Posted on 09/04/2007 10:37:19 AM PDT by 300magnum
Mike
The main reasons you are buying gasoline by the gallon rather than the pint is that Engines and transmissions are heavy and inefficient.
A typical car puts about 15% of the energy in a gallon of gasoline into motion.
A battery, electric motor combination should be able to get close to 90% of the stored power turned into motion. Plus, the car would be lighter, use regenerative braking and have better aerodynamics (no need to dump a hundred kilowatts worth of heat out of a radiator).
Trying to correlate your MPG to how much energy is really needed to operate a vehicle is not simple.
“The bottleneck would become the electrical service to the stations. To recharge 500 vehicles per day would require 50kwh x 500 = 25mwh per day. 25mwh / 24 hour per day means an average draw from the grid at 480V of 2000A. That one service station would be drawing as much power as 1000 homes.”
Hey, I hadn’t run those calculations before. I used to do some stuff with the nuclear energy and debated the enviros all the time who were into the hydrogen economy. Many problems there as well. Nothing like hydrocarbon to pack energy for easy transport.
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Actually, While your numbers are the best I have seen so far there are a couple of other realities to consider. Most electricity at the neighborhood level is either at 5000V or 13000V. If you go to the next step it is at 69000V. We have transformers in various locations to get it down to 480V, but it would be easy to supply 5000V. Large facilities like large buildings often use 5000V motors to operate airconditioning equipment. This makes the cable quite small and the insulation around it quite large.
If the energy supply station had it’s own bank of capacitors it could be charging continuously then they could do an instant transfer at very high voltage to cars that came in for a refill. 50000W @ 5000V is only 10 amps, at 13000V it is only 3.8A and at 69000V is only .72A.
There is nothing impossible here once the right materials have been found. Some day all our cell phones, PDA’s Ipod’s etc will be charged with a coil that will charge a supercapacitor as we walk around near charging stations.
As far as charging overnight, I suspect that we will have a supercapacitor at home charging while we are away and when we get home it will dump a full charge to our car in a matter of seconds.
If this works there will be many type of alterternative energy that will be practical especially photovoltaics, windpower and wave power.
SuperBattery AC/Crank Generator for Cell Phones
http://www.qualia-tech.com/index.php?act=viewProd&productId=105
I don’t know how weatherproof this is, but you can always wrap it in plastic:
That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. If GM owned it, they could put all of their competitors out of business. As it stands now, GM is the one going out of business.
US 7033406 (http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=7033406.PN.&OS=PN/7033406&RS=PN/7033406) - Electrical-energy-storage unit (EESU) utilizing ceramic and integrated-circuit technologies for replacement of electrochemical batteries; Weir, et al. (April 25, 2006)
Abstract
An electrical-energy-storage unit (EESU) has as a basis material a high-permittivity composition-modified barium titanate ceramic powder. This powder is double coated with the first coating being aluminum oxide and the second coating calcium magnesium aluminosilicate glass. The components of the EESU are manufactured with the use of classical ceramic fabrication techniques which include screen printing alternating multilayers of nickel electrodes and high-permittivitiy composition-modified barium titanate powder, sintering to a closed-pore porous body, followed by hot-isostatic pressing to a void-free body. The components are configured into a multilayer array with the use of a solder-bump technique as the enabling technology so as to provide a parallel configuration of components that has the capability to store electrical energy in the range of 52 kWh. The total weight of an EESU with this range of electrical energy storage is about 336 pounds
'If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible he is almost certainly right, but if he says that it is impossible he is very probably wrong.'
In 1969, I met Clark and asked him if he thought his permanent Moon base and regular trips to the planets would really be reality by the year 2000 as shown in his movie.
He said yes.
I also have doubts about that one. Too high a CV (power) product in the case of a catastrophic event during charge or discharge raises the prospect of serious arcflash injuries where the vaporized component itself (supercapacitor, charging station, anything close to them) is converted to a conductive plasma that can cause extensive second and third degree burns, fires and even electrical explosions in case of a catastrophic failure. The maximum current to private residences is limited for just this reason. I’m not sure how a much higher charge rates would be permitted for an electric vehicle even if technically feasible.
“an ultracapacitor, a battery-like device”
no. A capacitor is not at all like a battery.
Capacitors by their nature lose their charge gradually. If this problem has been solved, then we have a breakthrough.
When some arabs or government folks show up and smash their labs we’ll know this has some promise.
And Tesla’s experiments with lighting should be revisited.
struck by lightening? a moose once bit my sister.
A capcitor is nothing but a sandwich of 2 metal plates seperated by a thin insulator. Capacity is increased by 3 factors: 1) Surface area of the plates 2) Thinness of the dialectric (insulator) 3) The insulating properties of the dialectric. So, the search is on for the perfect dialectric, which might be a layer only 1 atom thick and have a complete resistance to leakage or breakdown at high voltages. That matierial is UNOBTAINIUM.
The “Fischer Carb” is BACK! In a new incarnation—1000 MPG!
duly noted
BS METER PEGGED! Even an ultra-efficient capacitor with a huge storage capacity is going to require an amount of power (over time) from the "Grid" which will equal the usage of the car's electric motor(s)! A kilowatt (1000 watts) of power equals about 1.34 HORSEPOWER!
Assuming 100% efficiency (impossible), a mere 10HP electric motor running for ONE HOUR consumes about 7.46 KWH! A "5 minute charge" at the home would equate to approximately an 89.5 KW power drain at the home! Not impossible in and of itself but, a MAJOR refit of home feedlines would be required and the cables would be monsterous in size (not to mention the heat and current degradation!
I am certain that more technically proficient Freepers can come up with more exact figures but..., other than a super golf cart, I don't see it. Now, an OVERNIGHT charge at a more moderate power drain, stored by an ultra-efficient, light weight capacitor bank DOES hold great promise for moderate range lighter weight commuter automobiles!
That is 100wh per mile. There have been many cars built that used that little energy. Not an SUV, but people building electric cars dedicated to lowest energy use.
There are home-converted SUV’s carrying around 1500 lbs of lead-acid batteries that still use less than 400wh per mile.
Visit www.evalbum.com for examples of home electric vehicle conversions. Certainly purpose-built vehicles will be more efficient than those.
Even the GM Impact (EV1) used only 160wh per mile for cruising at 55mph. And it carried over ten times as much weight in batteries as the EESTOR cap would weigh. Removing 1000 lbs of batteries from the EV1 might yield 100wh per mile.
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