On Monday 15 May 2006 18:36, John Coviello wrote:
I had an idea for a hybrid car today. How about putting one of those
comact wind turbines on the roof of a car, not the big ones with blades,
the one with a rotating wind turbine that looks like a cone. Then as the
car moves along it can generate electricity from the wind to charge the
batteries. I know it would not be a net energy generator or anything like
that, but it could extend battery range pretty significantly. Has anyone
tried this?
Outside of becoming known in your area as a 'conehead', you will gain
little or no benefit from your enterprise. What little energy you gained from
the generator would be more than compensated for in static and kinematic
fluid friction and drag losses as you travelled 'down the road', not to
mention electrodynamic inefficiencies and old fashioned mechanical
friction. But some of us have the dream of running down the road with
propellers on our heads hoping to fly.
Even this writer had the same dream. As a six year old, I imagined that
I could take the family bathtub and put it into a lake and travel all over
simply by connecting the tub drain to the overflow drain hole from the front
with a funnel out the back for the 'thrusting water to gush out driving me
forward'. The idea of water seeking its static level sometimes does'nt come
natural to a six year old with dreams of perpetual motion machines.
Clearly the best idea is to use nuclear power extensively, like France.
Nuclear power can desalinate water, solving water supply problems. Nuclear
power can separate water into hydrogen and oxygen. Release the oxygen
into the air and sell the hydrogen as fueleverywhere. Just burning
the hydrogen in a 'fresh air Otto cycle internal combustion engine would
be a horrendous waste, but a fuel cell based on hydrogen would work beautiful
as a power source for personal automobile transportation.
Pteranodon
