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posted by Fnord666 on Sunday September 27 2020, @10:39AM   Printer-friendly
from the nanotubes++ dept.

New composite material revs up pursuit of advanced electric vehicles:

Scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory used new techniques to create a composite that increases the electrical current capacity of copper wires, providing a new material that can be scaled for use in ultra-efficient, power-dense electric vehicle traction motors.

The research is aimed at reducing barriers to wider electric vehicle adoption, including cutting the cost of ownership and improving the performance and life of components such as electric motors and power electronics. The material can be deployed in any component that uses copper, including more efficient bus bars and smaller connectors for electric vehicle traction inverters, as well as for applications such as wireless and wired charging systems.

[...] Tolga Aytug, lead investigator for the project, said that "by embedding all the great properties of carbon nanotubes into a copper matrix, we are aiming for better mechanical strength, lighter weight and higher current capacity. Then you get a better conductor with less power loss, which in turn increases the efficiency and performance of the device. Improved performance, for instance, means we can reduce volume and increase the power density in advanced motor systems."

[...] While the new composite breakthrough has direct implications for electric motors, it also could improve electrification in applications where efficiency, mass and size are a key metric, Aytug said. The improved performance characteristics, accomplished with commercially viable techniques, means new possibilities for designing advanced conductors for a broad range of electrical systems and industrial applications, he said.

[...] "Electric motors are basically a combination of metals—steel laminations and copper windings," noted Burak Ozpineci, manager of the ORNL Electric Drive Technologies Program and leader of the Power Electronics and Electric Machinery group. "To meet DOE's Vehicle Technologies Office's 2025 electric vehicle targets and goals, we need to increase power density of the electric drive and reduce the volume of motors by 8 times, and that means improving material properties."

Journal Reference:
Kai Li, Michael McGuire, Andrew Lupini, et al.Copper–Carbon Nanotube Composites Enabled by Electrospinning for Advanced Conductors, ACS Applied Nano Materials (DOI: 10.1021/acsanm.0c01236)


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  • (Score: 2) by Rich on Sunday September 27 2020, @12:03PM (2 children)

    by Rich (945) on Sunday September 27 2020, @12:03PM (#1057599) Journal

    What a pile of bullshit marketing. Nothing in electric mobility calls for the improvements mentioned. Everything about the drivetrain an electric car is easier and cheaper to do than with an ICE, and even the batteries are easier, just not cheaper yet at the amount required. Whoever gets the cheapest batteries wins the market. I don't think any high-tech material is warranted where plain copper does, and does so at ludicrous (sic) performance levels. To reduce the price (copper ain't that cheap), manufacturers might turn to aluminium instead. Mentioned bus bars might be a thing, they could be a stressed structural member, and with a cross section of such one, resistance of Al would not be an issue.

    The stuff mentioned might be interesting for electric motorsport, though.

    • (Score: 2) by legont on Sunday September 27 2020, @12:35PM

      by legont (4179) on Sunday September 27 2020, @12:35PM (#1057605)

      ... lighter weight ...

      yeah, right, exactly like "cheaper prices".

      --
      "Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Sunday September 27 2020, @12:57PM

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Sunday September 27 2020, @12:57PM (#1057612)

      I see two things going on with this composite material:

      1) new specifications which allow for smaller/lighter copper components throughout the power systems

      2) copper components which may perform equivalently for a limited lifetime window, but will break down long before pure copper systems would have - somewhere outside the "design service life" of 7 years or whatever the consumer economy wants it to be.

      3) massive uptake of the "new material technology" due to its reduced cost

      4) faulty implementation of the reference designs which demonstrated 50+ year durability in HALT testing, but actually fail around 7.5 years in vehicles delivered with a 7 year warranty

      Mercedes started delivering vehicles in the early 2000s with wiring systems based on ultra-thin / optimized conductors, even when carrying power such as to halogen headlamps. Then they coupled this thin hot wire with insulation that... ooops... didn't last as well in all environments as it did in testing. Market value of a 2002 Mercedes that cost $120K new, was maintained to factory spec at a cost of $2000 every 10,000 miles, and has been garage kept and driven very little - maybe 50K miles on the odometer... you'll be lucky to get $6K for a perfect condition car if you have one.

      --
      🌻🌻 [google.com]
  • (Score: 2) by Rupert Pupnick on Sunday September 27 2020, @12:54PM (2 children)

    by Rupert Pupnick (7277) on Sunday September 27 2020, @12:54PM (#1057610) Journal

    As usual for phys.org, a lot of hype, but no direct quantitative comparison of the properties of the new material compared to copper. You know: density, resistivity, strength, etc.

    • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 27 2020, @03:02PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 27 2020, @03:02PM (#1057630)
      • (Score: 3, Informative) by Rupert Pupnick on Sunday September 27 2020, @10:47PM

        by Rupert Pupnick (7277) on Sunday September 27 2020, @10:47PM (#1057855) Journal

        I did miss it, and thanks for pointing it out. I did not know that there was a sharp “knee” in the resistivity curve at higher current densities. I looked at the maximum current densities you’d encounter in ordinary house wiring, and note that for example 10 gauge wire which is rated for 30A service at a diameter of .259 cm, you get a current density of roughly:

        (.03 kA)/(pi*(.13 cm)^2) = about 0.5 kA/cm^2

        which represents the thermal limit associated with conduction losses and is way to the left on the plot. To me this says that you have to surmount some serious thermal dissipation problems before you get anywhere near the 80 to 100 kA/cm^2 regime where there are significant differences between the copper and this new experimental material. So I don’t think it’s any kind of a useful breakthrough to design into things that run over the normal range of environmental conditions, but it is surely an advance in material science.

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