Hybrid Power Trac

[Marks481]

A small diesel car is looking better and better.

Kind of funny. When I was younger, my folks had a 1978? diesel VW rabbit that would get 55-60 mpg if you babied it. 30 years later, and people are lusting after a hybrid that gets 40 mpg? And this is progress?

I understand that pollution laws have reduced the high mpg of diesels (or at least made them more expensive to make). The 2009 VW Jetta TDI would be a serious consideration (47 mpg highway) if I was in the market for a new car.

 

[cqaigy2]

As Dr. Phil says, "Get real"...

That said there are lots of interesting technologies out there and some of them might even be successful. You wouldn't need to haul around that much water; the military already reclaims water from engines as route to quality water in the field. There was a guy thirty years ago that claimed to have a 'modern' steam engine, recycling the water, with fancy triangular pistons. It seems to have been lost without a trace; I often wonder what tripped it up.

All the best,

Peter

Yes i noticed that about the IC/steam engine. As involved as that individual was in racing etc. There would have been more testing.


Seems like is saw someplace where somebody was using a virus to lay down a less expensive/toxic metal to build an electric cell with the potential "no pun intended" of a much higher energy density. They successfully tested it with virus laid down terminals and manufactured terminals, im no too sure what the significance of the terminals are except maybe smaller size?

 

[ponytug]

In battery and ultracapacitors, one of the important goals is to increase the surface area of the electrode as much as possible. This enables higher currents, and more rapid recharging.

Batteries long ago left simple sheets of metal behind. Early attempts at larger surface areas were items like fused carbon, then electrode pastes.

These days much of the work is on building fractal geometry electrodes, that is electrodes which are no longer just two dimensional, aka 2D, r**2, but with so much surface area that the surface area is driven to be infinitely large, aka 3D, r**2.9, etc. The virus manufactured terminals were a way to explore some of these high dimensional surfaces inexpensively.

Whether you could actually use them to make them in a battery plant remains open...

But these are the sorts of batteries that you would want in your hybrid power trac. I once held an ultracapacitor the size of a paper back book that held 100 Farads, and enough energy to start your car a couple of times. However the cost was a little high. I am told that some of the cars coming out of Detroit are using small ultracapacitors to improve electrical performance by providing increase noise suppression at the battery.

All the best,

Peter

Rather a long way from a hybrid power trac aren't we?

Yes i noticed that about the IC/steam engine. As involved as that individual was in racing etc. There would have been more testing.


Seems like is saw someplace where somebody was using a virus to lay down a less expensive/toxic metal to build an electric cell with the potential "no pun intended" of a much higher energy density. They successfully tested it with virus laid down terminals and manufactured terminals, im no too sure what the significance of the terminals are except maybe smaller size?