Graz University of Technology in Austria, believes that eco-friendly battery housings for electric vehicles should be compact, and as lightweight as possible. The university has established a program to promote bio-based, multi-functional laminates in battery housings, using the acronym BioLIB. We explore what initially seems to be an offbeat approach, and discover several advantages.
Wood and Steel Battery Housings Are More Eco Friendly
The team at Graz disapproves of aluminum battery housings in terms of their cost, ecological footprint, and fire protection properties. They suggest following a functional-integration approach instead, where one component performs several roles in an eco-friendly battery housing.
However, this is not just dry academic theory. The scientists have combined wood and steel in a single electric vehicle battery casing. This single unit reaches several goals, including temperature regulation, vibration damping, impact energy dissipation, fire protection, and electromagnetic shielding.
Combining wood and steel in this manner, enabled the Graz team to achieve ‘the best of both worlds’. They successfully teamed mechanical and thermal properties in a way that both materials complemented each other.
Is There a Future For This Offbeat, Eco Friendly Approach?
We believe there could well be a future for this discovery, that swims across the tide, when we think laterally. The scientists at Graz University of Technology have provided us with a working example, of how two dissimilar materials can combine forces to achieve a common goal.
The Graz eco-friendly battery housing achieves a number of positive battery casing properties, including temperature management and crash performance. While at the same time, it simultaneously delivers vibration damping, and thermal containment.
This performance exceeds that achieved by current state-of-art battery enclosures, while weighing less, and costing less with a smaller ecological footprint. The only remaining question is, why did we wait so long for such an eco-friendly battery housing?
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