Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

welcome Kev, nice to have another different profession to add to our list feel free to rant any time (as long as its on topic and not nasty, everything is good )

c1: Why would you have a reverse gear with an electric motor? 1L/100km is still a long way to go - my bike gets about 0.1L/100km and cost me $300.

Regarding motor sport, if electric motors had a direct advantage (i.e. not to do with peak power storage) they would surely already be used. But they're not. I'm simply saying that replacing a gearbox with an electric motor does not seem useful (unless you have superconducting motors or something).

Having held a truck gearbox in my hands, and seen a 300kW 3phase induction motor, the argument seems fairly clear.

I thought the question was not so much how we drive the car (ie electric motor vs gearbox) as to the question of lessening GHG emmissions and reliance on fossil fuels.

Thanks for the welcomes everyone. Got pretty excited about this aquaponics stuff as soon as I saw the rerun on Gardening Australia. Wasn't in the country for the first time around. Got Joel's book, read it cover to cover and got a pretty lame system together the next day at my in-laws house. I will save pics for when my wife and I get something going at home.

As for the electric motor thing. I agree with njh that if electric motors had a clear advantage then they would have been used earlier. However the big advantages of electric drive systems for cars are just being developed now. The good motors such as being developed by AC propulsion are getting a lot better. Storage technologies are improving. Things like all-wheel drive, traction control and active stability are much more common (which are things that can be done better with electric motors). Introducing these sorts of technologies into popular motorsport is very difficult because of regulations.

F1 has banned a lot of technologies, and the engines are well defined. Our local V8 cars have pretty strong restrictions, for example the rear suspension is specified as a watts linkage. Nascar mandates carbs and the truck arm rear suspension uses chains to limit droop. The list goes on and on.

A straight forward swap of petrol for electric motor is out of the question except in the short hill-climb, autocross and drag comps, due to power storage.

However hybrid technologies in the immediate future could have a very bright future in motorsport, regulations permitting. At a particular 24hr race last year, I engineered a car that was using 0.7 gal a lap (Sorry for the units I worked in the US for the last 18months). We completed around 630 Laps (~440Gal Fuel) . We had about 30 pitstops for the race. Reducing that by one pitstop buys around 1-2 minutes of track time. All we need to do that is cut fuel usage by 4-5%. Regenerative technologies can give that sort of advantage. A minute over 24 hours doesn't sound like much, however it is a serious advantage, in this particular case it would have meant another place for us.

The complicated situation is that being 5% more fuel efficient buys you more than a minute becaues you end up with more choice of when you pit. However that would start getting into a pretty serious discussion. I should also note that these cars are run at close to ideal fuel/air mixture for full burn. Its pretty important to get the most out of your fuel in endurance racing.

0.1L/100km is pretty hard to beat. I did work with a French guy who had been part of building an eco-marathon car that did about 0.04L/100km. Much better than the 5mpg at the race I mentioned.

Kev

Just so you know, my "Green" side has always been at odds with my love of speed (The drug, not the tablets). I don't work on engines much, with my specialty being suspension systems. The idea of green motorsport excites me, but is a long way away.

Kev

khayward: yeah, one of my collegues is a auto engineering guru and he said exactly the same thing a while back regarding regen braking and track times. We had a lovely chat about using ultraflywheels for braking energy recovery.

I do find the highly regimented rules for F1 rather silly - I'd like to see a few 2 strokes, diesels and turbines out there rather than the tiny incremental enhancements we've seen in the last while. I didn't realise the suspension restriction - that must be really annoying!

good one Kev-
so sound like you might have spent a bit of time at waneroo(?)

Good lord, have your internet connection go out for a day, and it takes a day to read all the missed posts!

Quick aside: energy isn't created (or lost) during braking. Energy is a conserved quantity. It's *form* changes, which is what we've all been talking about anyways . How to get useful forms of energy from non-useful forms.

OK, picky people, energy-matter-information is conserved, not energy by itself.

The 6 cyl engine was replaced with a 1 cyl genset which powered the electric motor installed in the engine bay and normal drive train, of which he only needed to use top/reverse he had micro gens on each wheel which increased drag to generate power and when braking each would generate power fed to storage...I am finding myself having to discribe way beyond my understanding... just pretend I never said anything...K
C1...out

finally got to watch An Inconvenient Truth tonight we tend to be a bit behind with our viewing here.
Need to think some on it, probably watch it again tomorrow...

yes i got it the other day to

I wastch the movie "An Inconvenient truth" last night, and it puts in fairly blunt terms the way we are headed as far as global warming goes...

An interesting, scarey and exiting read...

Did you hear Al Gore on tele the other night pleading with US congress to do something about it?

Can't believe (we) picked GW over him. Thought it was good to have him address congress. Sort of funny, it seems to be making the presidential contenders squirm a bit as the press drools over him and think he will run again. Still its great to see he has come into his own.

agreed-- just wish those peckers in the big house would listen.
They keep saying we can't afford it, truth is we can't afford not to.

mind you all the silly old buggers will be dead and buried before it will affect them...
just like coward i mean howard or PM