home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- Xref: sparky sci.electronics:20999 sci.energy:6206 rec.autos.tech:16823
- Path: sparky!uunet!olivea!decwrl!adobe!pngai
- From: pngai@adobe.com (Phil Ngai)
- Newsgroups: sci.electronics,sci.energy,rec.autos.tech
- Subject: Re: Flywheel batteries as EV power source
- Message-ID: <1992Dec17.173322.5161@adobe.com>
- Date: 17 Dec 92 17:33:22 GMT
- References: <1992Dec15.004956.465@mtu.edu> <1992Dec15.194558.2556@adobe.com> <1992Dec16.192456.6261@news.cs.brandeis.edu>
- Sender: usenet@adobe.com (USENET NEWS)
- Organization: Adobe Systems Incorporated
- Lines: 34
-
- In article <1992Dec16.192456.6261@news.cs.brandeis.edu> andyh@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu (Andrew J. Huang) writes:
- >2. There are several places for the energy to go during an explosion.
- >Since the energy is kinetic, a lot of it will end up as particle
- >velocity. Some will dissipate into the air as air friction (some hot
- >air as a side effect). A quantity of energy will go into the
- >mechanical breaking of the flywheel disk itself. Some more will go
- >into the penetration of the flywheel housing. What residual energy
- >escapes these will have to be determined by testing.
-
- I could describe the explosion of a few sticks of dynamite
- in just about the same way.
-
- Question for the science impaired: how does the energy in a
- stick of dynamite compare with a gallon of gasoline?
-
- >3. You don't need to destroy cars to test the safety/danger of
- >exploding flywheels. You just take a flywheel, spin it to 10 times
- >its rated capacity, and give it both barrels of a 10ga shotgun loaded
-
- Am I supposed to believe these things will have a 900% safety margin.
-
- >The potential for these IS tremendous. As I remember, the power
- >output of a flywheel is roughly "equivalent to a V8" in a much smaller
- >volume and weight. Couple this with a super efficient small engine
- >running full time at maximum efficiency, minimum pollution to keep the
- >flywheel "charged" and you can get power, economy, cleanliness and range.
-
- I'm starting to think you are speaking of a system where the flywheel
- is just a small battery for a vehicle with an on-board IC engine and a
- fuel tank. Most people who talk about flywheel systems intend for the
- flywheel to store ALL the energy. No gasoline, etc.
-
- --
- My opinions are my own.
-