It has rained, so for the moment I'm not doing much on the farm and I have a little free time.
What interested me the most about the aircar was the idea of using a high pressure air tank storage system.
If that air tank can compete with a battery in power density for a car then using it to store power instead of batteries is almost certain to make both solar and Wind power a viable alternative to the conventional power grid.
What I meant when I said battery tech hasn't improved in 50 years was that it's actual cost hadn't really went down significantly and all the various "advanced" battery chemistries have been built experimentally for about that long.
It just wasn't until the advent of cell phones and laptop computers that the relatively high energy density, but expensive chemistries had an application where the extra cost over lead acid or nickel-cadmium was worth mass production.
I know about putting "flat" motors at the wheels, but those four motors taken together are still relatively heavy. The Saving comes from replacing the drive shaft and transmission and other gears with copper wire.
In a hybrid electric car you have the weight of the batteries, the weight of the liquid fuel engine, weight of the liquid fuel and the weight of those 4 electric motors.
In the Hybrid version of the aircar you have the weight of a single dual purpose compressed air or liquid fuel engine, the weight of a small battery and standard small alternator, the weight of a liquid fuel tank, the relatively light weight of a high pressure air tank and the is the added disadvantage of gearing and transmission for the single engine.
The big advantage of the aircar is it's use of a single engine and a energy storage system that has a relatively low weight and cost compared to batteries.
Chemical batteries are usually the "hidden" cost of any alternative electrical power system.
I have a friend who lives several miles from the power grid and when he built his home they wanted 15,000 up front to run a power line to his home.
He instead refused to pay the power company and purchased just over 8,000 dollars worth of deep cycle batteries and solar panels.
His water heater, cook stove and Deep Freeze are powered by propane and his house is wired for 12 volts. He has a 12 volt refrigerator and a 12 volt washer and all his lights and electronics are 12 volts systems. (I think he has a small microwave run by a 12 volt to 120 volt AC converter.)
Just over 8,000 dollars worth of solar panels and batteries often left him in the dark dependant on a exspensive small gas powered backup generator after just 2 consecutive days of cloud cover.
I suggested purchasing a small wind generator pointing out that here in Arkansas if it was cloudy then the wind was usually blowing.
He purchased a small fully enclosed integrated DC generator and wind turbine putting it on a 20 foot pole. He now has power to spare for his fans (no airconditioner), but when you factor in the 2 to maybe 4 year lifespan of the deep cycle batteries his electrical power cost are at least 50% to double the cost of buying power from the electric company. Also note that he does not have the capacity to run any size airconditioner in his home.
The Wind generator has actually proved to be a real cost saver by letting his batteries last longer and taking up the slack as the several thousand dollars worth of solar panels age.
Solar panels lose capacity as they age producing less power for a given amount of sunlight and so far the excess capacity of his wind generator has kept him from having to buy additional solar panels and because he isn't having to drain his batteries as deeply it is letting him go slightly longer before he has to purchase new batteries.
The small wind generator mentioned above could be fitted with a wire mesh screen, but I've seen larger designs of wind generators that don't use the traditional exposed propellar set on top of a pole or tower.
One of those "safe" windmill designs require the construction of a expensive very tall smoke stack style tower with an enclosed propellar filling the base of the tube.
The "smoke stack" tower design does have some advantages to offset it's high construction cost. It doesn't really have a maximum windspeed and if it is designed correctly the tall tube can actually supply some power on windless days by using the temperature changes from the base to the tower's top.
Someone mentioned the need for a battery that can be charged in under 10 minutes. I doubt that is doable from several standpoints.
Given the chemistry and physical structures needed I believe it's an almost mutually exclusive requirement between high capacity and fast charging of a chemical battery.
You can have one or the other, but I doubt you can have both and when you add in the huge demand such a fast charge system would place on a electrical power grid it will probably create more problems than it solves.
Your talking about a HUGE amount of electrical power being pushed into a battery in just 10 minutes.
We can use the simple, but in detail wrong example below to get an idea of the magnitude of power your wanting to put into a battery in just 10 minutes.
Lets assume you have an electric vehicle that can use just 5 hp of electric motor capacity to cruise at 60 km/h and has at a set of batteries that can supply power for 300 kilometer. (5 hours of cruise controled 60 km/h on a flat road with no stops.)
Ignoring nearly all losses in conversion the 5 hp constant power is about 3,750 watts of electrical power coming from the batteries.
Lets assume you cruise for 4 hours or 240 minutes before you pull over at a recharging station.
You need to put 3750 watt * 240 minutes or 900000 watt-minutes of power back into the battery.
900000 watt-minutes/10 minutes means your road side charging station needs a powerline able to handle more than a 90 kilowatt demand to recharge a single vehicle with a 20 percent reserve left in the "tank".
When do you fill your vehicle? In the above I assumed the driver pulled off when he had just under a 1/4 of a tank.
Someone mentioned atomic reactors and then the problem with the waste, if we allowed a few breeder reactors to reprocess the spent rods then the waste issues would be minor.
Yes I know the reprocessed fuel is relatively easy to turn into weapons grade material and at one time that was a good argument against building breeder reactors to convert the other reactor waste back into useable fuel, but given the spread of atomics in todays world it's now nearly a useless safety measure.
howard melton
God bless
What interested me the most about the aircar was the idea of using a high pressure air tank storage system.
If that air tank can compete with a battery in power density for a car then using it to store power instead of batteries is almost certain to make both solar and Wind power a viable alternative to the conventional power grid.
What I meant when I said battery tech hasn't improved in 50 years was that it's actual cost hadn't really went down significantly and all the various "advanced" battery chemistries have been built experimentally for about that long.
It just wasn't until the advent of cell phones and laptop computers that the relatively high energy density, but expensive chemistries had an application where the extra cost over lead acid or nickel-cadmium was worth mass production.
I know about putting "flat" motors at the wheels, but those four motors taken together are still relatively heavy. The Saving comes from replacing the drive shaft and transmission and other gears with copper wire.
In a hybrid electric car you have the weight of the batteries, the weight of the liquid fuel engine, weight of the liquid fuel and the weight of those 4 electric motors.
In the Hybrid version of the aircar you have the weight of a single dual purpose compressed air or liquid fuel engine, the weight of a small battery and standard small alternator, the weight of a liquid fuel tank, the relatively light weight of a high pressure air tank and the is the added disadvantage of gearing and transmission for the single engine.
The big advantage of the aircar is it's use of a single engine and a energy storage system that has a relatively low weight and cost compared to batteries.
Chemical batteries are usually the "hidden" cost of any alternative electrical power system.
I have a friend who lives several miles from the power grid and when he built his home they wanted 15,000 up front to run a power line to his home.
He instead refused to pay the power company and purchased just over 8,000 dollars worth of deep cycle batteries and solar panels.
His water heater, cook stove and Deep Freeze are powered by propane and his house is wired for 12 volts. He has a 12 volt refrigerator and a 12 volt washer and all his lights and electronics are 12 volts systems. (I think he has a small microwave run by a 12 volt to 120 volt AC converter.)
Just over 8,000 dollars worth of solar panels and batteries often left him in the dark dependant on a exspensive small gas powered backup generator after just 2 consecutive days of cloud cover.
I suggested purchasing a small wind generator pointing out that here in Arkansas if it was cloudy then the wind was usually blowing.
He purchased a small fully enclosed integrated DC generator and wind turbine putting it on a 20 foot pole. He now has power to spare for his fans (no airconditioner), but when you factor in the 2 to maybe 4 year lifespan of the deep cycle batteries his electrical power cost are at least 50% to double the cost of buying power from the electric company. Also note that he does not have the capacity to run any size airconditioner in his home.
The Wind generator has actually proved to be a real cost saver by letting his batteries last longer and taking up the slack as the several thousand dollars worth of solar panels age.
Solar panels lose capacity as they age producing less power for a given amount of sunlight and so far the excess capacity of his wind generator has kept him from having to buy additional solar panels and because he isn't having to drain his batteries as deeply it is letting him go slightly longer before he has to purchase new batteries.
The small wind generator mentioned above could be fitted with a wire mesh screen, but I've seen larger designs of wind generators that don't use the traditional exposed propellar set on top of a pole or tower.
One of those "safe" windmill designs require the construction of a expensive very tall smoke stack style tower with an enclosed propellar filling the base of the tube.
The "smoke stack" tower design does have some advantages to offset it's high construction cost. It doesn't really have a maximum windspeed and if it is designed correctly the tall tube can actually supply some power on windless days by using the temperature changes from the base to the tower's top.
Someone mentioned the need for a battery that can be charged in under 10 minutes. I doubt that is doable from several standpoints.
Given the chemistry and physical structures needed I believe it's an almost mutually exclusive requirement between high capacity and fast charging of a chemical battery.
You can have one or the other, but I doubt you can have both and when you add in the huge demand such a fast charge system would place on a electrical power grid it will probably create more problems than it solves.
Your talking about a HUGE amount of electrical power being pushed into a battery in just 10 minutes.
We can use the simple, but in detail wrong example below to get an idea of the magnitude of power your wanting to put into a battery in just 10 minutes.
Lets assume you have an electric vehicle that can use just 5 hp of electric motor capacity to cruise at 60 km/h and has at a set of batteries that can supply power for 300 kilometer. (5 hours of cruise controled 60 km/h on a flat road with no stops.)
Ignoring nearly all losses in conversion the 5 hp constant power is about 3,750 watts of electrical power coming from the batteries.
Lets assume you cruise for 4 hours or 240 minutes before you pull over at a recharging station.
You need to put 3750 watt * 240 minutes or 900000 watt-minutes of power back into the battery.
900000 watt-minutes/10 minutes means your road side charging station needs a powerline able to handle more than a 90 kilowatt demand to recharge a single vehicle with a 20 percent reserve left in the "tank".
When do you fill your vehicle? In the above I assumed the driver pulled off when he had just under a 1/4 of a tank.
Someone mentioned atomic reactors and then the problem with the waste, if we allowed a few breeder reactors to reprocess the spent rods then the waste issues would be minor.
Yes I know the reprocessed fuel is relatively easy to turn into weapons grade material and at one time that was a good argument against building breeder reactors to convert the other reactor waste back into useable fuel, but given the spread of atomics in todays world it's now nearly a useless safety measure.
howard melton
God bless