"To imagine a new AC Concept, we’ve started analysing the types of thermal energy sources available in an electric car, searching for the ones useful to create a new AC AD/ABSORPTION system that decrease the use of the battery.
From a first analysis, various unused heat sources have demonstrated in the car: the atmospherically heat, the motor, the breaking plates, the car body and the environment itself. This heat needs to be dissipated but potentially could be a source that can be used in the Ellum Ac system. Exactly in our system this source will provide most of the energy required to power the cooling system while the E-llum Technology will be used for the fine control. That means, E-llum AC System could be a new class of adsorption physical/chemical reactor, that will be able to better utilize these free energies.
During these months we’ve conduit 9 technical macro-activities: Determination of the actual working condition and specification, Definition of the specification and the thermodynamic cycle, Proposal of E-llum heat pump concept, IP Management, Design of E-llum heat pump and Selection of family of coolant, Creation of a proof of concept, Test it and Re-test in stress conditions.
For the refrigerant choice we’ve analysed 2 big families of gas mixture and we’ve decide to proceed with homologue gasses filling H2 and using three different concentration (ppm) of components. This concentration choice is due to the different behaviours of the gasses during the regeneration session of the global heating exchange process. The gases have:
- Safety profile: the mixture of gasses, in use conditions (temperature and pressure), are safe, chemically stable, non-toxic, and non-explosive; it’s perfectly compatible with the actual car system;
- Green Profile: the mixture of gasses doesn’t contain any hazardous materials for environment
The most complex experimental work consisted in the definition of design and in the practical realization of the prototype of the ""E-LLUM Reactor"".
We’ve tested no. 10 particular conformations of the E-llum Reactor, that are different from composition and structure. Exactly, we’ve need a sensible system, made of E-llum rules, that is responsible for exceeding the reaction threshold that allows the cycle to start providing the necessary particular kind of energy.
So, before starting the complete tests, several partial tests have been carried out on each single component to validate its operation. In particular, has been subjected to an extensive series of validation tests on a number of different geometries each of which underwent processes of structural modification to make it responsive to the functioning according to the E-LLUM rules.
The results that emerged from the experimental tests differ, in the extreme values, of an order of magnitude and range from values comparable to a condition of non-functioning to values of absolute practical interest. This result makes it possible to state that there are configurations designed to be extremely more efficient than others in the use of this innovative configuration of absorption heat pump.
The next step will be to engineer the prototypes of the most promising solutions in order to determine the best commercial solution.
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