New Mars Forums

tahanson43206

Moderator

Registered: 2018-04-27

Posts: 19,437

Flywheel Energy Storage

In another topic (Fixing Americas car industry) Calliban reminded us of the potential of flywheel energy storage for automotive applications.

This topic is offered for those members who might wish to develop these ideas further.

I'd like to see some real-world hardware come out of this topic.

We have over twenty years of creative thinking collected in the archive of this forum, but not ONE idea (that I know of) has ever been expressed in the Real Universe with real working hardware.

It should be possible for a modest home workshop to produce a working flywheel storage system capable of application in a hybrid model car design.

Batteries not used for transportation mean batteries that last longer in a transportation application.

An all-electric design means that existing automotive hardware can be enlisted to allow the flywheel idea to blend into the flow of commercial products without creating a disruption.

This topic is available for publication of facts about the relative performance of various materials and configurations for the flywheel concept.

(th)

tahanson43206

Moderator

Registered: 2018-04-27

Posts: 19,437

Re: Flywheel Energy Storage

TH, the most often touted solution for dealing with the gyroscopic effect of flywheels is to couple two counter-rotating units together.  This provides a unit with no net angular momentum.  The energy storage density really depends upon what the flywheel is made of.  Wiki gives a value of 5.3MJ/litre, presumably for a carbon fibre composite flywheel.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density

I think real systems will have much lower energy density.  This is something that works much better as part of a hybrid drive system, where the flywheel can capture braking energy and provide launch assist.  Flywheel powered 'gyro' buses have been used in the past.  These used alloy steel flywheels and charged up the flywheel at regular bus stops.  This avoids the cost of electrifying the entire bus route with trolley cables.  However, historical vehicles were quite heavy which pushed up energy consumption per km.  With glass or carbon fibre flywheels, we could do much better today.  Wood epoxy laminates are also an option that provides better energy density than steel, due to superior specific strength.

If we wanted a mass producable vehicle that could get people across town (50km range) without straining the Earth's resources to breaking point, then flywheels are a strong contender.  Fibre wound spindle flywheels do not produce large fragments when they fail.  Instead, we end up with a container full of molten sand.  Flywheels are capable of very rapid charging and have effective lifetimes of 100,000 - 10 million cycles.  It is likely that the car would wear out before the flywheel.  This makes flywheels a much better investment than batteries for automotive and grid energy storage.

tahanson43206

Moderator

Registered: 2018-04-27

Posts: 19,437

Re: Flywheel Energy Storage

In another topic, Calliban reminded us of the practical application of flywheel energy storage in the transportation industry.

Another potential practical application of flywheel storage is in the home.  Since homes do not move (except for earthquakes) the need for gyroscopic countermeastures is less than is true for the transportation market.

I have no sense of the relative energy storage density that might be achieved with thoughtful design and effective manufacture.

Many members of the forum live in individual domiciles where a short term energy storage system would be an attractive option.

This topic is available for presentation and evaluation of alternatives for the home market, as well as for transportation.

(th)

tahanson43206

Moderator

Registered: 2018-04-27

Posts: 19,437

Re: Flywheel Energy Storage

Spinlaunch is an advanced example of flywheel energy storage...

http://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=10224

This initiative is pushing the state-of-the-art of flywheel energy storage to the absolute limits of materials science and human ingenuity.

However, at the same time, it is pushing the state-of-the-art for industrial scale stored energy storage.

(th)

Mars_B4_Moon

Member

Registered: 2006-03-23

Posts: 9,776

Re: Flywheel Energy Storage

the Flywheel car vid

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06YYvEcPak0

Kinetic energy recovery

https://web.archive.org/web/20100713210 … ology.html
,
https://web.archive.org/web/20100629021 … IVT/works/
,
https://web.archive.org/web/20120918024 … -bike.html

Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2023-12-30 14:28:07)