Hybrid idea

[chuckm]

It's a pipe dream $-wise, but I'd love to build a diesel hybrid tadpole trike. Here's my idea.
Four parallel wired ultracapacitors (each weighing 54lbs, 55Wh, 75V, 50A continuous, 150A 5sec peak) http://www.maxwell.com/ultracapacito...12179_rev3.pdf
Diesel genset, ideally something like this 260lbs unit, running at 72V: Model 6250 Alternator with Lombardini LDW 903 FOCS
Power the wheels with a WarP 9 motor and a Kelly 500A controller with regen, running at 72V. If I could keep my vehicle weight under 1200lbs and a cd around 0.25, then the acceleration shouldn't be too gimpy. The capacitors should be able to soak up the regen power readily and provide all the current I need (by both motor and controller limits)
What are your thoughts?

[whitewiz]

Serial Hybrid
not that i know anything about electricity but
-you may needs an array of increasingly smaller capacitors to keep from sending a surge of amps to your motor as the ultracap can discharge its entire load in a few seconds
-think about replacing some of the very expensive ultracaps with a zinc-air battery, its light, cheap and provides a steady source of power.
-if one of those ultracaps gets shorted, say in an accident, i wonder how big a mushroom cloud it makes?

were you thinking something like a t-Rex or a stallion?

[Intrigued]

Cool! Those supercapacitor packs are about 20 X 10 X 9 inches. I knew Maxwell had some big caps, but didn't know about the packs. Can be strung together to 600 volts.

That diesel genset is pretty nice, too! $10K isn't a bad price for what they'll do.

Some quick figuring, with 4 X 8 (32) caps in each pack, puts the pack somewhere in the $3000 range, with four packs at $12K. Wild Guess there, from prices seen for individual caps.

At 75 volts and 50 amps, or 3750 Watts (continuous), a pack would only run about 53 seconds before exhausting - unless you have a pretty small load. Four in parallel for 75 volts and 200 amps would still only run 53 seconds at the 200 amps, so the genset would have to be running fairly continuously. I'm not sure 200 amps is enough to pull even a tadpole up to any decent speed, but the caps can handle 3X continuous for 5 seconds. That would kill discharge time quickly, and I'm not sure that 4 packs would really "...supply all the power I need." I'd guess a 6 X 12V battery pack would still be needed for the higher demand and less-than-instantaneous charges and discharges, but that's a whole lot better than carrying around 20 to 30 batteries!


Oh, whitewiz, caps pretty well have a discharge time of seconds no matter what - again, unless you have a mighty small load. They don't do the "sending" of any surge, and no array would make any difference. The load put on them determines discharge, and a person would have to be careful to limit continuous amperage at the controller, or they could indeed blow - not anything worthy of a mushroom cloud, unless you're talking "down the street" cloud versus "next town over" cloud.

Also, the only way to recharge a zinc-air battery is to replace its guts (okay, "zinc electrolyte paste"), so they're not really feasible to use without some type of "refueling station".

ANYway... Running biodiesel in the genset, and with that setup, would still keep you from supporting any terrorists, and would be a cool way to get around, for sure!
AND, it could still be done for about the same price as a lithium pack at OUR today's prices... and have more range...

[Electric Frenzy]

why not a biotrike? Serial hybrid that runs 50miles all electric and then is recharged by a biodiesel CAT engine to the tune of 100-120mpg. Base price is $24k and they're being made now.

More info @ Home

p.s. I'll have MUCH more info and first hand impressions in the coming weeks.

[Piwoslaw]

Originally Posted by Electric Frenzy

why not a biotrike?

Check out these two threads:
Swee's Bio-Hybrid Trike
Help me build hybrid trike.

[chuckm]

At 75 volts and 50 amps, or 3750 Watts (continuous), a pack would only run about 53 seconds before exhausting - unless you have a pretty small load. Four in parallel for 75 volts and 200 amps would still only run 53 seconds at the 200 amps, so the genset would have to be running fairly continuously. I'm not sure 200 amps is enough to pull even a tadpole up to any decent speed, but the caps can handle 3X continuous for 5 seconds. That would kill discharge time quickly, and I'm not sure that 4 packs would really "...supply all the power I need." I'd guess a 6 X 12V battery pack would still be needed for the higher demand and less-than-instantaneous charges and discharges, but that's a whole lot better than carrying around 20 to 30 batteries!

Heh... you're right. Rather embarrassing miscalculation, wasn't it? Perhaps just one ultracap (for regen power uptake) tied to a couple of battery strings would be better. Unfortunately, now I'm in lithium battery range if I want to keep the weight down.

[Intrigued]

It's a tangled web at the moment, huh!

I may have been right about some of that, but the real question is HOW right. With technologies birthing/dying/changing daily, the playing field can shift almost hourly.

If we can see lithium (or a better) battery production rise to the point that supply matches demand a little better and brings the $ down, then things are going to happen quickly. I hope I'm in the middle of it somewhere!

OR... if they had supercaps that would hold 55 KILOwatthours... OOH, BABY!!!

[chuckm]

Originally Posted by Intrigued

... if they had supercaps that would hold 55 KILOwatthours... OOH, BABY!!!

Ironically, that was my embarrassing error.

[Intrigued]

OUCH!!!

Been there, done that, forced to buy the t-shirt...

I honestly still like the idea. Having that as a PHEV with a small battpack would do my in-town driving pretty well on electricity, and then for the longer trips fire up the bio-genset. A supercap or two would absorb regen efficiently. There's enough of the Big Boys doing stuff like that for me to think it has merit.

[Electric Frenzy]

Originally Posted by Piwoslaw

Check out these two threads:
Swee's Bio-Hybrid Trike
Help me build hybrid trike.

Neither of those threads have any information of any ACTUAL vehicle that can be purchased currently. That's why I suggested the biotrike by CAMI. It seems that it would meet almost 100% of his requirements/demands.