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Battery-Powered Plane Taxis, Set To Fly Soon
bigdaddy writes "'WORCESTER - At 10:01 a.m. yesterday, Cary Dillman fastened her shoulder belts in the pilot's seat of a sleek twin-seat airplane, closed the cockpit canopy, and taxied into aviation history sounding - in her words - "like a sewing machine." Dillman was piloting the first conventional airplane powered by electricity.' How cool is that! Full details in this story."
No, because it depends where the power is generated.
If it's here where I am, most (if not all) of my electricity comes from hydro and nuclear. If it's in the US, it'll likely be fossil fuels, but since it's produced in large quantities it will be less fossil fuels than what the plane would produce...
So it isn't completely 'non polluting', but it's still much better than a regular plane.
Dunn is also working on Fuel Cell planes.
Fuel Cell and Aviation
He says, "There is a limitless supply of hydrogen, and it poses no environmental harm, unlike carbon dioxide and other compounds generated by traditional gasoline or diesel engines," Dunn said. "
You can have a very well silenced piston engine aircraft, but most of the noise comes from the propeller. The Chevvron 2-32C sounds like an electric strimmer two gardens away, with its 32hp two-stroke engine. At full throttle, all you can hear is a faint buzz from the engine, and quite a bit of noise off the prop.
They tend to suffer from the same problems, however -- low flight times. You can have an electric R/C plane that's extremely high performance and fly for 3 minutes (with Ni-cads), or a very very tame flying plane that flys for 30 minutes (using Li-ion cells.) With a glow or gas engine, you can have a very high performance plane that flies for 30 minutes -- or you can try and fly across the Atlantic in an 11 lb plane.
Electrics are quieter, cleaner (no oil sprayed everywhere) and easier to deal with, which are the main reasons for their popularity. You can fly them where gas/glow planes would not be allowed.
Still, a plane that carries a passenger (i.e. not a model) for only 100 miles per charge really isn't going to be that useful. They're going to need to be able to make the fuel cells work before this plane will be accepted as anymore more than a toy. Either that, or they're going to need to make a *massive* improvent in battery technology -- such as being able to hold 5x as much charge. It may happen eventually, but it's not likely to happen soon.
That's unlikely. Batteries weigh far too much for the amount of energy they can store. Jet fuel is hard to beat from an energy density standpoint. Weight matters a lot on an airplane.
A practical electric car would be much more useful. Cars spend more time idling, have less efficient engines, and do all their polluting in a relatively small space. Airplanes, in contrast, fly efficiently, generate thrust efficiently, and spread out their pollution better. There's a lot less need for electric planes, even if the weight and refueling problems could be solved.
At least he didn't suggest hybrid planes that employ regenerative, um... braking.
One last question: why did the electric motor cost $20,000?
Not to mention that a simple eletric motor ought to be inherently more reliable than a piston engine.
A much better approach would be to determine how we can produce gasoline from CO2 and H2O or coal, using some other source of energy to get the job done. It's already possible to produce natural gas this way.
There've been electric-powered planes for at least 25 years. Paul MacCready's team, the same ones who built the first human-powered airplane in the 1970s, built a solar-powered (and thus, obviously, electric) airplane called the Gossamer Penguid.
And six years ago, a team at the University of Stuttgart built this, a fully solar-powered self-launching motorglider (that is, an airplane which is intended to shut off its engine and glide once it reaches altitude).