Students from Terrassa present their ideas on how to charge electric cars

Three students from the Escola d’Enginyeria de Terrassa (EET) of the UPC are convinced that a 4x4 electric vehicle could recharge its battery and circulate for 3 days by processing 33kg of forest biomass. The project is meant to develop a rural EV charging station. This is only one of the 10 ideas presented by the students of the school. All projects are related to the electric vehicle charging system.

One of the critical elements when implementing electric cars is to design a battery charging system to drive with guarantees and autonomy. The head teacher of the programme "Equipment Projects and Electronic Systems" of the EET proposed to his students to think about this problem and look for innovations that would help to resolve it in an economic, efficient and effective way.

A rural electric station

Robert Falco, Mark Lopez and Juan Sotomayor have considered the needs of electric vehicles that run in a non urban environment and have devised a rural EV charging station capable to generate enough energy to recharge these batteries using biomass from forests (ie forest debris). The system works by creating a circuit of energy transformation. First the biomass is burnt. The energy created by combustion moves a steam turbine and the steam generates electricity, which goes to the network, then to the battery charger. Or what is the same: the forest biomass would generate heat, the heat mechanical energy and mechanical energy would generate electric power.

According to the calculations of the three students from Terrassa campus, with just 33kg of forest biomass, after the recharging an 4x4 vehicle used in farms or rural hotels could circulate for 3 days.

More ideas

Other interesting ideas presented by the students are a wireless charging system, efficient management systems for car lots with electric recharging points, charging equipment for urban electric buses and a mixed battery system containing the advantages of both types of batteries, lithium-ion and nickel-metal hydride.