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Ultracapacitor Bus Recharges At Each Stop
TechReviewAl writes "A US company and its Chinese partner are piloting a bus powered by ultracapacitors in Washington DC. Ultracapacitors lack the capacity of regular batteries but are considerably cheaper and can be recharge completely in under a minute. Sinautec Automobile Technologies, based in Arlington, VA, and its Chinese partner, Shanghai Aowei Technology Development Company, have spent the past three years demonstrating the approach with 17 municipal buses on the outskirts of Shanghai. The executive director of Sinautec touts the energy efficiency of this approach: 'Even if you use the dirtiest coal plant on the planet [to charge an ultracapacitor], it generates a third of the carbon dioxide of diesel.'"
the company name says it all!
*ZAP* Aowei!
Oh, first post!
The next model will come with a flux supercapacitor, and will generate several sequels.
Exxon buys them out, or lobbies against the tech and throws campaign money to the folks that make the municipal decisions, as big oil does with everything else progressive that possibly endangers their energy monopoly.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
...bus ultra-charges you!
Aren't these, in the end, pretty much the same as a trolley? The bus is really a mini-bus that holds 11 people. It uses 40% as much electricity as a trolley. If you expanded the bus to hold as many people as a trolley can, wouldn't the increase in size and weight (both bus weight and passenger weight) make it use more energy?
If so, then what's the difference between this and, say, a mini-trolley? I mean, hell, why not ultracapacitor golf carts or something?
http://www.tenjou.net/
The cap's are under the seats?! Call me old fashioned (and it won't be the first time) but I'll take a cab, thank you.
people said i was crazy when i talked about this a few years ago. the best advatage of UC's is they don't melt when you discharge a huge current as batteries do, hello electric sports cars that kick the shit out of petrol engines.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Engineer: Sorry, the idea didn't pan out. The battery works, but it's got no capacity. Useless.
Marketing Guy: What do you mean, no capacity? It can't be zero if it works, right?
Engineer: Sure, but it gets drained in seconds by any sort of circuit.
Marketing Guy: They recharge as fast as they drain, right?
Engineer: Yeah, sure. but...
Marketing Guy: "Recharges in under a minute". Nothing on the market can match it. When can we ship in volume?
So this is like a train that goes on roads. But instead of having electricity all throughout the rails, it has them only on some tracks. And oh, if there's a red light, bye-bye, you're dead. What I think it'd do instead is be like a hybrid that has the ability to recharge at every bus stop. But I think it's an interesting idea. Being private means that there's no need to implement a system for billing the electricity too.
But then again, what provides the electricity? If it's more fossil fuels, then it's not being green; it's cutting diesel costs.
isn't the voltage across ultracapacitors really large with a large charge? if that cap explodes, i could see it being very very bad.
also what about times when the bus doesn't need to pick up or drop of passengers? just stop the bus anyways?
Pretty neat. There's tons of other uses for this technology. Among other things, ultra-capacitors are probably the way to go for non plug in hybrids.
or becomes stuck in traffic? Is there a backup gas engine?
mmmmm.... last year Team BMW Sauber almost cooked a F1 mechanic. http://www.bmwblog.com/2008/07/30/bmw-kers-shocks-mechanic-to-ground/ whatcouldpossiblygowrong in a municipal bus?
For urban locations where stops are seldom more than a block or two apart this makes for lower infrastructure costs, as no over-street trolly cables are needed.
The ability to alter routes would also be fairly flexible because you could tie into the power grid anywhere you need to add a station.
But the amount of power you need to deliver in a short time means that the stations have to have either the ability to acquire and store a massive charge in the between-bus intervals, (their own ultra-capacitors) or the grid inter-tie would really have to be massive enough to dump that much power into the bus in a couple minutes, for as many buses as you need to send down the line in rush hour.
A shorted capacitor might be fearsome fireworks display.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
I imagine the streets of many major cities may wind up getting traffic jams very frequently, so what happens if the bus gets stuck in such a one, and it takes an hour or more to get moving again (e.g. vehicular accident further down), or however long it takes to discharge the ultracapacitors? I suppose it may be necessary to install a backup engine that runs on conventional fuel, possibly just to run a generator which will charge the ultracapacitors sufficiently to get to the next stop.
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
"Even if you use the dirtiest coal plant on the planet"
How funny, I'd make a big bet that it is located in China.
Sinautec, as I suspected, is a Chinese firm, with an office in VA.
http://www.sinautecus.com/contact.html
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
That's nice that "A US company and its Chinese partner" are piloting the bus, but I think it would be much more interesting to know who designed and built it.
Is what makes bus travel POSSIBLE!!!
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
... in San Francisco, at least. They have lines of pure electric buses, with two power cables that run up to lines suspended over the road. You can see one here and I don't think this is particularly unique to San Francisco.
Is this to say that electric buses in San Francisco ALSO generate 1/3 the CO2? How are they lighter, since they aren lugging around huge ultracapacitors and regenerative brakes? How efficient are regenerative brakes? Could you put smaller ultracaps on existing buses and just use them to charge up from brakes, feeding the rest from the existing power lines?
Neat idea, but in reality, this doesn't seem like as big a step as it may seem. Might be nice to get rid of unsightly wires, though.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
In soviet russia, ultracapacitor bus recharges YOU!
...there's no reason why every rental car shuttle bus and parking shuttle bus at every airport shouldn't be converted post-haste. Then to prove a point, let's go ahead and power them with the dirtiest coal plant we can find to see if the claims are true.
The ultracapacitors are made of activated carbon and have an energy density of six watt-hours per kilogram. (For comparison, a high-performance lithium-ion battery can achieve 200 watt-hours per kilogram.) Clifford Clare, chief executive of Foton America, says another 60 buses will be delivered early next year with ultracapacitors that supply 10 watt-hours per kilogram.
Or, to put this in more sensible terms. 0.021MJ/kg (0.036MJ/kg next year) for an ultracap vs 0.72MJ/kg for a lithium-ion battery. Aka, the tiny bottom left square in this chart. Compare this to, say, gasoline at 47MJ/kg or even hydrogen at 142MJ/kg and you start to get some idea of why people are excited about "the hydrogen economy".
How we know is more important than what we know.
and we might get something that works !
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
The article just says that the bus itself is cheaper than a lithium-ion battery powered bus. It doesn't sound like they are accounting for the entire charging system. I can see how ultracapacitors would be useful for this case, since a bus is extremely heavy and basically stops every half mile. Regenerative braking would wear out a lithium ion battery pack fairly quickly and wouldn't be as efficient.
Otherwise, I'm fairly skeptical that ultracapacitors are really that price-competitive with batteries. Anyone want to try to convince me?
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Is there a way to remedy the unsprung weight problem?
Anyone?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Last I checked, capacitors have a very long lifespan, many many years compared to what, 5-10 for lead acid and lithium ion. They don't get memory, their performance doesn't degrade over time. And unlike lead acid, they don't mind the vibrations and jolts of being in a vehicle. I'm not aware of any severe temp restrictions on them either - I know for certain that hotter areas of the country have to have different kinds of batteries because of how heat kills batteries. (moreso than cold)
So that makes them cheaper to run since you don't have to change out batteries for many thousands of dollars every 5-7 years like you do on the hybrid cars.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Fisher Price figured it out years ago.
When the batteries dies, replace them.
Make the power pack standardized and quickly swappable.
You're welcome.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/27/opinion/27friedman.html -- basically, while in the US obstructionists are still yelling "climate change is a myth!", China is going green because it's realized it has poisoned its citizen enough. Look forward to them exporting their tech to the rest of the world...
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
http://www.utexas.edu/research/cem/Energy%20Storage%20Composite%20Rotor.html
The University of Texas at Austin Center for Electromechanics (UT-CEM) has developed a 2 kW-hr flywheel battery for energy management on a hybrid electric urban bus. The battery will recover braking energy and store excess energy generated by the prime mover. The flywheel rotor, fabricated from high-strength composites, spins at 36,000 rpm at full charge (~825 m/s tip speed), and is housed in a vacuum enclosure to minimize windage drag. A cross-section of the flywheel system design is shown. Ensuring flywheel safety is a major issue that must be addressed in using flywheels for transportation applications. In support of this activity, the durability tests performed under Phase IV of the DARPA Flywheel Safety Program, focused on this flywheel design.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
will be doing just this IF they are real. And yes, it has been planned for this.
this does not use batteries, does not swap anything. Did you not read the article?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
They went to the trouble to dog electric trolleys in the article, but why not just make the trolleys 40% lighter and add regenerative breaking? At least do an apples to apples comparison between the two. I am wondering since you need to store the energy if line loss or high voltage would be a problem with the ultracapacitor.
this will hold but a FRACTION of the energy that a regular battery powered bus will. It will only move several miles on a charge. Assume that the caps cost 20x for same amount of energy (they are not; they are less than 10X). But in this case, the bus will ONLY go several miles at most. OTH, electric buses are designed to go minimum 60 miles, which is at least 20x. So, worse case situation, the cap and battery costs the same (really not likely). The BIG difference is that the cap can be used easily for braking AND will last a lifetime. Batteries can not be used for braking AND will need to be replaced every couple of years.
For buses, and even metro trains, this is the right way to go.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Ultracaps and modern power electronics make this idea a lot more practical.
A Shadeless room is a brighter room.
The bus has to stick to a route, which is why this works for initial deployment. However, imagine if rechargers were installed at every red light - little pop-up electrical contacts that mate with the cars when they stop, complete with a micro-payment system that accounts for each micro-fill.
Now you don't have to carry around loads of batteries.
Numerous studies have been done and prove that the energy into it will be worse than what it is for any fossil fuel. Right now, the amount of energy on a cap is low, BUT with more RD work, that will change. OTH, the costs of hydrogen and oil will only continue upwards.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
First Most Favored Nation status, then nuclear missle secrets, then an (actual?) Manchurian candidate. What's next ?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Lest everyone forget, this is a bus we're talking about. I don't think I ever saw WRX STi badging on that bad boy, so while reducing wheel weight is good as it reduces the gyro effect when the wheel spins, but I doubt that these vehicles are going to wind up facing wheel-skip problems... I hope. They're not making any more Speed sequels/prequels/craptinuations, are they?
Odi profanum vulgus et arceo
you could charge a regular battery at each stop
These Boots Are Made For Walkin
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
"Even if you use the dirtiest coal plant on the planet [to charge an ultracapacitor], it generates a third of the carbon dioxide of diesel.'"
Petroleum diesel C16H34 or C14H30
Coal Errrrrr C with variable trace quantities of S, H, O and N.
Subcritical fossil fuel power plants can achieve 36–40% efficiency. Supercritical designs have efficiencies in the low to mid 40% range, with new "ultra critical" designs using pressures of 4,400 psi (30 MPa) and dual stage reheat reaching about 48% efficiency.
Ideal diesel efficiency of 56%, but lets stay sane, I keep hearing more along the lines of 35% (Probably BS but real numbers have been banished/obfuscated/hidden somewhere)
Factor in 15% to 50% (extreme) grid transmission loss, and (ops) 5% to 10% electric motor loss.
Love the idea of a Ultra Capacitor for a Hybrid, just stop saying silly things. Less CO2, you're funny.
For the 20 years of my life in the US, I have never seen a car burning on the side of the road.
I've seen a car catch fire after an accident. I also knew someone who burned to death after the car she was in caught on fire, she was wearing her seat belt which became jambed. For this very reason I hate mandatory seatbelt laws, if there's the possibility someone will burn to death they should have the choice as to whether or not they will wear a seatbelt. The only thing worse than burning to death is surviving having your body burned.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Build a voltage regulator or something into the battery and there will be no risk of shock.
Ever wired a capacitor in backwards? I have, the result is loud.
Now blowing up a bus might be as easy as cross wiring the charging terminals.
Keep this bus going at 88 MPH or it'll explode... Back In The Future!!!
Don't ja now those things can discharge just by you trying to disconnect them? We're going to have to cut all 5 of these leads at the same tyme.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas:
Fuel name CO2 emitted (lbs/106 Btu)
Fuel oil 161
Coal (bituminous) 205
Coal (subbituminous) 213
Coal (lignite) 215
Coal (anthracite) 227
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_combustion_engine#Energy_efficiency:
"most engines retain an average efficiency of about 18%-20%"
From http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_energy_efficiency_of_an_average_coal_powered_plant:
"According to Hans-Dieter Schilling (Energie-Fakten), the average efficiency of all coal power stations in the world currently stand at around 31%"
Mashing those numbers around a bit I get around 900lbs of CO2 per usable MMBTU from diesel (fuel oil, close enough for these rough numbers), vs 700lbs of CO2 per usable MMBTU from coal based electricity. That's not even 1/3 less, far from the 2/3 less they are claiming.
There are extraction/transmission/conversion losses in both cases that could be factored in, but it's hard to see how it could change their math by a factor of two.
Am I missing something obvious?
From the summary: "Even if you use the dirtiest coal plant on the planet [to charge an ultracapacitor], it generates a third of the carbon dioxide of diesel."
Yea, notice it said "diesel" not biodiesel.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I've seen several cars burning on the side of the road. Usually the fire begins under the hood. Once saw a mercedes on fire in a taco bell parking lot. When I'm on the highway and see one, I usually take advantage of the opportunity to speed for the next 50 or so miles. If I get pulled over by the highway patrol, the plan is to tell the cops I was rushing to a payphone to dial 911 about the fire.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
That "US comapny" that is Chinese, is really French. Then again Jaguar is owned by the Indian company Tata.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Detroit may not use them, but they are all over ebay in the electric bicycle and scooter areas. In addition, michelin has been working on them as well.
Really, this is 2009....citing Detroit as a hot bed of engineering elegance and technical skills is a little passe now....that they _failed_ at some tech or "couldn't get it to work" is nothing new at all. In the US the REAL domestic far out and successful car and truck engineering goes on in autoracing, hotrod shops, modding shops and new startups. Detroit maintains their solid global C-minus rating at all costs...
Here's Detroit, a movie reference-> Fat (unions) Drunk (stockholders) Stupid (management)
That's no way to go through life, son..
Detroit gets ideas, sure, any place BUT Detroit, then 15 years later starts showing some clunky million dollar prototypes, then 30 years later they enter production at double the cost and half the reliability of about anyone else. Here's my prediction along those lines teh VOLT!!11! ....a few months later.. Auto top headline news..GM was forced to recall all their (now 60 grand) volt models because of problems with the batteries..and computer systems...and paint job..and the small booster engine that catches fire and blows up....and new "mileage performance" tires that shed road gators worse then a semi running on fourth generation retreads..
I'm from Detroit, keyword "from"
In my part of the world at least, you need a lot of power to warm a bus from -40 to something more reasonable. Diesels have a hard time keeping up.
Would they have another bank of capacitors for resistive heating?
What if the bus gets stuck in snow and runs out of charge? will the snow and slush cause problems with the charging contacts?
Trolleybusses seem a lot more practical to me, I never understood why they are so unpopular in north america, even if only used in high density areas, where the infrastructure would pay off.
Sent from my PDP-11
Page 2 of TFA:
DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! This message brought to you by Steve Ballmer.
From the product page:
http://www.sinautecus.com/products.html
"Sinautec's forty-one seat Ultracap Buses have been serving the Greater Shanghai area since 2006. "
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
http://www.gizmag.com/michelin-active-wheel-production-electric-car-by-2010/10489/
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
No, just put a bridge rectifier over the bus load contacts (a fat one, it's going to handle a serious amount of current). It means you wouldn't even need to worry about which way round the connections are wired up, but you'll have a voltage drop over the diodes (you could also use one diode, but that would mean it would simply not load when connections are wrong).
Having said that, I would like to see an ultracapacitor go "bang" - that's a lot of energy to release in one go..
Alternatively, you may just end up with a bus driving backwards :-)
Insert
Why build out the electric infrastructure at the bus stops when one already exists for the subway system? I don't believe there's anything in the current system to do regenerative braking or store power in the cars. So this would reduce the power requirements, eliminating the need to expand the electric capacity when adding more cars to the system.
Once the subway works, then consider building the bus based system, unless a flywheel and/or hydrogen are doing the job cheaper.
Make the flywheel brittle - like a ceramic or like those shotgun rounds that disintegrate when breaching a door. That way if containment is breached, it turns into powder.
..........FULL STOP.
Carbon Dioxide? Really a problem?
Monoxide, sure.
Plants BREATHE carbon dioxide. Haven't heard of any problems with dioxide buildup anywhere, either....
The solution, found in the 20th century, was the constant velocity joint. Tinfoil hat not needed. They went to Detroit and some old guy in the SAE said "folks, we tried that and it was a very bad idea because..."
Car makers have had over a hundred years of experience of what does, and what doesn't work. They don't suppress technology because it might replace theirs - everybody wants a technology lead. They just don't buy stuff that doesn't work.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Don't put your tongue across the terminals.
I read the title as "Ultravelociraptor bus charges at each stop"
The Great American streetcar scandal (also known as the General Motors streetcar conspiracy and the National City Lines conspiracy) is a conspiracy in which streetcar systems throughout the United States were dismantled and replaced with buses in the mid-20th century as a result of illegal actions by a number of prominent companies, acting through National City Lines (NCL), Pacific City Lines (on the West Coast, starting in 1938), and American City Lines (in large cities, starting in 1943).
National, which had been in operation since 1920, was organized into a holding company, and General Motors, Firestone Tire, Standard Oil of California, Phillips Petroleum, Mack, and the Federal Engineering Corporation made investments in the City Lines companies in return for exclusive supply contracts.[1] Between 1936 and 1950, National City Lines bought out more than 100 electric surface-traction systems in 45 cities,[2] including Detroit, New York City, Oakland, Philadelphia, Phoenix, St. Louis, Salt Lake City, Tulsa, Baltimore, Minneapolis, and Los Angeles, and replaced them with GM buses. American City Lines merged with National in 1946
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_American_streetcar_scandal
Every death caused by car fires is absolutely, 100%, cheaply preventable. All that's needed is a racing-style fuel cell, which contains a flexible bladder inside that prevents fuel from spilling when the hard outer shell is breached (that's why fires in racing are basically a thing of the past these days). These are commonly used in racing, and are standard equipment on many aircraft. They require no extra maintenance and the additional cost would be negligible in mass production. The only downsides are a very slight increase in weight (maybe 10lbs) and decrease in capacity (maybe a liter or two on an average-sized car tank). It's literally a tragedy that this is not required on all cars. It's much more important than curtain airbags or fucking OnStar. It really pisses me off when I hear of someone burning to death in a car accident.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
but where I work we deal with quarter sized ones, and they are quite temperature sensitive, in fact on the circuit boards we make we expect them to be the first thing to break down due to thermal problems.
Fortunately we are only using them as a back-up power supply for when the device suddenly loses power, so if they break down under normal conditions we can send a warning without losing anything.
Nahh... It's all about regenerative braking.
I am just poking fun at the silly statement that "the dirtiest coal plant on the planet [to charge an ultracapacitor], it generates a third of the carbon dioxide of diesel."
That is silly
A diesel hybrid would be da bomb!
I could see ultracapacitor's used there.
"Now you're getting desperate. Even 15% grid loss would be extreme"
I do not think so. A decade ago, someone posted a cradle to grave power grid distribution graph. I would live to find a copy of it again. The striking thing to me was the grid loss. It only makes since given Ohm's law, miles of wire, and many transformers, but I had never considered it before that time. Losses illustrated were between 5% to 50% with 15% being the median.
If you have empirical evidence to the contrary, I very much would like to have it! I have been looking for that graph for a while now.
I suspect that the real issue is with emissions from Diesel engines in city traffic. The ultracapacitor approach gets the emissions out into the countryside, where the coal mining and power generating plants are.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
If you doubt this, there is a simple experiment you can do. Find an old high voltage electrolytic capacitor. Charge to a few hundred volts (if you don't know how to do this you should not be doing it.) Then discharge it with a suitable insulated screwdriver, but don't keep the screwdriver on too long. You will get a bang. A check with a voltmeter will reveal residual charge on the capacitor, in fact it may still be unsafe to handle.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
while in the US obstructionists are still yelling "climate change is a myth!", China is going green because it's realized it has poisoned its citizen enough.
China has horrific air quality that actually kills people. Hardly anyone in NATO dies directly from air quality unless they start the engine while the car's still in the garage.
Look forward to them exporting their tech to the rest of the world...
Looking forward to them exporting their values and ideals to the rest of the world too?
Populus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur...
"Force shits upon Reason's back." - Poor Richard's Almanac
Why not an adiabatic diesel engine? Some time ago DARPA had a project for a ceramic diesel engine; by reducing heat loss to the environment by running the ting with no cooling system they were predicting about 80% efficiency.
I don't know why they gave up on it but it seems to me this would put an end to electric vehicles permanently.
But, think what wonderful coil gun one could build with these caps.
I recall having capacitors blow in power supplies... often results in fudge production... Don't want to be on that bus when the capacitor blows. Good idea though.
"Moreover, with four wheel-motors, there is no differential neither transmission. It is a direct drive, and there is no energy loss between the motor and wheels, as in a car with central engine. This is a second reason why wheel-motors consume less energy, particularly during cold winters."
They don't mention how they make up for no differential. You kind of need something to compensate for the wheel turning during a turn. Something dynamic an instantly responsive.
It go scrapped becasue it wasn't viable, or there is something already in the works.
Now, if there was a market for really efficient cars, they would sell really efficient cars. In reality efficiency* has been lower on a new car buyers list then comfort and convenience.
High mileage ultra efficiency cars are in the auto makers best interest.
*It seems one is finally emerging.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Came in hoping for a reference to Philip Jose Farmer's The Fabulous Riverboat.
Leaving disappointed.
I don't know but there's Willie Nelson Biodiesel, yes Willie Nelson has a chain stations selling biodiesel.
Doesn't mean it won't show up some time. Possibly as soon as three or four years. But you can't sell things now based on the fuel might be available in four years.
The same applies to fuel cells and the hydrogen economy. I favor research into different energy sources, just not with taxpayer subsidies.
Falcon
Ah, Willie Nelson. One of the Highway Men.
Should there be a Law?
Hmm, you are the only person on the bus late at night on your way home after enjoying a few beverages, no one else wants to get on or off, yet the bus keeps stopping for a minute at a time to recharge while your bladder gets closer to exploding.
I pity the drivers of these things, they have a hard enough job already
Profit! :>