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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.'"
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
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....
The advantage with a bus is that its much easier to add new stops and routes. You only have to build up the charging station, whereas with a trolley, one has to tear up the road, put in tracks, and build stations.
We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it
Why would you be dead at a red light? If you're not moving then you're motors are drawing power.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
OK, now state the energy-to-mass and energy-to-volume figures of the gasoline PLUS gas tank versus that of the hydrogen PLUS storage matrix. Fact is, petroleum or synfuel equivalent is the most volume-efficient storage mechanism for hydrogen yet devised - not even counting the contribution of the carbon content. One liter of gasoline contains a higher mass of hydrogen than one liter of liquid hydrogen.
State of the art hydrogen storage systems have a container mass 10x the mass of the contained hydrogen, versus around 0.1x for gasoline tanks. Compressing or liquefying the hydrogen saps a huge amount of the theoretical energy efficiency of the system.
When you add container weight, petroleum is the most MASS-efficient storage mechanism for hydrogen.