The Electric Car

[rsol]

the burning stuff thing is important if you want statues to hang around a bit longer and nasty black rings around ppls noses to be a thing of the past. the shit in the air on a local level is enough to warrant it.

Plus this mini black hole is subject to other forces that hold it in place, the smaller the flywheel the less energy needed to keep it suspended.


The fly wheel has yet to come of age, as has the electronic heat pump. I think this will be a strong point for nanotech. R&D still required to manufacture them as far as i know. It has been done, just not done cheaply:) they have to "bake" them

[JazzRoc]

Quote:the burning stuff thing is important if you want statues to hang around a bit longer and nasty black rings around ppls noses to be a thing of the past. the shit in the air on a local level is enough to warrant it.

You could mandate electric-only vehicles round town and combustion vehicles for the country.

Quote:Plus this mini black hole is subject to other forces that hold it in place, the smaller the flywheel the less energy needed to keep it suspended. The fly wheel has yet to come of age

It doesn't matter how small you make the flywheel: the law of conservation of momentum is immutable. Flywheels will ALWAYS be too dangerous to use within vehicles that possess suspension and steering systems. It's physics.

[rsol]

the spin wont make the object any heavier. and as the flywheel gets smaller there is less requirement to keep it in place. you are resisting on the spin after all.

yes there is g- limits as with anything. you couldnt shake a car to death tho? of course you can! when i mean a golden age i mean just this. A point where they are able to keep them stable in acceptable conditions. Its not impossible just not done yet. you wait m8.


The flywheel in its present state is still a tip top way to store energy at home in a back garden. bury that sucker in the ground and you have a unit capable of AC or DC and have multiple standards from one source. No need to change down or up, wasting all that energy. for life!! you can buy one for about 30k for the home so still a little out of reach to the average person. mark these words.....you may one day see a flywheel in your mp3player:)

oh and yes regenerative braking is cool. i also was wondering about harnessing the static built up on the tires from road friction:)

[JazzRoc]

"The Chrysler Patriot was a turbine-electric hybrid sports-prototype racing car utilizing flywheel energy storage, built by Chrysler in 1993 as a concept car but with the express intent of winning the Le Mans 24 Hour Race.

The traction engine was a four-pole, three-phase, 525-volt AC induction motor, weighing 143 pounds (65 kg), with a maximum speed of 24,000 RPM; it had an aluminum housing, was lubricated by oil, and had an 8:1 motor to final drive ratio. Electrical power was supplied by a water-cooled, three-phase alternator which was built into a two stage gas turbine, fueled with liquified natural gas, running at 50,000 RPM at low speed and 100,000 RPM at high speed, weighing 186 pounds. Additional energy for acceleration was provided by a 147 pound SatCon composite flywheel housed in a vacuum chamber running at 58,000 RPM, coupled to the drive train via three-phase permanent magnets in a Halbach array.

Although introduced with much fanfare as a great leap forward in alternative energy storage and efficiency, press releases regarding the Patriot faded away. It was later revealed that serious problems with the mechanical integrity of the flywheel could not be overcome, and protection from a shattering flywheel would exact too much of a weight penalty." - from Wiki.

It's possible that an underground version might be useful for a house (solar-electric input?) but even tiny flywheels will "ground" (and grind!) their magnetic bearings when "bumped" - POW! (It's what makes a gyroscope a gyroscope!)

Of course, you could get back to pressurized inert gas/oil mist sliding sleeve bearings, but you are back with friction losses and coolant systems.

As for the "dawn of the Golden Age" - try the Rings Trilogy... hey - greasons seatings, crimble, and so on...

[rsol]

147pounds worth of flywheel is going to need alot of heavy housing. granted. That was over 15 years ago. This is not current. this was before research into flywheels as small and lightweight units. thats bronze age sort of stuff.

Minimization will be the key to improving performance and will also mean for a more stable gyroscope.

what would you say would be a maximum G for a vehicle to withstand? how much energy would you need to stabilize a flywheel of say 1 pound, spinning at 1Mrpm? if it span at 50k rpm it would require the same energy to keep it stable. Its the weight of the wheel.

Moores law doesnt just apply to the field of computing. smaller means faster.

[JazzRoc]

Quote:bronze age sort of stuff.

And the Moon Landing stone age?

Quote:Minimization will be the key to improving performance and will also mean for a more stable gyroscope.

My grandson's got a RC Le mans car. It gets by on a battery pack.

Quote:what would you say would be a maximum G for a vehicle to withstand? how much energy would you need to stabilize a flywheel of say 1 pound, spinning at 1Mrpm? if it span at 50k rpm it would require the same energy to keep it stable. Its the weight of the wheel.

I don't think anything except continuous wrapped carbyl macromolecules (like buckyballs) will withstand that rotational velocity. So far, these are impossible to construct.

And no, it's the gyroscopic inertial forces that increase as the square of that rotational velocity.

Quote:Moores law doesnt just apply to the field of computing. smaller means faster.

Best make them REALLY small, and in pairs (WIKI):

One of the primary limits to flywheel design is the tensile strength of the material used for the rotor. Generally speaking, the stronger the disc, the faster it may be spun, and the more energy the system can store. When the tensile strength of a flywheel is exceeded the flywheel will shatter, releasing all of its stored energy at once; this is commonly referred to as "flywheel explosion" since wheel fragments can reach kinetic energy comparable to that of a bullet. Consequently, traditional flywheel systems require strong containment vessels as a safety precaution, which increases the total mass of the device. Fortunately, composite materials tend to disintegrate quickly once broken, and so instead of large chunks of high-velocity shrapnel one simply gets a containment vessel filled with red-hot sand. Still, many customers of modern flywheel power storage systems prefer to have them embedded in the ground to halt any material that might escape the containment vessel.

When used in vehicles, flywheels also act as gyroscopes, since their angular momentum is typically of a similar order of magnitude as the forces acting on the moving vehicle. This property may be detrimental to the vehicle's handling characteristics while turning. On the other hand, this property could be utilised to keep the car balanced so as to keep it from rolling over during sharp turns. Conversely, the effect can be almost completely removed by mounting the flywheel within an appropriately applied set of gimbals, where the angular momentum is conserved without affecting the vehicle (see Properties of a gyroscope). This doesn't avoid the complication of gimbal lock, and so a compromise between the number of gimbals and the angular freedom is needed. A single gimbal, for instance, could free a car for the 360 degrees necessary for regular driving. However, for instance driving up-hill would require a new gimbal mechanism with a new degree of freedom. Two gimbals would theoretically solve this problem and never lock unless your car rolls (something one carefully placed gimbal would not let the car do).

An alternative solution to the problem is to have two joined flywheels spinning synchronously in opposite directions. They would have a total angular momentum of zero and no gyroscopic effect. A problem with this solution is that when the difference between the momentum of each flywheel is anything other than zero the housing of the two flywheels would exhibit torque. You would, in effect, have two heavy spinning gears. Both wheels must be maintained at the same speed to keep the angular velocity at zero. Strictly speaking, the two flywheels would exert a huge torqueing moment at the central point, trying to bend the axle. However, if the axle were sufficiently strong, no gyroscopic forces would have a net effect on the sealed container, so no torque would be noticed.

[Hans Olo]

Have you seen "who killed the electric car" a film from the 90s? That was my starting point, when I realized how the technology is being suppressed.

[rsol]

yes but if you read into the text this person is referring to a flywheel as a large item. If you went to a microscopic level you would require very large housing in comparison to the flywheel yes but not large compared to a car. the point is the speed. and the material.

I dont think there alot of research in microscopic flywheels as yet:(

[JazzRoc]

I'm sure that suppression has taken place. However it isn't really surprising.

It's been a long time since cars were frequently found stopped by the roadside due to their failure to complete their journey.

With electrical vehicles this is commonplace. Nobody wants to produce something which the customer is going to end up cursing them for it, and rueing the day he gave up sensible road vehicles. A "standardized" battery pack (and rapid and cheap replacement scheme) would overcome this, but no government wants to standardize and legislate when battery technology is still unfinalized and in constant flux.

Rsol, you still don't seem to understand that no matter what the flywheel size, the storage of sufficient rotational energy to power a vehicle for say a hundred miles, will ALWAYS resist acceleration with suffient intensity to require heavy shielding. What MUST happen if the vehicle has an impact?

[rsol]

understood. im just thinking there will be a breaking point with size vs energy. i still think you could get safe enough housing if they could get that small. and if so then more than 1 or 2 could be possible. maybe even 16:)

As far as reliability? well id love to see an electric car with the amount of research the car has been afforded over this century. that would be one kick ass car!

[rsol]

I think we should open this discussion next year. It shall be interesting to see if anything develops over that time. i think the next few years may be the turning point.

supression? of the electric car? well i know of the suppression of the train. The train was virtually outlawed by GM buying up almost all local train stations and simply closing them. This killed choice for the public making it inevitable for the car to become king. The electric car has not had the same amount of research afforded to it as the petrol driven variety. Anyone can agree on that.

[Hans Olo]

Quote:The electric car has not had the same amount of research afforded to it as the petrol driven variety. Anyone can agree on that.

I do.

[Guest]

Quote:Electric cars obtain their energy from electrical power stations. The BURN takes place there. There is NO GAIN by using electric vehicles, because of the efficiency losses of both the station and its transmission lines.

This is true if you use the local power grid. Even then according to the FAQ's I've read on EV's, the power plant
has far better gas and particulate recovery methods than can be done at the tailpipe of your car.

Don't forget the gain of the air you breath.

I guess we shouldn't bother investing in solar and wind technologies either, since the wind stops blowing and the sun goes down?

[Guest]

Quote:I'm sure that suppression has taken place. However it isn't really surprising.
Rsol, you still don't seem to understand that no matter what the flywheel size, the storage of sufficient rotational energy to power a vehicle for say a hundred miles, will ALWAYS resist acceleration with suffient intensity to require heavy shielding. What MUST happen if the vehicle has an impact?

You don't need a flywheel in an EV... you can't stall the motor... and you don't need a clutch to shift.
Go look at some youtube EV conversions, most people dump the flywheel into the garbage.

[Guest]

Quote:The second question is, should we replace our legacy of oil / gas - based combustion engines with modern, clean, silent electric cars? My answer is YES we should, this would benefit the environment greatly. Is that the only thing we should do? NO, we should still replace the basis for that energy with something better.

Don't fall into the trap of demonizing the IC Engine... the fuel is the problem... if we burned Hydrogen it would
actual be beneficial as the air coming out is cleaner that the air entering the engine.