storage system is being rebuilt at tremendous cost to accommodate the need for continual local battery recharge," said Eric Nauman, co-founder of Ifbattery and a Purdue professor of mechanical engineering, basic medical sciences and biomedical engineering. "Ifbattery is developing an energy storage system that would enable drivers to fill up their electric or hybrid vehicles with fluid electrolytes to re-energize spent battery fluids much like refueling their gas tanks."

The spent battery fluids or electrolyte could be collected and taken to a solar farm, wind turbine installation or hydroelectric plant for re-charging.

"Instead of refining petroleum, the refiners would reprocess spent electrolytes and instead of dispensing gas, the fueling stations would dispense a water and ethanol or methanol solution as fluid electrolytes to power vehicles," Cushman said. "Users would be able to drop off the spent electrolytes at gas stations, which would then be sent in bulk to solar farms, wind turbine installations or hydroelectric plants for reconstitution or re-charging into the viable electrolyte and reused many times. It is believed that our technology could be nearly 'drop-in' ready for most of the underground piping system, rail and truck delivery system, gas stations and refineries."

It's got electrolytes.


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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by hemocyanin on Saturday June 03 2017, @07:04PM (1 child)

    by hemocyanin (186) on Saturday June 03 2017, @07:04PM (#519942) Journal

    That's fair. From my personal experience with a Leaf though, it takes about week or two at most to get over it. I'm already used to plugging in my phone and laptop, and while it might seem like a car is a different thing, it quickly becomes just one other ting you plug in. I don't even notice myself doing it most days -- just park, pop the charger lid, plug in the charger, go inside. No fumes, 70-80% fuel cost savings (I use 2.6c/mile of electricity, my gas car uses 12.5c/mile in gas alone), never find myself leaving the house and realizing I need to fit a gas station stop into where ever I need to get to. The gas station habit is really easy to lose.

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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 03 2017, @11:22PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 03 2017, @11:22PM (#520014)

    If you actually have an accessible outlet. Which most people don't, in which case it's a serious issue.