Slashdot Mirror
How Chrysler's Battery-Less Hybrid Minivan Works
thecarchik writes "Chrysler announced Wednesday that it would partner with the US Environmental Protection Agency to build and test prototypes of a different kind of hybrid vehicle, one that accumulates energy not in a battery pack but by compressing a gas hydraulically. The system in question, originally developed at the EPA labs, uses engine overrun torque to capture otherwise wasted energy, as do conventional hybrid-electric vehicles. The engine is Chrysler's standard 2.4-liter four-cylinder, the base engine in its minivan line. But rather than turning a generator, that torque powers a pump that uses hydraulic fluid to increase the pressure inside a 14.4-gallon tank of nitrogen gas, known as a high-pressure accumulator."
I routinely work with compressed gases (~2500psi, medical oxygen on an ambulance). The tanks are tremendously well-built, and if you drop one you're worried about the valve because it protrudes - not the tank itself. And by my envelope calculations, there's something like 603k pounds trying to turn my tanks inside out.
Yes, I'd want to be damn sure I knew what that tank was doing, and how well it was built - but we're pretty good at making pressure vessels that won't rupture on their own, and equally good at making ones that are solid enough to withstand impacts.
Frankly, 15 gallons of gasoline worries me more. The kind of impact that would rupture a tank would aerosolize the gas, and I'd rather be in an explosion than an explosion with fire.
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressed_air_car
The compressed air car has been under development for a long time. It shows great promise but nobody yet has been able to make a practical vehicle.
The advantage of a hybrid vehicle is that it doesn't have to store enough energy for a complete trip. In particular, it stores energy (thereby heating the engine) and releases energy (thereby cooling the engine) over a short period of time. The pure compressed air vehicle has the problem that the engine is permanently in cooling mode. If the engine is hot, because it has just been compressing gas, it is far more efficient. The longer it operates as an engine, the less efficient it becomes.
The advantage of compressed gas for short time energy storage is that the storage is simple and does not take much sophisticated material as compared with batteries.
People raise the problem of a tank of gas stored at very high pressure. The hybrid vehicle doesn't need as big a tank. Also, they've been working on this for a long time. The problem is basically solved. It isn't nearly as much a problem as a tank of gasoline.
For those who are not into car repair et al, Audi used hydraulic pressure accumulators for power brake assist. It's a great system, particularly for turbocharged cars, which spend a considerable amount of time in normal driving with low or no manifold vacuum (which is created by the pistons trying to draw air past a restriction, aka, the throttle vane. That big round thing your brake master cylinder comes out of? That's the vacuum servo. It uses surface area to multiply force from the vacuum.) Citroen used the same idea to power the extensive hydraulics used in their famous suspension systems. Mercedes did as well for their cars which had hydraulic power windows (!!), door-closers, and suspensions. Nowadays, the idea of hydraulic assist has largely gone by the wayside, with auxiliary electric vacuum pumps used where necessary. It's a shame, because the hydraulic system had a HUGE amount of reserve; you could pump the pedal hard almost thirty times.
The reservoirs are lovingly nicknamed "the bomb" by enthusiasts and owners of mid-80s-to-early-90's Audis, strictly on appearance; they look sort of like a large-ish cartoon bomb. I have NEVER heard of one exploding or failing (in terms of the pressure vessel, say, by cracking) in any way, and they've been in use for almost thirty years.
The way they DO fail, very predictably, is via the internal bladder that separates the nitrogen charge from the hydraulic fluid. Eventually the bladder fails, or the nitrogen simply diffuses through the bladder. Also, hydraulic systems are pretty horribly unreliable; with age, everything rubber fails eventually. Citroen did a pretty good job of proving that too, but on Audis, pretty much all the hydraulic hoses eventually fail. The hazard, in this case, is that when this system fails, it'll dump gallons of very slippery hydraulic fluid all over the road. If you're lucky, it won't also spray it all over, say, your hot exhaust. Atomized oil is pretty damn flammable.
Another danger: with the Audi system, all you had to do was pump the brake pedal until it was hard, and the system was safe to work on. This system would involve higher pressures and larger quantities of fluid...and it would become a real danger for anyone working on the car to do so with the system charged, as fluid over a certain pressure will either break skin or worse. I imagine they'll develop an easy way to discharge it, but people are still idiots.
The thing is also going to be a total bitch in a fire; I'm sure they'll put a pressure relief on the nitrogen side, but even then, you've got 10-15 gallons of flammable oil to deal with.
I really don't see Chrysler having any incentive to make the thing more durable than Audi/VW/Citroen did. It'll be made so it lasts about 60-70K, and then you'll be looking at replacing a huge, high-pressure tank. Expect the hilarity 3-4 years from whenever they go on sale, probably sooner.
Please help metamoderate.
Yes, SCUBA tanks (in the U.S.) are supposed to undergo annual visual inspection (basically an interior/exterior idiot check for bad rust, chips, cracks, beat up valves, etc) as well as hydrostatic testing every 5 years*. The cylinders most likely to have a catastrophic failure (typically the neck) were a bunch of aluminum 80's manufactured something like 30 years ago. Back when I worked in a dive shop we would do an eddy-current test on the necks of ALL aluminum cylinders during the annual visual inspection even though it was only really necessary for the one batch. If you take halfway decent care of a tank and don't let moisture get in (by draining the tank too low), they'll last for ages. We had decades old steel cylinders in our rental fleet that had probably outlived many a valve!
The concern is probably warranted but I would imagine the auto industry's safety measures will be far greater than those of the average diver. If the vehicles only go in for maintenance once every few years, the tanks ought to be fine. I would worry more about them being punctured during a collision. Frankly though, assuming they've done at least a minor amount of planning with collisions in mind, the severity of a collision strong enough to puncture the tank would make a sudden release of pressure the least of your concerns.
* Disclaimer: I've been out of the dive industry a while, my numbers might be off.