Flywheel Energy Storage: Steel Yourself For Carbon 149
Red Leader. writes: "Hey. Here's an interesting article on flywheels and the future of batteries from Wired Magazine (8.05).
Nothing super-promising yet (as always; vapourware) -- but down the road, these could make your laptop 'spin' a little longer." I'm a big fan of simple machines, and flywheels are one of my favorites. The mention of carbon nanotubes is especially interesting -- it'd be neat to see that technology enter the mainstream.
Re:How do the bearings work? (Score:1)
Re:Coriolis Effect (Score:1)
Free energy from the earth (Score:1)
Kinetic Energy and Safety (Score:1)
Paired flywheels might balance out the precessional forces under normal conditions. (Though slopes of up to %26 occur in my city, and slopes in excess of %15 are very, very common.) But paired flywheels would actually have more failure modes to account for.
It seems to me that any flywheel in a vehicle would have to be engineered to safely return to a zero energy state under any and all conditions. I cannot imagine how that could be done.
Re:Two birds with one stone? (Score:1)
I know what you mean... (Score:2)
Replace the glass disk with the flywheel, and the knife edge wheel with a motor driven rubber wheel - allow it to move in/out via some mechanism (no need to move the motor, allow the motor to remain stationary, and move the rubber drive wheel along the shaft, radially to the center of the wheel).
That should make it clearer...
Re:Flywheel problems (and solutions thereunto...) (Score:2)
Re:Won't work in a laptop (Score:1)
The way I read it putting them in a vacuum is't common practice, although I may very well be wrong on that. Still, how do you get a vacuum chamber w/ magnets & a spinning disk that has enough mass into something less than an inch thick?
Gyroscopic effects don't matter. (Score:1)
Re:!gyro (Score:2)
Check out http://www.amsat.org/ and
http://myweb.magicnet.net/~phase3d/newpics/sola
(They've got lots of good technical info on how they solved lots of the technical aspects of keeping a satellite up... Even heat dissapation is complicated without air.)
Re:flywheels instead of generators (Score:2)
Re:Flywheel Cars (Score:1)
Re:Flywheel Cars (Score:1)
furthermore, immediately after the non-ideal impact of a bullet, the energy dissipates as a variety of things (heat, kinetic, sound, etc) but the momentum is strictly conserved.
as far as the relativistic effects you describe (which would not really impact our flywheel), my memory of that stuff is much more fuzzy, but momentum remains different from energy.
Re:How do the bearings work? (Score:2)
In a well-designed system, the manetic bearings will not be affected by the motor/generator. The respective magnetic circuits can be well-isolated from one another.
How they measure rotor position for feedback to the magnetic bearings.
Rotor position can be measured in a number of ways, including capacitive, inductive and (probably) optical sensors (although this one would make me nervous). If you're really clever, you can combine an inductive sensor with the force coils for the mag-bearings and save yourself a set of coils, but this is tricky. Practical systems can measure rotor displacement (known in the field as 'runout') to a fraction of a mil (1/1000").
If it's a motor/generator, there must be a rotating magnet. Is it intregated with the flywheel, or attached to the side, or what?
There need not be a permanent magnet in a motor/generator... see induction motor, synchronous reluctance motor, etc. In fact, there are compelling reasons NOT to include rotating permanent magnets in a flywheel, such as elimination of parasitic losses due to eddy currents in motor/generator windings. However, some systems do incorporate permanent magnets.
- j
PS: These things are EXTREMELY tough in practice to make work... there are engineering challeges in many different disciplines that need to be solved simultaneously, which is probably why no one has gotten one to work reliably and economically yet (despite the conceptual simplicity).
Flywheel Cars (Score:4)
Consider a car with a flywheel in it. If the flywheel lies in the horizontal plane, its axis of rotation (and, thus, its moment of inertia) is vertical. If such a car were to turn on a flat road, nothing would happen. But if this car were to drive onto a ramp, the flywheel acts like a gyroscope and would cause the car to violently turn to the left or right.
Likewise, if the flywheel is oriented so that the axis is horizontal, any turn to the left or right would cause the car's nose or rear to pluge into the ground. The exact direction would depend on the direction of rotation.
What am I missing in this account? Am I simply wrong to think that the precessional force would be so strong? I haven't checked any numbers for myself, so it could be that the effect is sufficiently weak. Indeed, the bus that was described in the article didn't seem to flip over. Of course, it was just using the flywheels as temporary storage for acceleration in combination with hybrid power (right?). So perhaps its flywheels are smaller than the ones I'm envisioning as replacements for the batteries in modern purely electric cars.
The solution that I see is to place two counter-rotating flywheels right next to each other so that the total moment of inertia is zero. There would be tremendous stresses on the support structure for the flywheels, but the sum moment of inertia is zero.
Tom Kornack
Won't work in a laptop (Score:1)
To increase the amount stored, you can make the wheel heavier, or spin it faster.
Seems to me that there's only three ways to power a laptop w/ a flywheel:
Even with a Crusoe chip I don't see this being practical.
Re:Two birds with one stone? (Score:2)
Actually, I'm most intesteted in a clockworks-driven laptop power supply. I've seen spring powered flashlights - it seems silly, but consider how useful one would be during a prolonged power outage. No batteries needed. A wind-up laptop would be a wonderful thing...crank that sucker!
excelent (Score:1)
My
Quux26
Re:Won't work in a laptop (Score:1)
...and of course the gyroscopic effects.
Earth's Spin and Water Redistribution (Score:1)
Tom Kornack
Re:Flywheel Cars (Score:3)
They also use the wheel's own momentum to power the electromagnets used to suspend the flywheel in its chamber, which I thought was rather elegant.
Re:Scientific American had an article on this.. (Score:1)
It's a trivial issue.
Re:Flywheel Cars (Score:1)
Re:Flywheel problems (and solutions thereunto...) (Score:1)
Re:Flywheel Cars (Score:1)
To paraphrase a popular Pontiac automobile commercial tagline, "slower is better" in Ellis' view. His PowerBeam flywheel, operates at half the speed of the Oakridge device. Of course, this means it stores only a quarter of the energy, but it also produces only a quarter of the stress on the device's components.
As for the axis problem, counterrotinting does solve this, in the same way it solves the torsional problem when you spin the flywheels up. Say you have two flywheels, each rotating in opposite directions, and they are encased in a sturdy sheilding material. The angular momentum of flywheel A is X N*m/s along the k-hat direction, the angular momentum of flywheel B is -X N*m/s in the k-hat direction. If flywheel A is bolted securely to flywheel B, the net angular momentum of the system is the sum of flywheel A and flywheel B which is 0. Now, youre right that when you turn that forces will be generated, A and B will try to precess in opposite directions and tear themselves apart, but as long as you have your wheels cases bolted together well enough, and your magnetic bearings are strong enough, it shoudnt be a problem. also, if A doesnt have the same mass or rpm's as B, youll have turning problems too, but were assuming that the flywheels are identical and have the same rpms.
On the other hand, if you used gimbals, you could make one kick ass vehicle, that would be able to turn on a dime, you could replace the conventional front wheels with just one big roller, that could rotate freely, and use the gyroscopic efect to relace friction as the rotating mechanisim, but I digress.
Carbon Nanotubes (Score:4)
Re:Coriolis Effect (Score:1)
For the outside, yes. But for the bearings these wheels run in, the forces would be quite real. So even if you don't feel it on the outside, the bearings and mounting frames that hold the 2 wheels will have to be able to take the highest possible forces plus a safety margin. You do not want a full powered flywheel to break loose, you really do not want this to happen...
Awsome laptop giga-power! (Score:1)
Quake 3 would FLY!!!!!
Re:I recall (Score:1)
Really hard Sci-Fi. Weird stuff. Although the literary quality is nowhere near, say a Iain Banks or Gibson, the Sci part of it is impressive.
Does anyone know about more Sci-Fi novels written by this man?
Re:Carbon Nanotubes (Score:1)
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Coriolis Effect (Score:1)
Does anyone remember "Shipstones" [wegrokit.com] from Heinlein's books? They were a super-efficient non-lossy energy storage unit, which were so sophisticated in design that the inventor didn't even bother to get a patent, because (supposedly) they were almost impossible to reverse-engineer.
Heh; well, you can't be right about everything, I guess...
Midnight Sun Generator (Score:2)
Re:Coriolis Effect (Score:1)
Wasn't that what IBM said?
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Re:Flywheel Cars (Score:1)
You're correct (the above example works), with reference to the system, from a point of view outside the system. But each of the counterrotating parts creates its own separate angular momentum, and the axle or frame that you do the adding with (in this example, our hands and bodies connected by the earth) has to be one strong MF to handle the kind of changes in angular momentum that go with rotating the axis of flywheels that can run a car... And you have the problem of coming up with bearings that take that stress without burning up or wobbling.
Sorry, I remain skeptical that such a system is practical for those kinds of flywheels.
Two birds with one stone? (Score:2)
One other thing... I'll be really impressed if they manage to make the same spinning disk do double-duty as both hard drive platter and flywheel.
Flywheel problems (and solutions thereunto...) (Score:4)
Pardon the silly title.
yes, even the smallest flywheel has gyroscopic precession problems. Yes there is a danger that they might shatter and shoot out lots of nasty fragments. Then again, your typical battery can spontaneously burst into flames, spew acid all over the place, and generally trash your surroundings at the drop of the hat. I don't see too many peole complaining about those problems.
The precession problem with flywheels can be almost completely negated by using two counter-rotating flywheels. yes, I am aware that there will be some problems with movement along the Z-axis, but this is managable in instances where there is little Z-movement (such as cars).
Furthermore, the heat problem is significantly reduces (in fact, almost eliminated) if the flywheel is contained in a sealed vacuum shell. For safety's sake, making this shell from something like kevlar would reduce the small risk associated with flywheel failures at high speed.
The biggest problem with using flywheels is that there has to be some sort of electric motor - that is, something that can change mechanical movement to electrical energy. In items like cars and UPSes, this isn't much of a problem. In your laptop (and similar compact places) this is definately a stumbling block. I wouldn't look for flywheels in laptops anytime soon.
I expect to see flywheels in electric cars in the near future, since they offer alot of advantages over a most batteries: lighter weight, a very high energy capacity, ability to deliver large amounts of current quickly (something most non-lead-acid batteries can't do), and virtually no maintenance.
Honestly, I can't wait for the hybrid car to come along: small, constant RPM gasoline engine, electric generator, and flywheel. You have a lead-acid to start the whole thing, and store any excess energy in the flywheel. Cool!
-Erik
Re:Flywheel Cars (Score:1)
Perhaps the entire flywheel mechanism could be put in a cage that pivots on three axes (like those "human gyroscope" things at carnivals) so the moment is always perpendicular to normal?
Re:Two birds with one stone? (Score:1)
Another battery type: Methanol fuel cells (Score:2)
Motorola claimed it would be 3-5 years away from producing Methanol based fuel cells with at least twice the energy density from todays batteries. These batteries should also be safe from most of the problems associated with current technology (memory effect, fuel exchange instead of timely recharge...)
summary (Score:1)
My
Quux26
Re:Two birds with one stone? (Score:1)
http://www.survival-tech.com/litemain.htm [survival-tech.com]
VERY cool.
-S
http://students.washington.edu/steve0/ [washington.edu]
steve0@u.washington.edu
Connection... (Score:1)
Can someone please enlighten me...
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
NPS Internet Solutions, LLC
www.npsis.com [npsis.com]
An improvement? (Score:2)
My question is would it be possible to introduce alternating magnetic particles (in a permanant arrangement) around a track of the disk somewhere near the centre? You could then use these to accelerate or draw power out of the disc directly. This eliminates all friction imposed on the disk and as such the only thing slowing the disk down translates to actual power output.
You could use magnets around the outside area of the disk for suspension and stabilisation and I'd assume this could simplify design somewhat.
Is there a reason why this isn't being done?
Re:Egads! My dad's gonna be suprised... (Score:1)
Re:Heh, this reminds me of an idea I had in colleg (Score:2)
You don't really need it to vary continuously, though -- some skillz with the conventional gears could accomplish the same thing with a less mechanical effort.
Finally, connect the pedals directly to the power train (oh yeah and of course you'd need to add a neutral setting) and charge up by pedaling really fast before you come out in front of everybody, and pedaling lighly as you go along. Yeah that really would be cool.
A sensible "pedal"-gear size should avoid the Darwin risk.
Re:Clearly, there ought to be a better way. (Score:1)
>emissions, which are a very serious problem,
>getting worse, in most countries.
Well, it doesn't really solve it, it just pushes the emission generation away from the car. You still have to generate the power somewhere, and most countries burn fossil fuels to generate their electricity (including over half the power in the US I believe). The only practical alternative to that is nuclear power, and Greenpeace et. al have pretty much put paid to any new nuclear power development.
So, while electric cars, and now flywheels, sound cool, keep in mind that the power will still be coming mostly from burning fossil fuels with all the pollution that entails.
Debian does not make profits (Score:1)
Debian does not sell their distribution; they are a nonprofit team of volunteers. If you want the distribution you either download it or buy it from cheapbytes, Corel, etc.
Re:Clearly, there ought to be a better way. (Score:1)
Nanotech Flywheels (Score:1)
Acheive the same thing by rotating a nanoscale 1 miligram flywheel at 208 Million RPM.
Wee wheels win windfall -- news at eleven
Weesner
Possible security risk.... (Score:1)
Once the wheel is in place, it is monitored and controlled remotely via a local server plugged in to the Net...
Can you say security risk? Send a killer poke to a flywheel spinning at >60,000 rev/min, and watch the carnage fly...
Of course, that's assuming they sell out and use WinCE for their flywheels... if they use an embedded Linux, then it's no problem. *grin*
A couple of problems: (Score:1)
I recalled seeing an article on Time magazine one or two years ago, mentioning the possible application of flywheels on automobiles. The point is that with a mechanical energy storage device like that, you can easily reclaim energies from, for example, speed brakes, which are normally turned into heat and dissipated into the atmosphere.
However, there are still problems that were not satisfactorily answered AFAIK. Basically flywheels work by storing energies as kinetic energies of a spinning disk. So in order to increase the amount of energy stored, either you have to increase 1) the mass of the wheel, 2) the size (diameter) of the wheel, or 3) the spinning speed of the wheel. None of which seemed desirable.
After all, the most undesirable properties of batteries are: 1) heavy, 2) bulky, 3) potentially dangerous. Just imagine what would happen if you drop such a device to the floor with an 1 Kg plate spinning at over 10K rpm... you get the idea.
Anybody have insights into this one?
Re:are you 4 years old? (Score:1)
since you obviously didn't know the answer:
A flywheel is a heavy wheel on a revolving shaft used to regulate machinery or accumulate power.
NO (Score:1)
(H20 + {N2, O2, etc} -> products + energy)
the reason being that there is very little free energy contained in the molecules of any of these abundant environmental compounds; with the exception of hydrogen- but there's not too much of that floating around close the ground on earth... it tends to react chemically, or waft off up into the stratosphere.
A fuel cell is usually based on O2 reacting with H2 (great, huh? why not get all our power that way?) (becasue there's on source for the H2; we have to electrolyse it out of water, a process that requires more energy than it yeilds) so the possibility of ambient air chemicals yeilding energy... nah- it would be happeneing in nature right now, since entropy likes stuff to fall all the way down to the lowest stable energy state.
Alternating magnetic particles (Score:1)
The only way you can get an alternating magnet is by using an inductor with a soft iron core (ie a wire wound around a soft iron core). It's called an electromagnet.
The problem with this arrangement is, of course, that it costs energy to keep on alternating the magnet from one direction to another, etc. Especially if you need to do it fast.
By the way, when they talk about "using conventional motors to spin these things" they don't mean that you tie a string to the flywheel and to the motor and start the motor and keep it running until the flywheel is spinning fast enough *grin*. I'd be very surprised if you could get 60'000 rpm out of that!!!
Daniel
Re:A couple of problems: (Score:1)
Also, it is quite likely that such a flywheel will not be encased in a plastic box. More likely, as was mentioned, would be some kevlar casing. Since the flywheel will be made of carbon fibers rather than metal, if it is torn off its bearings by being dropped, it will (perhaps) disintegrate into thin strands of carbon. These may well be going very, very fast, but they will mostly be stopped by the kevlar coating.
Of course, even at 100g dropping one of those things on your foot could be unpleasant, but I think that's not applicable to just flywheels...
Daniel
Re:Planetary scale flywheel (Score:1)
Re:Alternating magnetic particles (Score:1)
He meant arranging magnets around the flywheel in a pattern.
Re:Earth's Spin and Water Redistribution (Score:1)
However, water has a tendency to flow, and there is considerably more water in the oceans ( and in the atmosphere as vapour ) than could be held in place by damming projects.
A greater effect is that of global warming melting the ice from the poles. This water will raise the water levels of the oceans, thus slightly increasing the earth's diameter. Using your skater analogy this will actually slow the earths rotation.
Re:Earth's Spin and Water Redistribution (Score:1)
Writing summaries... (Score:1)
To a certain extend, I do see your point. Alot of what I posted is indeed in the article. Next time I will try to add alot more additional info.
Perhaps I should have noted some of the interesting research being done on this:
Physical Limits of Portable Power Storage [mit.edu]
Batteries of the 21st Century [psu.edu]
Hybrid Electric Vehicle research [doe.gov]
In my defense, I do think I pointed out several things that were not obvious (and people were arguing about in the preceeding posts).
I'll try for more content in the future.
-Erik
Heavy Machines? Yes - Laptops? No. (Score:1)
Re:Earth's Spin and Water Redistribution (Score:1)
you mean, "melting the ice from the south pole." the ice at the north pole is floating and if melted it would not change the water level.
Re:Clearly, there ought to be a better way. (Score:1)
This is a great idea, but its really just an extension on current petrol (gasoline) engines. It is still using the age-old internal combustion idea.
The idea behind the flywheel is revolutionary, that is, it isnt based on internal combustion engines at all. Which in itself resolves a fundamental problem, emissions, which are a very serious problem, getting worse, in most countries.
While I think that the idea for replacing petrol and using hydrogen (much simplified, I know) is great, it still has many problems associated with it. It solves the problem of eventually running out of oil, but we still have many other issues relating to emissions to consider, this is why I think that using a flywheel to power cars is great. I know it is a fair ways off, and there are still many problems to overcome, but this is the way of the future, IMHO.
Re:Flywheel Cars (Score:1)
you can't convert momentum to energy... both are conserved :)
Egads! My dad's gonna be suprised... (Score:1)
This might sound like a buncha BS to some of you, but when I was in 6th grade, I remember vividly his explaining a flywheel concept to me. After reading the article, it sounds like the same thing, except my dad's plan had a huge flywheel... to generate large amounts of power. I don't know how they're mounting the motor, but my dad's concept had it mounted on a rail, and a servo system could move it toward the outer edge or toward the center. This would allow a fairly small motor (like their coffee-mug job) to spin a humongous flywheel... by starting at the extreme outer edge. As the flywheel speed comes up, the motor is moved inward, toward the center of the flywheel.
I guess it goes to show that one should never sit on a good idea, no matter how absurd-sounding it is in 1985.
(I think the problem there was that he had no idea how to initiate a patent on anything -- who do you trust to help you patent something without having your plans plain-out stolen?)
I think i'm going to go though my old 6th grade notebooks (yes, I still have some of them) and see if I can find any of his concept drawings. If nothing else, it'll make my old man feel like he knew what he was doing.
-Steve
--
Re:Flywheel=Merry-go-round (Score:3)
If you put 10 kids around the outside rim of the merry-go-round and try to turn it (called "spinning up") it takes more effort to turn all that weight, but once you get it going up to speed it keeps turning longer. Another approach is to only put 5 kids on and spin it faster. Both of these methods (high weight and high speed) releases energy as it coasts.
In the case of a flywheel, the middle of the flywheel is attached to a motor that serves both as a motor (to spin up the wheel) and as a generator (to collect the energy being released as it coasts). This time proven method of mechanical energy has a lot of potential because of how little wasted energy there is.
The 2 methods currenty under research are
1) Large and slow (buried inside a sub station on an electrical power grid)
2) Small and fast (portable in an automobile)
The issue with the small and fast approach is how you fabricate the spinning disk. If a small inacuracy in concentricity produces a "wobble" at 1000 PRM, it gets worse the faster you go. Most current methods employ a computer controled carbon fiber winding machine to collect SPC (Statistical Process Control) data as the wheel is being made and make adjustments "in process". The other area of research is air bearings and aerodynamics. Keeping the heat from friction to a minimum is important because thermal expantion can make the wheel grow a little larger, thus closing the air gap and causing a "touchdown" (this "air==bearing" thing is much like the method employed to "fly" a reader head on a hard drive above the platter).
As material research continues to explore new materials and computer power allows researchers to model these materials in new ways, there really is very little a fly wheel can't do. At the moment they (the large and slow kind) are being used to replace large battery racks in UPS stations in big buildings and on electrical power grids.
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Re:Flywheel Cars (Score:3)
Re:Coriolis Effect (Score:1)
IIRC, that's because whenever someone tried to open one, it blew up violently and killed everyone nearby.
Why use an exchange from mechanical to electrical? (Score:2)
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Re:Clearly, there ought to be a better way. (Score:1)
This is completely impossible. First of all, your composition of air is way off, there is no hydrogen in air, as free hydrogen. Hydrogen reacts violently with air (remember the hindenburg?) to produce water, which is why we have so much water. In a larger sense, space wise, there is massively much more hydrogen than water or oxygen, mainly because the sun is made of hydrogen, fusion doesnt produce as much oxygen etc, but I digress). Everything in the atmosphere is at a low energy state except for trace amounts of methane due to life, but thats an anomoly and not the rule. It is physically impossible to have an energetic reaction using common atmospheric elements, if it were possible then we would be screwed, because it would very quickly occur, all the energy would be released, and we would be fried to a crisp.
An Air/Water Cell is the next logical step.
You are implying then that some catalyist can be found to allow the reaction to proceed, but there has to be a possibl reaction first, and there is no possible reaction between air and water. All a catalyist does is lower the temperature that the reaction occurs at. In a conventional fuel cell, platinum allows hydrogen to be combined with oxygen without a giant fireball. If there were such a high temperature reaction, various above ground nuclear tests would have set it off. In fact, various scientists at the manhattan project were worried about this reaction occuring, i.e that the nitrogen in the air would combine exothermally with the oxygen and produce enough heat to sustain the reaction, and thus making the earth an oven. Lucky for us, it didnt happen, but it also empirically proved that there can be NO reaction between atmospheric constituants that is exothermal.
Re:Cars? (Score:1)
Too much Inertia?? (Score:1)
- http://www.inertialessdrive.co.nz
who are fiddling with this concept as we speak. They have some pretty awesome applications for this technology already. NO, IM NOT AN EMPLOYEE. (I'm gonna buy the water magnetiser just because it sounds so avante garde)OT: This is so childish... (Score:1)
This hasn't much to do with flywheel technology... its with the opening paragraphs of the article.. It mentions that cars are built "backwards". UGH!
An airfoil is shaped the way it is in order to cause a low pressure airstream on top and a high pressure airstream on the bottom. This causes lift.
Now... lets apply this to a car... what happens... your car flys away? No.. but close.. it would hover a little more while moving... especially on highways (ie when your going fast)... add rain and your fscked... you would hydrofoil and die. Or come close... the reason cars are tapered at the front is to help push the rest of the car down on the wheels giving it traction. Its an essential compromise of aerodynamics and safety.
Stupid rant I know.. but it bugged me.
- Xabbu
This idea has been around for quite a while (Score:2)
Some early USAF energy weapon work used a "homopolar generator", basically a flywheel spun up to high speed with the field off. The field current was then turned on, and most of the energy in the flywheel came out in a rev or two, producing a big power pulse. I think this technology was actually flown in the 1980s as an experimental system.
Flywheels for short power-outage ride through have been around since the early days of computers. Lots of mainframes came with motor-generator sets to improve power quality. Some vendors, notably IBM and Cray, liked to convert incoming power to 400Hz, simplifying linear power supply design in the computer itself. Switching power supplies are much less vulnerable to power sags, so we don't see those big MG sets any more. No great loss, either. Still, it was nice to know that no power glitch short of total lights-out could make it though the MG and flywheel.
Incidentally, you can build flywheels which fully cancel their own gyroscopic action, using pairs of coaxial counter-rotating wheels. Early Sony Walkman units used such a mechanism.
So flywheel energy storage is a technology that's been around for a while, looking for a killer app. Maybe this time.
Re:Question (Score:1)
You should be okay as long as you keep the bus speed below 88 Mhz.
Re:Flywheel Failure (the small and fast kind) (Score:2)
These wheels are made of fiber with much the same consistancy at Carot Tops nappy-doo. When the wheel begins to fail, a few of these strands begin to split off and compromises the airbearing, thus slowing the wheel and causing an imbalance. This further stresses the wheel causing even more strand to split off and slowing the wheel even more. Eventially, there are so many loose strands of fibre that the gap between the wheel and the housing is gone and the wheel grinds to a hault.
This small "seized up" flywheel poses very little threat for the same reason an internal combustion engine doesn't toss pistons through the hood of your car: Because there are forces acting on the wheel with an apposing force.
When they fail, they tend to fray (like carot tops hair) and seize up in their housing long before any pieces can cause damage.
___
industrial behemoths? (Score:2)
!gyro (Score:2)
IIRC the article mentioned that satellites would use this configuration, and they could adjust orientations by deliberately changing the balance between the speeds, thus introducing a net angular momentum.
You know you're a geek if... (Score:4)
overclock that puppy!"
That's a coiled sping, but there is a flywheel v. (Score:2)
To anyone in the industry reading these posts, produce a Flywheel UPS suitable for a PC server at no more than 50% more expensive than a decent lead-acid UPS and I'll buy one for home and I'll recommend them as replacements at work the next time a UPS battery fails...
Re:What's a Flywheel? (Score:3)
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Re:Clearly, there ought to be a better way. (Score:2)
More on this topic (Score:5)
Conventional UPS is mainly a combination of high-maintenance diesel-generators and lead-acid batteries. Other flywheel batteries offer only short-term (most "tens of seconds") ride-through power, during utility line outages; and while the utility or on-site generator supplies power, they constantly consume typically kilowatts while idling. That's over 1000x more losses than RPM's Flywheel Battery; which runs far cooler, will have far longer service life, negligible self-discharge, far higher reliability, far lower life-cycle cost, no wear-out, and no maintenance!
There are quite a few additional links at the bottom of that page.
Opposite pairs create huge forces. (Score:2)
Putting flywheels in moving objects is not the major thrust of the article (I read it in the print version of Wired ages ago, even referenced it in a /. discussion) - simply using a sensible, even retro, technology like this in any application is the point. There's reference to using them as batteries / UPSes for huge installations - factories, power plants. They're very effecient, low maintenance, large batteries. If you're just worried about whether or not they could be used in your car, you're missing the point.
Clearly, there ought to be a better way. (Score:2)
I really dig the advanced flywheel and carbon nanotube stuff. But wouldn't it be even better if no batteries were necesary? We have lots and lots of water and we have lots and lots of air. It would be really cool to develop a mechanism to generate electricity using H20 and the chemical compunds found in air (Nitrogen, Hydrogen, Oxygen, etc.) on the spot. Fuel cells are becoming better and better. An Air/Water Cell is the next logical step.
A machine which converted water and air to electricity sounds much like the goal of alchemy. It is a pipe dream. Yes. But e- wants to be free.
Once external energy becomes freely available to everyone anywhere, all manners of political change would follow, not least which would be more free software.
Competition for tabby... (Score:3)
A laptop with a charged-up flywheel in it might exhibit some interesting gyroscopic effects... you could pick it up, but wouldn't be able to turn it upside down?
Hell, put little feet on it, have it purr, and you'll have a replacement for a cat!
Re:Old technology, new applications (Score:2)
Ooooooh no they don't. Well, not in any way that's relevant for pretty much anyone's purposes.
I direct your attention here [repairfaq.org] and here [repairfaq.org] for a detailed explanation.
In brief, what most people call "memory effect" is really a combination of voltage depression resulting from the overcharge performed by all consumer battery chargers, and natural cell aging. Voltage depression does not greatly reduce cell capacity, but it does change the shape of the cell discharge curve - the cell's voltage drops abnormally early in the discharge cycle from the normal 1.2 volts to 1.05 volts or so, which may cause some devices to believe the cell is flat, because a normal NiCd IS very nearly flat when its terminal voltage has fallen this far. A voltage depresed cell, however, can actually deliver about the same amount of energy as it ordinarily would.
Genuine memory effect is very, VERY seldom seen, only occurs in sintered plate NiCd cells, and is in fact CURED by overcharging! Nickel metal hydride batteries are utterly immune to genuine memory effect, although they, too, can suffer from voltage depression.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Two birds with one stone? (Score:2)
That's why my physics professor decided to continue his education in physics after the army and became a professor - he was impressed with the effects of gyroscope, I think I also would be impressed.
Back to our story, I wonder if it would be possible to use the fly wheel as a gyroscope to keep a car in the air? I lived in Montreal (Canada) for 2 years and the Local Hydro there was working on the electric cars powered by fly wheels and hydrogen cells. They also invented an engine that goes into a tire and each tire became an engine, but the project stopped due to some resistence of SHELL and Oil production companies.
Re:Carbon Nanotubes (Score:2)
Back in the real world (non-Open Source, non-Software, there is such a place), corporations aren't always nice communities of people that will respond to your emails and modify their software distributions accordingly (in fact, there are actually some corporations that don't sell software). Many corporations in this so-called 'Real World' are greedy, capitalistic scum-suckers that care about only making the most money, instead of ethics. (You can relate those to Microsoft). Now, when you simply reveal the blueprints (source code) to the scientific community without either an NDA or a patent (real world equivalent of the GPL), these greedy, evil corporations (read: Microsoft-esque) will steal/ borrow/ use your new product in theirs. Now, you're not going to spend the time to patent something that doesn't work, simply stated, so your product needs to go through scientific review before you patent it. The only other option is going to be an NDA, or (more likely), an in-house team of scientists. Now, if they're not revealing it for 'commercial reasons', then they're probably planning to (gasp) make a profit on it. Now, that might sound like an absurd concept to you, but there are companies out there that make a profit. Redhat, Debian, etc.. make profits from selling their distributions, so profits aren't all bad. Look up. That banner ad is a profit for Andover. People like profits. Not everything is Open Source (at least, outside of the realm of software). Don't complain. They're just trying to remain competitive.
BTW, 'you' in that post refered to the Slashdot community at large, not just you.
BTW, the last 'you' in that message refered to the you, not the Slashdot community at large.
BTW, the last 'you' in that message refered to the you, not the Slashdot community at large.
Question (Score:2)
Just wondering...
Re:Flywheel=Merry-go-round (Score:2)
Re:Carbon Nanotubes (Score:2)
With due respect to your otherwise insightful post, I must disagree with this assertion: while affirmative scientific review may gain you credibility, it does not affect profits. What determines whether you're going to make a cent is (a) whether you can sell it, and (b) whether it works. Edison sold an awful lot of lightbulbs before photon emission from Bohr shell level transitions was understood.
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Re:Coriolis Effect (Score:2)
Coriolis Effect (not force) simply describes the behavior of objectsin freefall when the reference point is fixed to a spinning surface.
Say.. you were on one of those sci-fi 'spinning' space stations, standing on the inside of a ring, (you know... simulated gravity). It feels like gravity.. but if you were to jump up in the air, you would find the station would spin out from under your feet, and you would not land in the same place you jumped from. If you went to pour a drink cocktail-style, you'd find you have to angle things differently, as anything dropped will follow an arc away from the direction of spin, not straight down.
And gyroscopic forces simply need to be balanced. If you had two wheels on a typical demonstration gyroscope, spinning in opposite directions at the same rate, the gyroscopic effects completely disappear.
I recall (Score:2)
One of the concepts in this book, however, was the idea of using a (sci-fi) kerr-newman black hole as an extremely massive flywheel. The (sci-fi) theory is that a kerr-neuman black hole is basically a very tiny black hole (event horizon of perhaps 200 meters or so.. something human manageable) that is electrically charged. It is also spinning, rapidly. Remember, a black hole this size STILL weighs an unimaginable ammount.
So they built these huge shielding chambers, they'd put a black hole in side it (it's got an electric charge.. they can move them around using this...), and it sits in there and spins. Fast. By feeding energy into the chamber, they can spin it faster, and by tapping the Electric field (generator?) they can take power, causing it to slow. The deal was, though, that one of these jobs, even without replenishing hte power, could, once charged (and they were naturally charged when found) could hold enough energy to power cities (or planets) for years.
It *is* almost criminal. (Score:3)
If your tax dolars fund the military, who funds research, who develops cold fusion for powering weapons (like subs and planes).. they aren't obliged to share it with you. Nope. Not at all. It would be against 'national security' to do so.
In the corporate world, this is what patents were supposed to be about... so people would be encouraged to share.
Other concerns (Score:2)
Secondly, angular momentum is conserved. If you get enough flywheels spinning with the proper orientation, you could (in theory) have a serious effect on the Earth's rotation. They'd have to be spinning pretty bloody fast and be aligned just right, but it's possible. What happens when the factory ships a truckload of these? I hope they design two models, with spins oriented anti-parallel...
Good gyroscope practical joke (Score:3)
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Re:Carbon Nanotubes (Score:5)
In answer to the question specifically on carbon nanotubes, there has been a lot of experimentation done on them. Carbon nanotubes come in a variety of geometries that can be thought of conceptually as rolling chicken wire (a hexagonal array) up with varying amounts of stagger or offset. They can range in conductivity from metallic to semiconducting, depending on this geometry (Science, 288(5465):494-7). They have been used as tips for atomic force microscopes (PNAS, 97(8):3809-13). Tensile strength studies have found individual nanotubes with a Young's modulus E of nearly 1 TPa, or 1000 GPa (Science, 287(5453):637-40). Various other electromechanical applications like field emission effect (Science, 283(5401):512-4) have been dreamed up.
Not being in the field any longer, I can't make any predictions about timescales of the integration of carbon nanotubes into new technologies. However, you can usually tell that a material is no longer just a laboratory curiosity when the major chemical distributors start selling it, like Sigma-Aldrich [sigma-aldrich.com]. The fact is that carbon nanotube production is incredibly cheap and easy (doable by a fresh undergrad student, yours truly...). It is the purification of the desired nanotube type from the mishmash of soot you obtain from the arc that is the real challenge.
Ryan.
Re:Clearly, there ought to be a better way. (Score:2)
Now, if you're talking about electrolyzing the water first (separating it into H2 and O2), and then reacting the hydrogen and oxygen together, then you have something that works. Hydrogen power.
The idea being, you can electrolyze water in a large, stationary facility, and load up vehicles with hydrogen as fuel. In theory, the vehicles burn the H2 + O2 from the air, and give off nothing more than water vapor as exhaust. In practice, N2 in the air screws things up royally (makes nitrous oxides in the exhaust, IIRC), and storing hydrogen is a whole issue unto itself (since it tends to be explosive and all...)
Still, it's a cool idea, and it's being worked on. I believe H2 engines are supposed to be quite strong, even compared to gasoline ones. At least the H2-O2 reaction is *incredibly* powerful.