EEStor news

Point out news stories, on the net or in mainstream media, related to polywell fusion.

Moderators: tonybarry, MSimon

Aero
Posts: 1200
Joined: Mon Jun 30, 2008 4:36 am
Location: 92111

Post by Aero »

alexjrgreen wrote:
MSimon wrote:1.5 MT vehicle. 200 mi range (a little short but WTH) 1,500 Kg * 200 = 300KWh. Delivered in 1 hr. $150,000 capital. Delivered in 6 minutes. $1.5 million.

Cutting that in 1/2 (25 cents per KWh) is not going to help much.

It will all be unicorns, rainbows, and candy mountains by and by.
Battery replacement is surely easier than superfast battery charging?
There are down sides any way you look at it. I can see waiting in line at the service station because there are no fully charged batteries available. It is expensive to install excess charging capacity in the service stations. Having extra batteries on hand is also expensive. There will be times when battery demand exceeds supply at a given service station. Same thing for charging plugs.
Aero

MSimon
Posts: 14334
Joined: Mon Jul 16, 2007 7:37 pm
Location: Rockford, Illinois
Contact:

Post by MSimon »

alexjrgreen wrote:
MSimon wrote:1.5 MT vehicle. 200 mi range (a little short but WTH) 1,500 Kg * 200 = 300KWh. Delivered in 1 hr. $150,000 capital. Delivered in 6 minutes. $1.5 million.

Cutting that in 1/2 (25 cents per KWh) is not going to help much.

It will all be unicorns, rainbows, and candy mountains by and by.
Battery replacement is surely easier than superfast battery charging?
Good idea. Now what do you do when the battery for your vehicle is not in stock?

And you still haven't cut down on the capital outlay enough for good economics. You need to have $2,000 in capital for every $10 worth of electricity you plan to sell. OK you have a good customer and you can sell that electricity 52 times a year. Say $500 in sales. But let us say you can exchange a given pack 4 times a week. That is now $2,000 a year sales for $2,000 in capital. But the batteries wear out. So the cost of the replacement cycle has to be added in.

And what do you do when every one wants to "gas up" on the way home from work? Fine, You hire people to manage the exchanges. That kills the economics.

I have a bright idea. Why not drill for oil and work on the electric car concept some more. Hybrids seem like a good transition option.

And we should be working on ways to make gasoline with algae, and coal, and fusion/fission neutrons, and whatever. Maybe laser rays. Or direct current.

Because liquid fuels are going to be with us for a very long time.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

blaisepascal
Posts: 191
Joined: Thu Jun 05, 2008 3:57 am
Location: Ithaca, NY
Contact:

Post by blaisepascal »

MSimon wrote: And we should be working on ways to make gasoline with algae, and coal, and fusion/fission neutrons, and whatever. Maybe laser rays. Or direct current.

Because liquid fuels are going to be with us for a very long time.
Assuming that we have working polywell systems, and thus "cheap", clean, electricity, are there any good, efficient methods of "unburning" CO2 and H2O to get hydrocarbons and/or liquid fuels?

Personally, I'm intrigued by redox flow batteries, but I'm uncertain about the practicalities of recharging. Nominally, it's as simple as pumping out the discharged electrolyte and pumping in the charged electrolyte, but how do you pay for the difference in charge between a partially discharged electrolyte and a fully charged one; how do you recharge and reuse the electrolyte such that you can sell fully charged electrolyte while collecting used electrolyte?

BenTC
Posts: 410
Joined: Tue Jun 09, 2009 4:54 am

Post by BenTC »

MSimon wrote:Two capacitors of equal size. One charged to V the other at zero.

Energy = 1/2 CV^2. After connection you have two capacitors charged to 1/2 V. The total energy = (1/2*(2C)*(1/2V)^2 = 1/2 what you started with. You can do better with a DC to DC converter. About 85% to 95%. But you still have component capacity problems. And expense.

Where did the energy go? Let us see if some one knows. Any of you physics students care to guess? BTW for the sake of the question all conductors have zero resistance.
That leaves the conductors having inductance. The current through an inductor cannot be discontinuous. Immediately after connecting the two capacitors, there is no movement of charge. The potential difference between the two capacitors, across the inductor, causes charge to start to flow. The charge flowing through the conductor builds up a magnetic field. When the voltages on the two capacitors are equal, there is no voltage across the inductance, and so the current doesn't change, and the established magnetic field continues to push charge into the second capacitor. Now a negative potential is established across the inductance, slowing down the current, but not stopping it until the first capacitor is completely discharged into the second.

The capacitors and conductor inductance have formed a resonant circuit where the whole of the charge is transfered to each capacitor in turn. Each capacitor goes alternately from 0 volts to V volts, having the full energy. At in between voltages, energy is stored losslessly in the magnetic field of the conductor inductance. However at each oscillation, the moving charge will generate electromagnetic radiation such that the inductance pushes a little less charge into the destination capacitor, leaving a bit charge behind in the source capacitor. This goes on until the charges in the capacitors are equal, and the "lost" energy has been fully radiated into the environment.

KitemanSA
Posts: 6179
Joined: Sun Sep 28, 2008 3:05 pm
Location: OlyPen WA

Post by KitemanSA »

I am kind of fond of the metal-air batteries. Just keep adding new metal and draining the MOx into a sump for recycling. Tweek the electrolyte to keep things moving smoothly, and off you go.

Aluminum-Air would be wonderful!

seedload
Posts: 1062
Joined: Fri Feb 08, 2008 8:16 pm

Post by seedload »

Aren't charging times coming way down where we are talking about charging times in the order of minutes as opposed to hours?

Isn't a gas station for an electric vehicle nothing more than a metered outlet with a credit card slot?

Wouldn't the model be to install these 'gas stations' in parking lots of places like shopping malls, diners, rest stops, and your workplace?

We wouldn't stop and fill up any more. We would fill up any time we stopped.

For long trips, we take a five or ten minute break to get some coffee and take a leak every four hours or so. I guess rest stops would get a little bigger.

Basically, I imagine that gas stations as we know them go away.

TallDave
Posts: 3140
Joined: Wed Jul 25, 2007 7:12 pm
Contact:

Post by TallDave »

Assuming that we have working polywell systems, and thus "cheap", clean, electricity, are there any good, efficient methods of "unburning" CO2 and H2O to get hydrocarbons and/or liquid fuels?
Yes...ish. If you have cheap energy you can turn waste biomass into fuel pretty efficiently. Bussard actually wrote a paper on this.

blaisepascal
Posts: 191
Joined: Thu Jun 05, 2008 3:57 am
Location: Ithaca, NY
Contact:

Post by blaisepascal »

seedload wrote:Aren't charging times coming way down where we are talking about charging times in the order of minutes as opposed to hours?
MSimon suggested a rough working figure of 1 Wh/kg mi, which would mean that a car the size of a Smart ForTwo (curb weight 730kg) with one driver and stuff (figure 70kg) would need 80kWh for a range of 100mi.

A heavy-duty residential circuit (for an electric range or electric dryer) runs about 20A at 240V, say 5000kW. That's 16 hours to charge a Smart ForTwo sized car for 100mi.

To drop that charge time to minutes (say 16 minutes) would require increasing the charging power by a factor of 60, which could be done by going to higher voltages, or going to higher currents, or both. But 240A at 12.5kV is not something that anyone wants to play with.
Isn't a gas station for an electric vehicle nothing more than a metered outlet with a credit card slot?

Wouldn't the model be to install these 'gas stations' in parking lots of places like shopping malls, diners, rest stops, and your workplace?

We wouldn't stop and fill up any more. We would fill up any time we stopped.
That works fine for the short-haul commuter and in-town driver. It doesn't work fine for the long-haul driver. In some parts of the US it isn't unheard of for the daily commute to be 50mi one way, however.
For long trips, we take a five or ten minute break to get some coffee and take a leak every four hours or so. I guess rest stops would get a little bigger.
Potentially much longer.
Basically, I imagine that gas stations as we know them go away.

parallel
Posts: 1131
Joined: Wed Aug 27, 2008 8:24 pm
Location: Philadelphia, PA

Post by parallel »

Weir & Nelson applied for this basic patent in March 2006. The attached pdf file shows Nelson’s answer to the patent office dated Nov 6th 2009. http://www.theeestory.com/files/11369255_2_.pdf

In his response, under oath, he states that they discovered primary particles of composition modified barium titanate having a dielectric constant greater than 33,000 and breakdown voltage of greater than 6000V …. With an unexpectedly high relative permittivity with low variance between -55C and 125C.

So, three years later they are still waiting for the patent and it is probably necessary to have a patent in order to get appropriate loans for setting up major production lines etc.

KitemanSA
Posts: 6179
Joined: Sun Sep 28, 2008 3:05 pm
Location: OlyPen WA

Post by KitemanSA »

blaisepascal wrote: Assuming that we have working polywell systems, and thus "cheap", clean, electricity, are there any good, efficient methods of "unburning" CO2 and H2O to get hydrocarbons and/or liquid fuels?
The NRL is doing work to turn CO2 into liquid fuel. See:
viewtopic.php?p=24218&highlight=nrl#24218

By the way, if you want the paper (not too much in it) send your eddress to my PM.

dnavas
Posts: 84
Joined: Sun Nov 11, 2007 3:59 am

Post by dnavas »

blaisepascal wrote:MSimon suggested a rough working figure of 1 Wh/kg mi, which would mean that a car the size of a Smart ForTwo (curb weight 730kg) with one driver and stuff (figure 70kg) would need 80kWh for a range of 100mi.
Pretty pessimistic. The Tesla is more like 1100-1200kg and gets a (very practical) 150mi range on a battery somewhat more like 50kwh. Aircon on my house is 50A 240V, so pulling 40A x 240V isn't out of the question, and my recollection is that Tesla can handle twice the current if it's available. Of course, the last N% for battery recharging is done somewhat more slowly than bulk charging, but....

Weight is really only one variable. For high-speed driving (the only kind where range per day is really an issue), there are other practicalities at work. Wasn't it Solectria's Sunrise that had some extreme range to it way back in the 90s? Like >300mi on <30kwh?

:shrug:
A heavy-duty residential circuit (for an electric range or electric dryer) runs about 20A at 240V, say 5000kW.
FWIW, I believe my oven is 40A, and my dryer is 30A, but I wouldn't swear to it....

MSimon
Posts: 14334
Joined: Mon Jul 16, 2007 7:37 pm
Location: Rockford, Illinois
Contact:

Post by MSimon »

blaisepascal,

240 V @ 20A = 5 KW. 80 KWh takes 16 hrs.

Ben,

Yep. Radiation.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

randomly
Posts: 11
Joined: Tue Nov 10, 2009 1:03 pm

Post by randomly »

blaisepascal wrote: MSimon suggested a rough working figure of 1 Wh/kg mi, which would mean that a car the size of a Smart ForTwo (curb weight 730kg) with one driver and stuff (figure 70kg) would need 80kWh for a range of 100mi.
This is much too conservative an estimate.
The Tesla and Volt get about 0.13 Wh/kg mi

4-5 miles per kwh for an electric car is a reasonable estimate.

Personally I would stick with the gas/diesel onboard generator for extended trips and use the gas station infrastructure. It greatly reduces the size and cost of the required battery, avoids rapid charging problems, and yet a battery sized large enough to cover daily commutes (40-60 miles) means 80-90% of all miles driven will be on electric. That does not include freight trucking.

MSimon
Posts: 14334
Joined: Mon Jul 16, 2007 7:37 pm
Location: Rockford, Illinois
Contact:

Post by MSimon »

randomly wrote:
blaisepascal wrote: MSimon suggested a rough working figure of 1 Wh/kg mi, which would mean that a car the size of a Smart ForTwo (curb weight 730kg) with one driver and stuff (figure 70kg) would need 80kWh for a range of 100mi.
This is much too conservative an estimate.
The Tesla and Volt get about 0.13 Wh/kg mi

4-5 miles per kwh for an electric car is a reasonable estimate.

Personally I would stick with the gas/diesel onboard generator for extended trips and use the gas station infrastructure. It greatly reduces the size and cost of the required battery, avoids rapid charging problems, and yet a battery sized large enough to cover daily commutes (40-60 miles) means 80-90% of all miles driven will be on electric. That does not include freight trucking.
A production car is not going to spend the money required to get the weight reductions and motor performance Tesla did. And that number might represent out of the door designed number. i.e. not counting 30% reserve for battery life, reserve for battery aging, reserve for production tolerances etc.

Tesla may not need all those reserves or can shave them by being basically hand built.

But I do agree hybrids are the way to go for at least 10 to 20 years. Shake down the electrics and introduce them gradually.

My guess is that we will still be using liquid fuels in very large volumes 100 years from now.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

MirariNefas
Posts: 354
Joined: Thu Oct 09, 2008 3:57 am

Post by MirariNefas »

blaisepascal wrote:
Isn't a gas station for an electric vehicle nothing more than a metered outlet with a credit card slot?

Wouldn't the model be to install these 'gas stations' in parking lots of places like shopping malls, diners, rest stops, and your workplace?

We wouldn't stop and fill up any more. We would fill up any time we stopped.
That works fine for the short-haul commuter and in-town driver. It doesn't work fine for the long-haul driver. In some parts of the US it isn't unheard of for the daily commute to be 50mi one way, however.
But what percentage of the market is that? If small, just do something impractical.

I don't like the battery swapping scheme. I've seen some good arguments (some of them here) against it. Still, if every day to work I just need the overnight battery charge, I don't need to swap batteries often. If I have to do that every time I take a road trip, it doesn't bother me much.

For the guy who commutes 50 miles one way, he needs at the very least a battery which goes 50 miles on a charge and recharges in the 9 hour workday. In reality, all-electric vehicles are being advocated as having 100 mile+ ranges, so he's covered. At some point higher than that though, you end up having people who need special arrangements like battery swapping. And if that's a low enough percentage of the market... who cares?

The fraction of a percent of commuters who go 80 miles and stay at work for too few hours to recharge that already lead strange and somewhat impractical lives. Why should they expect the future to cater to them? But they'll still have options.

PS exceptions made for special categories. Special vehicles like freight, off road vehicles, utility vehicles, etc, shouldn't be expected to go electric. But they might have to get their deisel fuel delivered or accept the inconvenience of uncommon, more expensive gas stations. And maybe those rare long distance commuters will buy deisel electric hybrids and do this too.

Post Reply