🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Dec15.194558.2556@adobe.com> pngai@adobe.com (Phil Ngai) writes:
<regarding flywheel energy storage>
>But how hot would this "cotton" be? You're dumping what is presumably
>the equivalent of several gallons of gasoline's worth of energy.
>That's a very large amount of energy.
>
>I hope they do lots of crash tests before unleashing such a dangerous
>technology on the unsuspecting public.

<I have to admit an emotional response to this since I think that
flywheels have tremendous potential.>

1. I think that it is unfair to call it "such a dangerous technology"
based solely on your own opinions, without having done any
investigation on your own.

2. There are several places for the energy to go during an explosion.
Since the energy is kinetic, a lot of it will end up as particle
velocity.  Some will dissipate into the air as air friction (some hot
air as a side effect).  A quantity of energy will go into the
mechanical breaking of the flywheel disk itself.  Some more will go
into the penetration of the flywheel housing.  What residual energy
escapes these will have to be determined by testing.

3. You don't need to destroy cars to test the safety/danger of
exploding flywheels.  You just take a flywheel, spin it to 10 times
its rated capacity, and give it both barrels of a 10ga shotgun loaded
for elephant.  If it explodes, you measure the explosion.  If not,
send it to Ralph Nader for further tests.

The potential for these IS tremendous.  As I remember, the power
output of a flywheel is roughly "equivalent to a V8" in a much smaller
volume and weight.  Couple this with a super efficient small engine
running full time at maximum efficiency, minimum pollution to keep the
flywheel "charged" and you can get power, economy, cleanliness and range.

-andy