Telerex contributes to innovative heat battery
How do you cool in a vacuum, where heat transfer via convection and conduction is not possible? This was the central question that the student team of Delft Hyperloop faced during the past academic year. The team found the solution in a heat battery based on a phase change material. With support from Telerex, a seemingly half-baked idea was transformed into a successful application in just one year.
The hyperloop aims to become the fifth leading mode of transportation after cars, trains, airplanes, and boats. This superfast transport involves magnetically propelled pods (the vehicles) being propelled at high speed through a vacuum tube. Thanks to the low resistance, speeds of over 1,000 kilometers per hour are possible. A trip from Amsterdam to Paris would then take just half an hour. This makes the hyperloop faster than airplanes, but significantly more energy-efficient.
Scalability is crucial
With the promise of supersonic speeds, the hyperloop could change the future of transportation. And that future may be closer than we think. For example, there are plans for a hyperloop route between the Rotterdam and Amsterdam regions. This route would allow products like flowers and medicine to be transported at lightning speed, for example, to Schiphol Airport.
"Ultimately, you want to be able to integrate such a route into a European or even global network," says Kevin Tran, Lead Thermal Management at Delft Hyperloop during the past academic year. "That means carefully considering the efficiency and scalability of the infrastructure. These were key considerations for our team."
Making infrastructure cheaper
The Delft Hyperloop team from Delft University of Technology is one of sixteen teams competing to contribute to the ongoing development of the hyperloop. Approximately forty students from Delft University of Technology are taking a year-long break from their studies to work on this project. The goal is not to develop a hyperloop from start to finish, but rather to accelerate its implementation through smaller innovations.
During the European Hyperloop Week in July 2022, Delft Hyperloop won the Helios I first prize for the best hyperloop prototype. "That year's team had developed an engine that enables incredibly high speeds," says Joep Raithel, Lead Engineer Propulsion for the Delft Hyperloop team, which will participate in the competition in July 2023. "The downside of that design was that all the expensive components were built into the track, making the infrastructure itself extremely expensive, making the concept unscalable."
Electrical components moved
"For our prototype, we chose to place our energy-efficient magnetic motor in the pod rather than the track. This makes the infrastructure nothing more than a dumb piece of steel," Raithel continues. To eliminate rolling resistance, the Helios II also uses electromagnetic fields in both the vertical and lateral directions. This allows the pod to float completely on the track.
This concept does, however, have a significant drawback: the electrical components generate a lot of heat within the pod. "And that heat is difficult to dissipate in a vacuum tube, because vacuum has very high thermal resistance, which insulates the system," says Tran. The Helios I was cooled using water, but that approach doesn't work if the heat is generated in a moving pod.
New cooling system needed
"So we needed an efficient cooling system internally within the pod to store the heat," explains Tran. "We found the solution in a heat battery, which uses a phase change material, in our case a type of wax. This material starts as a solid, but as soon as heat is applied, it melts and turns into a liquid. During this phase change, a significant amount of energy can be stored."
"The material must be thermally conductive, but not electrically conductive, to prevent short circuits," says Lex van Huuksloot, Account Manager Thermal Management, EMC Products & Enclosures at Telerex. As a partner, Telerex Delft supports Hyperloop with advice and rapid delivery of components, among other things. "In addition, it must, of course, be fire-resistant."
Successful collaboration
Norbert Engelberts from Optimal Thermal Solutions (OTS) acted as the "thermal management doctor" during development, validating the idea for the new cooling system. Telerex supplied the fans and the heatsink that stores heat in the battery, as well as the advanced thermal compound from the Spanish company CoolMag For heat transfer at the drive coils for optimal temperature control. Van Huuksloot: "A key advantage of CoolMag is that it contains no harmful substances. You can even use it without gloves or a face mask."
Tran and Raithel look back on a successful collaboration with OTS and Telerex. "We started with half an idea, and without the experience to put it into practice," Raithel reflects. "Telerex and OTS gave us the confidence that we were on the right track. Ultimately, we managed to complete a complex engineering project within the allotted time. That's quite unique. Projects at large tech companies always run late."
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