Electric Rag and Tube

[kasper]

1 hour ago, Marty_d said:

I would have thought the Pipistrel Alpha Electro would have met their requirements.

Possibly.  But it’s still very limited range and the battery is very expensive and change is a hassle plus you’ll need 4-5 battery packs per airframe to keep it flying constantly as a trainer and it will never cover the military training syllabus - it’s not in any way aerobatic. 
 

think outside the box.  An aluminium air battery has far lower cost than lithium and much greater energetic density - but it has to be recycled and not recharged.  So a battery weight the alpha has could be replaced with an aluminium air battery giving near 3!times the power.  
 

If I was the military a system of plugging in for 1.5hra of aerobatic on a  Good airframe that is then battery out and replace with new and have all the old ones recycled would be better than large banks of recharging highly expensive and chemically able to burn batteries.  
 

and recycling an aluminium air battery is possible - you add electricity to covert the oxidised aluminium into new aluminium and you go again.  In effect the end point of the aluminium in a battery of this cycle is the baulxite you started with as ore from the ground … but already refined and sepretate from spoil.  

[Geoff_H]

My personal opinion is that electric will never make it to aircraft.  I see hydrogen stored cryogenically as a smaller working solution.  Much lighter.  All hydrogen left in the tank after flight can be expected to be lost through evaporation.  I see hydrogen systems to fill tanks before and emptied after flight. Engines will require a limited amount of development.  The natural gas pipelines will be able to get the hydrogen to the airports.

I am worried about the flammability of hydrogen. When vented two dust particles colliding can ignites colourless gan with a flame front 10 times the velocity of natural gas. When you work on a hydrogen system you have to use brass tools to restrict spark generated.

[turboplanner]

29 minutes ago, Geoff_H said:

My personal opinion is that electric will never make it to aircraft.  I see hydrogen stored cryogenically as a smaller working solution.  Much lighter.  All hydrogen left in the tank after flight can be expected to be lost through evaporation.  I see hydrogen systems to fill tanks before and emptied after flight. Engines will require a limited amount of development.  The natural gas pipelines will be able to get the hydrogen to the airports.

I am worried about the flammability of hydrogen. When vented two dust particles colliding can ignites colourless gan with a flame front 10 times the velocity of natural gas. When you work on a hydrogen system you have to use brass tools to restrict spark generated.

When you say hydrogen, are you talking about a tank full of hydrogen being used as fuel in an Internal Combustion Engine as a lot of people are speculating about?

In that case the storage mass, combustion rate, power output are issues for discussion. What might just work in a vehicle might be too heavy for an aircraft.

If you are talking about a hydrogen fuel cell with an electric motor powering the prop, then cost and range could prove an issue.

 

[Geoff_H]

Yes an internal combustion engine with a very light tank.  Technology change less than fuel cells.  I think that passenger airline aircraft turbine engine would be simply modified to burn hydrogen.  Cryogenic tanks would be quite light, evaporation of fuel would be limited. The aircraft industry is so conservative I think that batteries or fuel cells and electrical motors are a change too far.

An A380 has 4 70MW engines, a significant amount of energy dissipation will require a significant technology change for electrical power.

[kgwilson]

Short haul electric aircraft with up to 10 passengers is already viable and several companies are racing to get them to the market. Perhaps the most ambitious is Wright Electric/BAE Systems plan to build a 186 seat electric aircraft by 2030. Range will only be around 500km so pretty limited. If range can be extended to 1500km that covers emissions from about a third of world aviation. Long hauls is not viable at all with current and emerging energy density of batteries and hydrogen with volatility also being a major problem with hydrogen.

 

There is no shortage of tryers in the electric aircraft field with over 200 in development at present, though many of these are hybrids.

[octave]

There are some promising hydrogen fuel cell powered research aircraft being flown right now.  Companies such as  ZeroAvia who have recently purchased 2 19 seat aircraft for conversion ZeroAvia presses ahead with two hydrogen-powered 19-seat aircraft  This company has serous backers behind it Shell and Amazon back ZeroAvia for emission-free flight by 2023      

 

It is also interesting to see the  intended development of 40 seat planes H2Fly and Deutsche Aircraft announce hydrogen-powered 40-seat airliner

 

 Large companies such as Airbus doing research ZEROe Towards the world’s first zero-emission commercial aircraft  

 

What an exciting time to be alive for people who love aircraft and innovation.

Edited July 11, 2021 by octave

[turboplanner]

1 hour ago, Geoff_H said:

Yes an internal combustion engine with a very light tank.  Technology change less than fuel cells.  I think that passenger airline aircraft turbine engine would be simply modified to burn hydrogen.  Cryogenic tanks would be quite light, evaporation of fuel would be limited. The aircraft industry is so conservative I think that batteries or fuel cells and electrical motors are a change too far.

An A380 has 4 70MW engines, a significant amount of energy dissipation will require a significant technology change for electrical power.

True about the doable technology change.

Here's the thing, it's possible to build a lightweight cryogenic fuel tank, but that would be a hand grenade.

To make CNG vehicles safe required a tank with similar strength to an acetylene tank; in the words I was given when I asked what would happen in a collision "We've made the tank strong enough that in a T Bone it deforms the other vehicle."

If you could guarantee no forced landings or survivable crashes, you'd have to address that issue.

The people who are spruiking "Hydrogen" cars also have to deal with the same issue.

 

 

Edited July 11, 2021 by turboplanner

[octave]

17 minutes ago, turboplanner said:

if you could guarantee no forced landings or survivable crashes, you'd have to address that issue.

Zeravia did have a hydrogen fuel cell plane make a crash landing - no fire  ZeroAvia Hydrogen Test Bed Crashes After Off-Airport Landing  

 

As of December 2020 there were about 31225  hydrogen powered vehicles on the road (worldwide), surly some of these must have been involved in accidents.   I think I would rather be in a hydrogen vehicle accident where the fuel is lighter than air than in a petrol vehicle.

22 minutes ago, turboplanner said:

the people who are spruiking "Hydrogen" cars also have to deal with the same issue.

 Firstly to me at least batteries for smaller vehicles makes much  more sense but to suggest that hydrogen more dangerous than liquid fuels or lpg seems at odds with practical experience.

 

Here's why hydrogen-fueled cars aren't little Hindenburgs

 

Turbs what are your thoughts on storing hydrogen as hydrogen  as a metal hydride or in ammonia or in many of the other ways it can be stored  Hydrogen storage?

 

 

[turboplanner]

10 hours ago, octave said:

Turbs what are your thoughts on storing hydrogen as hydrogen  as a metal hydride or in ammonia or in many of the other ways it can be stored  Hydrogen storage?

 

 

Fortunately I don't have to waste my time speculating on alternative fuels. These things will be put forward by speculators, reviewed by engineers, and where promising become projects in the research departments, if still promising go into product analysis where costs and benefits are analysed in very fine detail, infrastructure analysis then takes place to see whether a viable support infrastructure can be adapted or built, and if still promising, product design engineers do the analysis to see how it can be incorporated into a car, aircraft, ship etc.

 

Around 2007 I was involved in checking out the viability of using urea injections downstream of the engine to neutralise exhaust emissions in long distance over the road trucks in Australia. I was able to show that with the on board tank storage available, I was able to show that there was infrastructure around Australia to refill the tanks with urea in all but two areas (from memory one of them was a let to Mt Isa), and for those legs, two containers would fit into the tool box. Even with competitive pricing and a readily available network, Urea Injecting dodn't make it to the top of the market, and is a minor player.

 

 

Edited July 11, 2021 by turboplanner

[kasper]

But Turbo urea injection whilst reducing nox and co does nothing for pm10 or pm5 or co2 and can’t address the fundamental issue of using/releasing carbon from crude oil. 
 

agreed that for 99% of this forum audience their involvement in anything developmental in the wider area of alternate energy to transport will be only as a consumer of what’s being offered.

 

but a fair fraction of this forum are very interested in the areas that are possible because they recognise that things will change and they want to know possible changes are considered. 

[turboplanner]

2 hours ago, kasper said:

But Turbo urea injection whilst reducing nox and co does nothing for pm10 or pm5 or co2 and can’t address the fundamental issue of using/releasing carbon from crude oil. 

 

agreed that for 99% of this forum audience their involvement in anything developmental in the wider area of alternate energy to transport will be only as a consumer of what’s being offered.

 

but a fair fraction of this forum are very interested in the areas that are possible because they recognise that things will change and they want to know possible changes are considered. 

I only brought Urea into the discussion to show the routine process of evaluating a new product. Meybe I sould have said "Product X" instead.

 

My post was to show how industry actually works, as against the www.

 

 

 

 

 

[Geoff_H]

If you're going to go for low emissions using electric I would not be too eager to swap to electric aircraft too soon.

A petrol fuelled BMW 330i creates less CO2 emissions than a Model S Tesla.  I expect that this is also true for petrol engined vehicles that have dual cycle engines, many vehicles for sale today.  Tesla charge with power from the eastern Australian grid.  The grid hass a high emissions per kilowatt hour generated. Basically owing to the use of coal for power generation.  The Tesla in NSW generates 0.164kg/km of CO2, the BMW generates 0.147kg/km of CO2.  I suspect that as I know of no dual cycle aircraft engines it would not be expected that this would be true for an aircraft.  However the CO2 emissions reduction would be small.  

 

[octave]

22 minutes ago, turboplanner said:

My post was to show how industry actually works, as against the www.

 

 

I have no idea if/when  Hydrogen will become will be used in mainstream aviation.  To dismiss it as some silly fantasy seems premature.     Are we to suppose that Airbus is wasting money doing research on hydrogen powered aviation?   Shell and Amazon forking out 21 million for something some say is merely just hype?

 

It doesn't really matter whether some believe these companies cant see these obvious flaws.  The fact is that doing research is surely a good thing and of immense interest to me and I would assume others interested in the progress of technology.      Research into hydrogen aviation is not a fringe area.    I never quite get why people always want to jump in on these subjects and proclaim airbus and others are simply mistaken about the potential and someone  sitting behind their keyboard can with great certainty proclaim something will obviously not work.

 

28 minutes ago, Geoff_H said:

Basically owing to the use of coal for power generation.

Depending on the percentage of power generated by coal in a given location.     An EV in Tasmania will obviously not be powered by coal. In other states the method of generation is variable.   In general power generation from coal is decreasing.  An EV is as clean as its power source and power sources continue to become cleaner.    My rooftop solar would allow me to drive 10000 - 14000 KM per year with the excess power I presently sell back to the grid (for a pretty poor price.)  My present car used to do about 7.6L per 100KM but as it gets older  it now gets about 8L per 100KM.  10000-14000 KM at virtually no cost or outside energy input seems like a pretty attractive proposition to me.     

 

[onetrack]

Energy technologies are highly fractured at present and no-one can see a clear path to one overwhelmingly common energy source.

Vast sums of money are being poured into competing energy source programmes, and nowhere is this more evident than in Japan, where the Govt has decided that hydrogen has a large part to play as a future energy source. 

 

However, the Japanese still have yet to determine a satisfactory and economic source of "clean" hydrogen. They are currently pouring huge sums of money into a planned programme of collecting hydrogen from brown coal in Victoria, transporting it by road to the port, then shipping it in a frozen state to Japan, in a dedicated hydrogen gas carrier. It is then distributed throughout Japan - but that last distribution process, is still a bit opaque.

 

The Japanese plan to utilise carbon capture from the coal treatment process by injecting CO² into a deep aquifer off the Australian coast. The whole process looks extremely dubious to me, and I suspect the Japanese are only planning for this hydrogen source for a short time, until they find a "greener" source from solar-produced hydrogen, or by extraction from methane hydrates.

The extraction of hydrogen from methane hydrates could be carried out by the injection of surplus CO², thus solving two problems in the one exercise. But the methane hydrate extraction process still has a long way to go, to be a stable, environmentally-satisfactory, and proven process.

 

Don't be surprised by the fact that the Japanese will pour trillions of yen of Govt money into long-term research and loss-making support for hydrogen, over a long period of time - a decade or more. They are intent on being independent from Middle Eastern oil and OPEC.

 

At the end of the day, ammonia poses a more economic and readily available form of a hydrogen source, it can be sourced from the vast reserves of natural gas that Australia owns and produces. But the holy grail is cheap and green hydrogen produced from solar - and the Northern outback areas of Australia are highly suited for this style of hydrogen production.

In the long term, I personally have doubts about the safety and viability of hydrogen as a power source. Just one major H² disaster would kill the fledgling H² industry.

 

https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/The-Big-Story/Be-water-Japan-s-big-lonely-bet-on-hydrogen

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/japan-hydrogen-energy-carbon/2021/04/13/0dd68e4e-9229-11eb-aadc-af78701a30ca_story.html

 

Edited July 12, 2021 by onetrack

[octave]

29 minutes ago, onetrack said:

However, the Japanese still have yet to determine a satisfactory and economic source of "clean" hydrogen.

Japan giant signs deal for 30 Australian solar farms with battery and hydrogen storage

 

PAG says it will also begin work on developing a green hydrogen export roadmap to Japan, again using the Lavo metal hydride technology, which it says can store and transport green hydrogen safely and efficiently to Japan, and other export markets, inside a standard shipping container.

Edited July 12, 2021 by octave

[kgwilson]

7 hours ago, Geoff_H said:

 

A petrol fuelled BMW 330i creates less CO2 emissions than a Model S Tesla. 

 

This is a bold statement with no qualifications whatsoever. Once built it is obviously untrue if renewable energy is used to charge the Teslas batteries. Battery Electric vehicles are going to replace Internal combustion engine vehicles whether you like it or not.

 

The world is at the beginning of a transition phase and manufacturing processes require a lot of energy so much of this is currently sourced from fossil fuels as is the electricity grid in this country. Not so in many other countries where renewables are beginning to take over traditional fossil fuel sourced electrical energy. Even the UK with over 60 million people was able to produce enough energy to keep coal fired power plants closed down for 76 days last year. 

Edited July 12, 2021 by kgwilson

[turboplanner]

2 hours ago, kgwilson said:

Once built it is obviously untrue if renewable energy is used to charge the Teslas batteries.

We live in Australia, so the only State capable of achieving that is Tasmania with its hydro scheme.

 

While renewables hit a record 50% of the AEMO Eastern States grid this year in cool autumn weeks, and usually sit around 15 - 20%, on very hot days in 2020 and 2021, renewables could not achieve more that 1% of the grid capacity once the coal-fired stations started running at full boiler capacity. Renewables ahve already had nearly 40 years in Australia to show they can handle the spectrum from Base Load to Full Peak load but they haven't been able to deliver the goods WITHOUT EVs.

 

It was established during the last federal election when a lot of minds turned to Labor's policy of building half Australia's car needs as EV by 2030 that aside from things like not having a design or low volume manufacturing industry, the killer was not being able to supply the recharging power without building a second power station grid with a capacity equal to the present one. The Lead time for Nuclear, a viable Zero CO2 sourcem was so far out in the future, even if the public accepted it, that it had to be ruled out, so we were left with either gas-fired plants, which still emit some CO2, but have supply problems or coal-fired plants where as Geoff_H points out the new developments in ICE technology are going to eliminate EV as a viable alternative in terms of total CO2 emission.

 

General Motors recognised this achilles heel when they changed their Zero emission EV description to Zero Tailpipe Emission.

 

We live in Australia where there are no CO2 emission regulations for cars, so a lot of people are doing a lot of astroturfing while hoping for new inventions which will change the basics of physics.

Edited July 12, 2021 by turboplanner

[Geoff_H]

2 hours ago, kgwilson said:

This is a bold statement with no qualifications whatsoever.

I did this calculation and many other such calculations in 2019.  I can supply the calculations, but would expect renumeration as this area of work is what I did for the last 10 years of my working career.  Consulting to many large organisations including BHP.  All data used was from published sources.  I have a degree in engineering and 45 years experience in energy systems.  

The point about using home PV cells to charge EV batteries is very valid, however as one 300W PV panel charging on a fine day will power a Tesla for 4 kilometres you either need to have a limited travel requirement or a lot of cells on your roof.

I did calculations on how big a battery that I would need to go off the grid and last one week without sunlight and do the 10,000 kilometres that I do and power my airconditioning and replace my gas with battery power.  The cost amazed me several orders of magnitude more than I expected.

The story about how long it would take to power the New York state grid allowing for 7 days without PV cells is staggering.  Elons giga factories would take over several decades to produce enough batteries by sole production.

[aro]

Renewable energy is becoming cheaper very quickly. It has been reported that it is cheaper now to build new solar or wind than to operate coal power stations.

 

EVs can potentially help solve the problem of variability, because they have big batteries and can actually return power to the grid if there is a shortfall. With the right software, you could charge your EV when solar and wind are producing a lot of power, and sell the power back for a profit when the renewable energy supplies drop. Power companies obviously don't want that to happen - they want to make the profits themselves - but it just means that some planning and regulation might be required.

[turboplanner]

3 hours ago, aro said:

Renewable energy is becoming cheaper very quickly. It has been reported that it is cheaper now to build new solar or wind than to operate coal power stations.

 

EVs can potentially help solve the problem of variability, because they have big batteries and can actually return power to the grid if there is a shortfall. With the right software, you could charge your EV when solar and wind are producing a lot of power, and sell the power back for a profit when the renewable energy supplies drop. Power companies obviously don't want that to happen - they want to make the profits themselves - but it just means that some planning and regulation might be required.

There's no doubt that renewables are way cheaper than power generated by coal-fired power stations, or that renewables can operate at full capacity all the time.

 

There's also no doubt that a steam turbine driven generator requires a boiler which must run continually to avoid structural damage, and can only be brought up to temperature slowly. Its this need to run at a base temperature to avoid boiler damage that is termed base power. In the past electricity companies would sell power "off-peak" at a greatly reduced price for things like hot water systems, but that never covered costs and in recent years, even if you buy a HWS with off-peak switching and wiring to the meter, you may not get a deal.

 

Because of this, In Base Power conditions, and up to a certain output, renewables can supply cheaper energy to the Eastern States Grid, which is based on short term buying and selling through AEMO, pretty much like a stock exchange. There are no favours given, electricity distributors will buy at the cheapest price they can get. So in recent years renewables have had higher market share in the winter months because the coal-fired plants, overfuelling because of the Base Load requirement can't compete, and this has led to power station owners withdrawing from the market and closing down. The downside to this result from free marketing is that renewables can't offer Peak Power volume to replace the former coal-fired capacity. That in turn is offset to a degree by the power companies buying energy interstate and from independent energy producers like the Sugar Mills in Queensland. On one hot night I was watching the AEMO dashboard and Victoria was pumping energy into South Australia to make up their shortfall, pulling energy from the Tasmanian Hydro, pulling energy from NSW, and NSW was keeping up by pulling energy from Queensland. On that night the total capacity of the renewables (solar and wind) was 1% of the grid.

 

That is the scale of the variability required.

 

The SA Big Battery has 40 minutes supply of the South Australian total demand, so sounds like a waste of time, but has proven invaluable when big energy demand comes on quickly, like a stinking hot day in SA, because the battery prevents some blackouts while the Coal-fired power stations are coming up to temperature, so they deifnitely have a future and are being expanded around Australia.

 

The problem with selling your power to the grid, EV or not, is the spot price system the Power distributors use to buy. You can watch it evolving on the AEMO dashboards, so if for some reason a power station in Queensland offers a cheap rate, you can see the price change and the energy flow change as distributors take up the offer. They are businesses and are unlikely to pay retail prices to homeowners with solar on the roof or energy stored in their EV which is pumped into the grid in minute quantities. You've alluded to this, but the States and Territories would have to be legally able, and then politically willing to set a minimim price paid to the household while there's also a free market.

[turboplanner]

Another aspect of your EV concept Aro is that, with EV Sales at the 500,000 per year mark there would soon be enough sitting on chargers each night for software to do what you suggest, and pump back into the grid when energy was needed, but that leads to the personal scenario similar to driving home and parking your car with a trip planned/business/appointments the next day, and overnight your petrol tank is emptied or left half full.

[octave]

4 hours ago, turboplanner said:

Another aspect of your EV concept Aro is that, with EV Sales at the 500,000 per year mark there would soon be enough sitting on chargers each night for software to do what you suggest, and pump back into the grid when energy was needed, but that leads to the personal scenario similar to driving home and parking your car with a trip planned/business/appointments the next day, and overnight your petrol tank is emptied or left half full.

 

This is not how V2G operates.   A good example of how it works is what happens now with home batteries that sell back to grid. I am looking at doing this myself so I believe I have some knowledge of how it works.  Selling power back to the grid either from a home battery or  from a vehicle battery entails set parameters Nobody would sell all the electricity from their battery back to the grid.  For a car it would work like this.  I get home from work, I plug my car in which may still have substantial charge.   During peak power demand the grid using your preset limits will take a little from many batteries then during the night when demand is low and power plentiful and importantly cheap the charging begins.  

 

There are especially benefits for fleet owners. A company that owns say 100 EVs that are return to base at 5PM still with capacity that can be sold back to the grid during the evening peak (at a high price)  and then can charge later during the period where electricity is cheaper.

 

There is a trial of V2G in proposed trial in Canberra run by ACTEW and ANU involving with the ACT governments fleet of 50 vehicles.        World leading electric vehicle to grid trial in ACT

 

There are many trials in Europe  Vehicle-to-grid pilot schemes gather pace

 

and in the US  First vehicle-to-grid charging pilot in the US Midwest underway

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I

[spacesailor]

And now your power supplier Can turn off your panels forcing you to use their grid electricity.

Smart Meter !.

spacesailor

[octave]

40 minutes ago, spacesailor said:

And now your power supplier Can turn off your panels forcing you to use their grid electricity.

Smart Meter !.

spacesailor

 

   When the grid voltage is too high my feed in is curtailed to protect the grid.  In practice this means 1 or more panels (usually no more than 4) are switched off for a short time.    When this happens all of the other panels are available for me to use.  If I purchased a battery or an EV with a 2 way charger I could store this electricity.   

 

 

 

My last bill was $98.67 due to accrued feed in tariff.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited July 13, 2021 by octave

[spacesailor]

I thought if l buy thousands of $ worth of panels l wouldent have a bill to pay.

BUT

No one will install a standalone system.. ( l don,t fancy a Smart meter, they seem to put your bills much higher ).

spacesailor