Message from discussion Energy Storage

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From: Billy Harvey <Billy.Har...@thrillseeker.net>
Newsgroups: sci.nanotech
Subject: Re: Energy Storage
Approved: nanot...@Lugoj.com
Date: Sat, 18 Nov 2000 05:52:02 -0000
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In article <t19jfu4iulg...@corp.supernews.com>, Ian Stirling
<Inquisi...@I.am> [talking about energy storage for motorcycle use]
wrote:

>As you can get hydrogen from the water vapour in the air, and nanotech
>is likely to make solar panels better, then it can really help too.

Extraction of hydrogen from the air requires energy.  If you're going
to do that on-the-roll using the energy obtained from a solar panel,
then it is more efficient to use the solar panel directly.  Storage of
energy needs to occur at a rate at least equal to its use.

>Nanotech may also make flywheels a lot smaller, and potentially safer, so
>that in a crash for example, the flywheel container bursts, releasing lots
>of marble sized flywheel containers, that bounce around, and eventually
>discharge safely.

A flywheel can certainly act as an energy storage device but any
dependence on kinetic energy is going to have to handle the
dissipation of that energy.  Remember that this flywhell has to be
strong enough to handle sufficient charge to drive this machine for a
couple of hours.  While in normal use that energy dissipation is
controlled over time, in an accident that dissipation may occur very
rapidly in a mechanical object.  The fact that there are thousands or
millions of little pieces of flywheel simply means that there will be
that many more holes in you.  Even wrapping a flywheel in some type of
diamondoid casing simply means that you have a very hard and very
energetic object to handle in a very short time.

Billy