| How would you solve the battery problem?
Posted: 11/6/2009 12:02:48 PM | There used to be a bunch of electronics geeks on the science forums. I am not sure if they are still here but I was thinking about the battery issue with electric vehicles.
The weak point is the battery storage level as well as how fast it can recharge.
The weight as well is an issue and length of charge.
I had a thought and was curious what others that may understand the technology better than I would have for a response.
Instead of a battery used in electric cars why not use a bank of capacitors instead?
Unless I am mistaken you can charge a bank of capacitors up pretty darn quickly.
but they also discharge pretty quickly as well.
However, what if a system was built that could make the energy stored within capacitors to stay within them longer by passing the electrons back and forth why draining off energy to be used to power the vehicle?
I can see it would be a pretty complex system that would need to have some pretty quick gate switching to make it work (If i used that term correctly)
My thought is this.. if you had capacitors instead of batteries the recharge time to be full would just be a few minutes to get those electrons into the capacitor loops.
So the cars would not need to have as far of a distance between recharges as batteries do.
a battery takes many hours to recharge so they would need long battery life. but if something took a few minutes to recharge and you could get 100 miles of travel distance out of it then that would likely still work pretty well for the majority of the users who would consider an electric vehicle.
Any thoughts? pitfalls to over come? or am i just plain wrong in my understanding of how a capacitor could be used? | |
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| How would you solve the battery problem?
Posted: 11/6/2009 3:34:15 PM |
There used to be a bunch of electronics geeks on the science forums. I am not sure if they are still here but I was thinking about the battery issue with electric vehicles.
I heard they found out there was porn on the Internet and have not been seen since.
Any thoughts? pitfalls to over come? or am i just plain wrong in my understanding of how a capacitor could be used?
The regular capacitor just can not hold enough power for long enough to work.
The Ultra / Super Capacitor is at 1/25 of what a battery can do but still not quite there.
There are some people at MIT* working on a new Super Capacitor that can match a batteries power.
From what I have read only issue holding them back is cost.
*Joel Schindall | |
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| How would you solve the battery problem?
Posted: 11/6/2009 3:46:02 PM | We can go to the moon but we are still using the same fuel for an old invention ….what’s the delay? Our engines are full of computer chips …. We have cruise control …. No need to keep the gas peddle pressed with our foot and yet we have not … or will not come up with a new way to fuel cars ….why is that?
Is it a Government control situation ... Lack of motivation or need ....what???
to Dreams: sorry I can't add or comment on your query regarding capacitors?¿ Personally I believe that batteries with super long life is the way to go and likely it's already possible just not being utilized.
Peace …..the FairyHealer | |
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| How would you solve the battery problem?
Posted: 11/6/2009 3:56:59 PM | We can go to the moon but we are still using the same fuel for an old invention
Because it works.
By that I mean it works for the people that earn the most $ off of it.
….what’s the delay?
Cost.
Until the cost of what we have no reaches a point where the alternatives become feasible or the alternatives becomes cheaper.
Our engines are full of computer chips …. We have cruise control …. No need to keep the gas peddle pressed with our foot and yet we have not …
Actually a good driver can achieve better gas mileage than cruise control.
or will not come up with a new way to fuel cars ….why is that?
Because someone lost the magic stick that you just wave and get a solution.
Is it a Government control situation ... Lack of motivation or need ....what???
If it was possible we would have it.
to Dreams: sorry I can't add or comment on your query regarding capacitors?¿ Personally I believe that batteries with super long life is the way to go and likely it's already possible just not being utilized.
So you think someone has the answer but they are juts holding on to it, because why? | |
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| How would you solve the battery problem?
Posted: 11/6/2009 4:19:14 PM | Capacitors - even the SuperCaps - are still rather large compared to batteries. And with very low internal resistance, a short-circuit can result in a rather spectacular display of electrical fire. 
One of the alternatives I've heard before (but would be *extremely* costly to implement) would be to bury current-carrying conductors in the roadbed - and have cars equipped with matching pickup coils. The vehicles would be powered by the grid, and the only time the batteries would be used would be if they went off the roads that were equipped that way. | |
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| How would you solve the battery problem?
Posted: 11/6/2009 4:30:10 PM | The problem with capacitors isn't the discarge rate. Rather as they discharge the voltage within them drops as well. So you need a lot more of them just to provide vehical range on par with conventional batteries. Which means such a power supply would cost and even weigh a whole lot more than current battery systems. However the plus side is they can near infinately be recharged and discharged without the process tearing them down (like conventinal lead/acid batteries).
There are other energy storage systems being investigated. One of the oldest is flywheel energy storage. Which was used in the early 1900s to provide energy for electric trolly cars. These are something like specialized electric motors/generators. Feed current into it and the core flywheel spins, remove the current and the inerta of the flywheel keeps it spinning allowing it to act like a generator. With modern advances (carbon fiber flywheel in a vaccume sealed houseing with magnetic bearings allowing it to reach many thousands of RPMs) this may prove to be a viable solution for metro vehical stop and go use. Plus side is it can be "charged" quickly. Down side is energy is only produced when the flywheel is spinning as well as spinning up the flywheel ("chargeing") so fast it explodes. | |
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| How would you solve the battery problem?
Posted: 11/6/2009 4:56:59 PM |
We can go to the moon but we are still using the same fuel for an old invention ….what’s the delay? Our engines are full of computer chips …. We have cruise control …. No need to keep the gas peddle pressed with our foot and yet we have not … or will not come up with a new way to fuel cars ….why is that?
Is it a Government control situation ... Lack of motivation or need ....what???
Gasoline is our primary vehical fuel because the ease of storage, safe to handle, relatively high yield of thermal energy contained within, and cost to produce and transport.
Early automobiles ran on a large variety of fuels. From steam to electric, gasoline, diesel and even ethanol. gasoline beat out early electic because even into the 1930s largely only citys had power grids, and with the crude batteries of the time limited electric vehical range to a few miles at best. Gasoline beat out ethanol mostly through prohibition shutting down distilleries and by the fact that great as ethanol is, it simply doesnt contain the thermal energy gasoline has (meaning lower MPG). Gasoline beat out diesel through pure economics, diesel engines require much higher compression ratios than gasoline or even ethanol engines do. That requires more robust and costly engine construction. Gasoline beat out steam just through ease of use (even with hand cranked engines it took less than a minute to get a gasoline car running...starting a steam car in the morning could take 20 to 30 minutes if not longer) as well as the potential danger of steam boiler explosions. | |
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| How would you solve the battery problem?
Posted: 11/6/2009 4:58:57 PM |
One of the alternatives I've heard before (but would be *extremely* costly to implement) would be to bury current-carrying conductors in the roadbed - and have cars equipped with matching pickup coils.
kinda like the race tracks as a kid slot cars basically.
Yeah that would be a big undertaking and not to shut down your thought but if we were going to go about wiring up roads i am thinking wiring them for electro magnetics would be a similar amount of resources yet have greater benefits because no motors would need to be in the cars but i am thinking that is going in a completely different direction... I would not care to be stuck on a track unable to decide for myself which way to go.
I prefer stearing and accelerating myself. One of the things I do not like about electric cars is they are TOO quiet. pedestrians would likely not look as well crossing streets due to using hearing as well to decide if a car is coming without looking sometimes.
As a kid we would put a card in the spokes of a bike so that the bike made noise. Im thinking electric cars would also need something similar to at least make them as loud as the avarage car on the road. | |
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| How would you solve the battery problem?
Posted: 11/6/2009 5:04:51 PM | To James:
Seems kinda odd that cars are such an old technology and so much has been “improved” upon and modified …all but the Fuel/GAS aspect …..? Just wondering thats all.
Peace, the FairyHealer | |
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| How would you solve the battery problem?
Posted: 11/6/2009 5:27:53 PM | Hey Milti
You referred to a flywheel spinning up to many thousands of rpm, and then that energy being used to propel vehicles. I follow Formual One racing closely, and this year the cars were encouraged to have what was called "KERS''; Kineteic Energy Recovery System. This was more or less foisted on them by the managment of the series wanting to appear "green", and possible coming up with a technology that could be transferred to street car use...........
What a EFFING joke it turned out to be. Nobody even tried to use a flywheel recovery type of system, and a little less than half of the teams had systems where by the braking forces would be used to turn a generator, that charged a system, that could then be used to give the cars about an 80hp boost. Considering that these cars make upwords of 800 hp, the amount of money spent was horrific for the amount of gain. It was really a joke at first, because the cars that had the KERS just didn't work right. One of the mechanics was very badly shocked and had to go to the hospital because he touched a car that wasn't properly grounded. When the drivers exited the cars, they would jump, so as to not even come close to touching the car and the ground at the same time.
Now this is the pinacle of automotive design, with no expense spared. These teams routinely spend over 200 million per year, and that doesn't include drivers salaries.... yet, the teams decided among themselves that none would use the KERS systems next year......... just not worth it.
The only system that seems to make sense is where the car is propelled by an electric motor, with the attendant short range, usually under 100 miles, but there is a gas powered motor that drives a generator, actually an alternator, that puts part of the charge back into the batteries as the car travels to increase the range to about 350 miles. During that time period, they use on average about 3 or so gallons. So, effectivley, these cars get about 100 mpg, and if you don't go long distances, you just charge it up at night in the garage. What makes these motors so efficient is that they are running at a constant rpm, so it is easy to tune them to be very efficient, to make a long story short.
Paul K | |
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| How would you solve the battery problem?
Posted: 11/6/2009 5:53:57 PM |
One of the things I do not like about electric cars is they are TOO quiet. pedestrians would likely not look as well crossing streets due to using hearing as well to decide if a car is coming without looking sometimes.
Yeah, I agree, the lack of noise is a problem.
Back in college we turned an ordinary turbo off a car into a minature turbine engine. Crude but worked well. And I think something like this could be a potential solution...small turbine driving a generator in a hybrid automobile. Down side is you are still useing fuel, and it takes a little time to start it up and shut it down. Plus sides are the wide variety of fuels that could be used (even diesel), and its efficiency in useing them (better than conventional engines), as well as noise they make (which can be muffled). This system could even be modular, swappable for conventional battery packs should the need arrise.
And the best current solution I think for electic car power supply would be standardized modular battery packs that can quickly be swapped out at specialised service stations. Like the quick oil change places now. you drive in and your battery pack is swapped out for a freashly charged one. the station then recharges the one that was in your car and swaps it with someone else later. Not unlike propane tanks used in home grills...Provided enough of these stations, electric vehical range and "recharge" time would be practicaly on par with current gasoline vehicals as well as haveing far more stable "refueling costs". The stations themselves could even use solar and wind power to reduce their cost in rechargeing all those battery packs. | |
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| How would you solve the battery problem?
Posted: 11/6/2009 6:09:19 PM | Hye Milti
The problem with turbines is that they turn very high rpm, and God help you if one the size that would be needed to turn a sufficiently large alternator ever got hit in an accidnet, and the blades started disintigrating at 225,000 RPM............ The second major problem is what do you do with the exahust heat. If you put the slightest resistance on turbine exhaust, you kill its efficiency. In order to quiet it down, and cool the exhaust heat down enough, you would kill the power it makes.
The problem with standardized modular batteries, is that they STILL won't bet you farther than 100 miles. That means 3 stops from Los Angeles to Las Vegas...... no thanks.......................
As far as wind power....... there is a freeway from the LA area to Palm Springs. You drive through an area that is always windy, and sure enough there are THOUSANDS of these ugly wind generation stations....... most of them not running.... Why? Because they're finding out the hard way that they cost more to make and install and maintain than they get back.................................
Bummer, dude.
Paul K | |
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| How would you solve the battery problem?
Posted: 11/6/2009 6:49:58 PM | Hey, Paul
"Now this is the pinacle of automotive design, with no expense spared." - To win races.
They wern't spending millions to develop long view technologies. They spend millions to meet the demands of the rules "foisted" upon them in a limited time frame leading up to that season. It goes without saying that there would be problems...Everything in formula one (and engineering in general) had its teething problems at one time or another. No reason to give up on it because some limited focus time pressure application failed to produce significant results.
As for the system that makes sense, its a really old idea that has been used in trains for decades now | |
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| How would you solve the battery problem?
Posted: 11/6/2009 7:00:17 PM | ^^^^^^
Agreed. Although the reason for using such a system in trains is different than would be for automotive use. For trains, they needed a system a way to get the enormous loads moving from a standstill, and there were no clutches up to the task, and it just so happens that the maximum torque for an electric motor is at ZERO rpm. So, they make the power with a diesel generator, and drive the train with electric motors.
The problem that car manufacturers have today is that it is very hard to get the diesels to meet the new standards. A diesel motor would be ideal in such an application. You could make it quiet enough,and it would last just about forever. I am reading that Audi has new technology that is applicable to street diesels. They are taking it from their race winning diesels............
The KERS systems that were foisted on Formula One were nothing more than hybrid type sytems that are in the new crop of hybrid street cars adapted to F 1 use. The powers that be were just trying to be politically correct............. One more instance where political correctness raised its ugly head.
Paul K | |
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| How would you solve the battery problem?
Posted: 11/6/2009 8:02:04 PM |
The powers that be were just trying to be politically correct............. One more instance where political correctness raised its ugly head.
Don't you just hate political correctness ?
It's vomit inducing already.
My girlfriend teaches her classroom kids on how to make a good 'snowperson' in their front yards in the wintertime. Not 'snowman', but 'snowperson'.
Ugh. I think a little bit of upchuck just hit the back of my tongue.
Sorry for the temporary off-topic interlude..... and now back to your regularly scheduled programming.
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| How would you solve the battery problem?
Posted: 11/6/2009 8:30:37 PM | The basic problem is storing the energy. A gas or diesel engine car only needs to carry the fuel. Its doesn't need to carry the oxygen or the exhaust. A battery carries all the reactants both before and after its expended.
Efficiency plagues all thermal engines like gas, diesel, gas turbine, sterling, steam, etc. The aforementioned advantage of the fuel makes up for this problem. To read about it, look up Carnot cycle. Electrics don't have this problem and usually get 5 times the efficiency. For batteries to compete with gas, they don't have to have the same storage volume or weight efficiency but consider filling a gas tank with both the gas and enough pure oxygen to burn the gas. You have a very serious bomb. That is what you get with batteries, capacitors, flywheels etc. that stores that much energy. That is why air breathing fuel cells make sense. They need air to release the energy. Hydrogen has been the chosen leader but it has lots of problems. Personally, I prefer metal-air batteries and skip the home recharging. Energy packs would be suitcase sized and sold at Walmart etc. Expended batteries would be collected there as well and reprocessed in high efficiency bulk facilities. A secondary smaller battery or capacitor system would be used to recapture braking energy. Its been trialed successfully but only with a city bus.
Road embedded power has safety and efficiency issues. Compressed air has efficiency issues from the heat and cooling from compression and decompression but is cheap to build. | |
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| How would you solve the battery problem?
Posted: 11/6/2009 8:46:41 PM | Len,
sort of like a trolley, or cable car, runs on a rail/wire and maybe add batteries/capacitors for the times no rail/wire is available.
it could be "sold" to the mass transit sector during development the same way natural was.
could this be feasible- long term?
Dale | |
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| How would you solve the battery problem?
Posted: 11/6/2009 8:56:41 PM | Hi dale
I remember when the television cable companies put cables in front of almost everybodies house to get cable TV. Then numbers they said it cost was staggering to the point where if it wasn't subsidized, it wouldn't have happened.. Can you even imagine the cost of what you propose................ AND, because it would be the local/state/fed govt doing this, can you imagine the boondoggle it would become?
Paul K | |
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| How would you solve the battery problem?
Posted: 11/7/2009 12:36:06 PM | Dale...
Essentially correct, except that the power lines would be buried in the roadway instead of running overhead... and the cars would have induction pickup-coils underneath the floor.
The problems are twofold - there's the efficiency issue that Dave pointed out (I don't know offhand what the efficiency of an air-core transformer is... which is basically the principal behind the idea...) and tearing up the roadways to embed the power cables would be horribly expensive.
Unlike natural-gas or biodiesel buses, there would be an absolutely *horrendous* initial outlay of capital to get the project started. Even hydrogen, for all its faults, would likely be cheaper to install.
I seriously doubt that anyone would be willing to plunk down that kind of money for a system that would be very limited initially...  | |
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| How would you solve the battery problem?
Posted: 11/7/2009 1:04:47 PM |
The problem with turbines is that they turn very high rpm, and God help you if one the size that would be needed to turn a sufficiently large alternator ever got hit in an accidnet, and the blades started disintigrating at 225,000 RPM............ The second major problem is what do you do with the exahust heat. If you put the slightest resistance on turbine exhaust, you kill its efficiency. In order to quiet it down, and cool the exhaust heat down enough, you would kill the power it makes.
Turbine operation speed is basied on the turbine design. exahust temperatures can be adapted for cogeneration greatly increaseing efficientcy. Small gas turbine generators have been on the market for decades. Units roughly 3 feet square are often used to provide both electricty and heating in arctic climates. the Aerospace industry uses even smaller units to provide jetengine starting systems, drive neumatic and hydrolic pumps and cabin ventilation systems. Turbine engines have a long track record of fixed RPM industrial use, and been on the "drawing board" from the inception of hybrid automobiles.
An experiment from a decade ago: http://www.autoworld.com/news/GMC/Series_Hybrid.htm | |
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| How would you solve the battery problem?
Posted: 11/7/2009 2:06:14 PM | Hey Uncle Milti.....
:) :) :) Thanks for the link to the GMC Hybrid. I didn't find in the write up if the 350 mile range was solely on the electricity generated by the turbine, or if at 350 miles, the batteries had to be charged. If it was solely on the power from the turbine, I would say they have something there. That means that with the 6.5 gallon fuel tank, running 350 miles would average about 54 mpg. The way things are going, that is not too impressive.
Since this was a decade ago, I am sure that they have made progress in all fronts of this technology.
Paul K | |
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| How would you solve the battery problem?
Posted: 11/7/2009 3:04:21 PM | From wikipeadia:
"The APU(turbine generator) started automatically when the battery charge dropped below 40% and delivered 40 kW of electrical power, enough to achieve speeds up to 80 mph (128.8 km/h) and to return the car's 44 NiMH cells to a 50% charge level.
A fuel tank capacity of 6.5 US gal (24.6 L; 5.4 imp gal) and fuel economy of 60 mpg-US (3.9 L/100 km; 72 mpg-imp) to 100 mpg-US (2.4 L/100 km; 120 mpg-imp) in hybrid mode, depending on the driving conditions, allowed for a highway range of more than 390 miles (627.6 km). The car accelerated to 0-60 mph (96.6 km/h) in 9 seconds."
So its turning on at 40%. Generates the power to drive the car and recharge the batteries. Then shuts off at 50% charge. and the cycle repeats when the batteries drop back to 40%.
Keep in mind the EV1 had a range of about 80-100 miles on batteries alone. This extends it by a factor of three without a significant weight penalty. (a conventional generator capable of 40kw is easily 4+ times as heavy as that APU unit and much larger to boot) | |
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| How would you solve the battery problem?
Posted: 11/7/2009 3:54:00 PM |
Gasoline is our primary vehical fuel because the ease of storage, safe to handle, relatively high yield of thermal energy contained within, and cost to produce and transport. Actually, in the last 15 years, Brits have discovered that you can use cooking oil for exactly the same purpose, only it's much, much cheaper. What's more, because you can use USED cooking oil, it's free. But for some reason, the UK government seems to frown on using it. | |
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