Computers to Create the Perfect Battery

The essential component of an electric vehicle, the battery, has quickly and at the same time became the EVs biggest enemy: the battery. Too expensive, too ineffective and too big, the battery is at the center of all the fears of the buyers in the market for a car these days.

Obviously, the future will be a bit brighter and get better range, so to speak. Everybody knows it, but what no one can surely tell is when that moment will arrive. According to the researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Mathematics ITWM in Kaiserslautern, that time is almost here.

Using a specially developed computer software called Battery and Electrochemistry Simulation Tool (BEST), the researchers are able to look at the battery in a way not possible to any other mortals. They see the microscopic structure of the electrodes, for instance, meaning that they get a pretty good perspective of a pore measuring no more than 10 micrometers. And all in 3D.

How, you might wonder, will this help the battery get better and perhaps cheaper? By looking at the battery from within the battery, the researchers are able to identify the best materials to used in the components, they way in which they interact, the hotspots that may overheat and even the effects aging can have on the battery.

"Ultimately, BEST should help both automakers and manufacturers of electric storage devices to build robust, safe batteries with greater range and, at the same time, improved acceleration," Jochen Zausch, a scientist in the Complex Fluids group at Fraunhofer ITWM was quoted as saying by Science Daily.