Battery operated car

You're thinking of mounting a wind-turbine onto an electric car to charge its batteries. This subject has been raised several times before. It's not practical to do this for several reasons:

1. A powerful generator like the one you're proposing requires a great deal of torque to rotate it.

2. To get this torque would require a very large radius and surface area for your wind-turbine blades.

3. The sheer size of the wind-turbine required will make this idea impractical, especially in a congested urbanized area.

4. Another impact of the size of the required wind-turbine would be to increase aerodynamic drag on your car significantly. This would in turn require a more powerful motor that will impose a heavier power drain on your batteries.

Don't be discouraged though. I know I said your idea is impractical, but you can always experiment on wind turbines to see if you can come up with an improved design for them. After all, some astonishing inventions have been made by amateurs.

One more thing, you are always welcome to ask questions that you're curious about. Just don't bring up nonsensical topics like the Illuminati or the New World Order, or any other moronic New Age conspiracy crap like how "The System" is suppressing Nikolai Tesla's discovery of limitless free energy unless you're prepared to be ridiculed.

You might want to look at the Battery Vehicle Society. Apart from the inefficient energy conversions, all dynamo type concepts suffer from the fact that the total time spent breaking (against the dynamo) in a journey is relatively little. In short, whenever you break you are wasting fuel (!).

Unfortunately not! Foolish (for a non technical person) no! Many technical people has made the same mistake already.

The problem with forces are that each force is countered by another force in the opposite direction.

The powerful stationary fan would indeed turn the fan and dynamo on the vehicle and would store some energy in the battery. This is in itself already an inefficient system because of losses. The motor turning the fan looses some energy. The stream of air spreads out. The fan cannot utilize all the energy. the dynamo looses energy, The cables heat up = looses energy, The battery looses energy internally.

It would actually be better to use a battery charger directly.

With the vehicle moving the losses are even worse,

There are losses in the cable from the battery to the motor, in the motor, in the transmission, between the tyres and the road, and energy is used to accelerate and move the vehicle. additional the other losses would have to be added as well.

Running in air also produce drag which must be overcome by additional energy.

Alternative: Running a car on powerful batteries (charged before the trip) is possible and is done. A solar panel can be used to extend the reach.

The fan idea will actually shorten the reach.

These, so called, friction forces are in the opposite direction to the motion. What about if you quickly turn around and go the other way? Jeff

What day is it, April 1st? Where am I??

You can use the power of the wind, fit your car out with a sail, it's proven over thousands of years.

As I read your post, you're thinking that the movement of the auto will provide the energy to operate the windmill

some fans, which will automatically run during the movement of vehicle

Although an attached windmill would turn as the auto moves, it creates extra friction and, the more electricity it generates, the more friction it creates. Net generated energy will always be less than that required for movement.

However, it might be a wonderful vehicle for clearing jaywalkers out of New York streets.

Tom

If the dynamo is to be run by the air forced through a fan by the motion of the vehicle. The energy to turn the fan blade will need to come from some where. That energy as described will come from the vehicle engine. This will place more load on the engine consuming more fuel. Due to the losses of changing the energy from one form to another and the inefficiency of the transfer. It would cost you more

Free Lunch? I'm in

TANSTAAFL! You're OUT! <grin>

You can always count on Andy Germany and STL Engineer to add some self righteous demeaning comments that add nothing to the fellow's question. It is a kind of naive question for folks who have experience, knowledge and skill but that's no reason to ridicule the fellow.

Kudos to all of you who generously replied with helpful information that may expand Sansan's body of knowledge.

"You can always count on Andy Germany and STL Engineer to add some self righteous demeaning comments that add nothing to the fellow's question"

OK, Andy did call the question, or the questioner, "foolish", which may have been demeaning, but excuse, me? Just what did I say to Sansan that was self righteous or demeaning? Granted, I made a few quick, hopefully humorous, comments in response to others, but they were only a few gags related to the comments presented by others, nothing insulting anyone's intelligence. Did you find something in my post #20 objectionable? I was trying to be helpful. Not that I want, or care about, your "kudos" but I thought my post #20 was "helpful information that may expand Sansan's body of knowledge."

I really would like to know, what was it I said on this thread that caused you to tarnish my fake good name <grin> with your rude comment? Since you tagged your comment onto this exchange with "aurizon", I guess you find something objectionable to "TANSTAAFL". Did you even know what that means? Obviously "aurizon" was being facetious when he called the idea a "free lunch". Was that demeaning as well? Is no one allowed to poke fun at a questioner who doesn't seem to have even taken basic Physics in secondary school? This is, after all, by definition, "The Engineer's Place for News and Discussion", and therefore we do, and have a right to, expect at least a certain minimal technical knowledge. There are plenty of basic math and science websites one could go to if one lacks "experience, knowledge and skill" in technical matters.

If you are thinking it could run without some other input of energy then what you are describing is generally called a perpetual motion machine (PMM). Despite the fact that PMM violates the Laws of Thermodynamics, it has not deterred many people of imagining a multitude of clever ways around the Laws. Interestingly, physicists (scientists that specialize in this sort of study) actually have different classifications of PMMs. For example, a PMM of the 1st Kind violates the 1st Law (known as conservation of energy) and a PMM of the 2nd Kind violates the 2nd Law of Thermodynamic (that says entropy cannot decrease). What you have here is a PMM of the 1st Kind.

Anyway, the world needs optimists like you - keep thinking!

To push the vehicle forward against the wind resistance of the fans requires more energy than the energy recovered by the fans. The additional weights, air resistance, friction and heat losses results in a system energy loss, ie your fossil fuel consumption will be larger.

However the fans mowing down pedestrians will reduce the world population, reducing the worlds demands on fuel, but dramatically increasing methane gases until a new state of equilibrium is reached.

The many posts that point out you can't rely on the motion of the car and the subsequent air flow relative to the car to turn your electrical dynamo for even something approaching a break even electrical balance.

What you can do is put your windmill at home to provide power, and charge the car overnight. If you can sort out and replicate Toyota's regenerative braking system, or separate the components and controls from a wreck at a wrecking yard, you could possibly significantly increase your range through congested areas.

My own favorite auto fuel is Methane - aka Natural Gas. It is renewable, it burns very clean, it doesn't crud up the lubricating oil, it generates less CO2 per mile, and currently is between 1/3 and 1/2 the cost per mile in the places I refuel. The only current drawback I'm aware of is the refueling stations are too few and far between in the U.S.... What a country!

Foolish......

Alkaline or Lithium?????

Foolish?, Hell, no.

Just separate the two items. The wind generator (of which thousands are in daily use) mounted on a pole or alike charging a separate set of batteries. The other set, the charged one , is in your car. When depleted, exchange them. Wind is an unlimited source of power, and is not yet used to it's fullest.

Main problem with your idea is that there's no free meal. (you don't have to be technical person to know that), When your car mounted windmill turns, it actually stops the car, so in order to move forward, you need more power out of your batteries, and at the end you will be wasting more energy than you are producing.

Google the terms "perpetuum mobile". That's what you are trying to get. Sorry, no-go. But if you do, you will be doing the world the biggest favor ever. (and I want to be your partner)

Wangito

First off, you dont have to listen to these naysayers. Wind driven energy devices on cars are proven FACT, although the technology to make them power an electric drivetrain is still non existant. However, in the early days of NASCAR, a racing legend named Smokey Yunick mounted a propeller from a model plane to his alternator, and mounted the alternator to the grill, and when the vehicle got up to speed it was able to generate the electricity needed to keep his battery charged (12 volts 100 amps is roughly standard output for an alternator.) for ignition and accesories, all while reducing the parasitic loss on his engine by not having a belt to drive it. Of course, NASCAR called it cheating and made him remove the assembly,, but you can actually see pictures of it and read more about it in his book "Power Secrets" (also a must have for any performance oriented engine builder, you can buy it at Borders Bookstore). It seems to me the technical hurdles for a setup you envision would be designing blades for your "fan" which would be lightweight and angled such that they spin up at lower vehicle speeds, a gearing mechanism which would take that high speed low torque rotation from the "fan" and turn it into high torque low speed rotation, and then your generator which would have to be designed to be as light as possible, all while delivering as much power as possible given a slow (maybe on the order of 1000 rpm) rotational speed. If the vehicle is a hybrid, you could greatly increase its mileage.

Great! Thank you very much for your valuable positive comments which are really encouraging. You have rightly read my mind!

I would like to thank all who have actively participated in this discussion.

Regards

Sansan,

Please don't be fooled into thinking that this type of electric power generation could do anything more than produce a small amount of auxiliary power, and that at a price of robbing the gasoline engine of several MPG's, just as the belt-driven alternator does.

TANSTAFFL means "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch" and was coined by Science Fiction writer Robert Heinlein in whose "Future History" series of books it had become a common expression. I think he used it to poke fun at other Science Fiction writers who did violate many scientific principles in their more imaginative fantasies, while Heinlein tried to keep to a more scientific basis, kind of a more modern Herman Melville (who described the technical aspects of whaling in his classic novel, Moby Dick).

In the same way, you can't really get a "free lunch" or something for nothing, in using the vehicle's own motion to power itself. That is what is meant by a Perpetual Motion machine. People who propose PM machines are often laughed at by scientists and engineers because they have been proposed so many times throughout the ages, it is something similar to the alchemists vain attempts to turn more common matter into gold.

The very best power feedback systems, like re-generative braking, or even the fan-driven alternator described in another post, are usually only attempts to squeeze a little more efficiency out of an on-board fuel powered system. Solar power or other wireless power "beaming" systems may be the only potential means of powering a wheeled vehicle, like a car or truck, which must have omni-directional capability to follow the twists and turn of a roadway, without an onboard power source, such as a fully-charged storage battery, or chemicals fuels for combustion engines or fuel-cells. And that is only possible because energy is added to the system, not merely trying to recycle it.

Even the best, low-friction machines will lose some energy to heat and eventually slow down and stop without energy being added to the system. And a vehicle removes energy immediately, since it does work to move itself, which is a transfer of energy from the system to its outside environment.

I hope this has cleared things up a little. I do not mean to be self-righteous or demeaning.

Fact: The increase in drag will equal exactly the increase in power required to overcome it.

You are letting sansan believe that with your arrangement you will be able to charge the batteries enough to create a perpetuum mobile.

If this is so, I have a much simpler arrangement: Why don't we tie big magnet to a fishing pole in front of the car, no moving parts no wind no nothing, It will pull the car forever!

Wangito

I guess then we'll need to flip it around to the back to stop, right?

No, no. Just make it an electromagnet and reverse the polarity of the battery!

ROFL

Hay, now that's a great Idea. Now show the rest of us how that works.

OK, mount those "numerous small magnets" on an in-ground conveyor system just under the surface of the road, with a frictionless (wheeled) pullbar on the vehicle to magnetically clamp onto the conveyor, and I think you may have something there. Kind of like the San Francisco Cable Cars.

But then something has to power the conveyor system!

Maybe huge Solar Power farms nearby!

Then, instead of a "Sunshine Slowdown" we would get "Cloudcover Creep"

As pointed out already, any fans capable of producing a significant amount of power would also slow the car down, so it could only be used when braking was desired. Direct mechanical regenerative brakes would do the same thing and are much simpler, more practical and efficient, and already are utilized in many electric vehicle designs.

As for eliminating the use of petrol/gasoline, if there is no natural wind, the only wind created would be that felt by the forward motion of the vehicle through the air. This takes energy, and I hope you know that you cannot possibly generate more energy than was used. That would violate laws of physics. Even if you did have natural wind, and your could rotate your "fans" to face directly into the maximum windstream (vector resultant of natural wind and apparent forward motion), you could not always count on the natural wind to help you.

For example, if you are driving West at 25 MPH and you have a tailwind from the East at 25 MPH, the net windforce on your fan, no matter what direction you turn it, will be O MPH! A better choice, as one put it, would be to put up a big sail! There is even a hobby called land sailing, using cars which are constructed like an iceboat, but with wheels instead of runners. Land sailors ride the winds of the desert on large dry salt lake flats or use shore breezes on large flat tidal beaches, but it would not be very practical for cars which must follow roads.

SANSAN,

Never reply to e-mails from Ethiopian Banks or any "You Won the Lottery" e-mails.

They are a big a scam as any "Perpetual Motion" device out there.

Get real.

How do you plan to start it?

Starter pistol?

ROFL

Be sure to point the pistol backwards to take advantage of the "Thrust".

Oh, "Pebbles"! You like the "Thrust", eh? Not getting enough from Bam-Bam?

ROFLMAO

Two thoughts on the matter, on a slow moving vehicle like a canal barge there may be some sense in using a wind generator to supply some power (I see them on my local river).

For emergency power generation when all other sources have failed some aircraft have a propeller driven generator that can be dropped into the air stream.

<For emergency power generation when all other sources have failed some aircraft have a propeller driven generator that can be dropped into the air stream.>

Oh, yes. Here's a story of an air crisis with a (relatively) happy ending along those lines. The ram air-turbine certainly played a part in saving the lives of the crew and passengers:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Transat_Flight_236

"merly foolish you will never out way the energy need to power this idea for you would need a constant power source witch a battery will never be adequate the power you would need to run a car at full peek is greater then the source"

Now, THAT is truly "stream of consciousness"....

OR

USE THE SPELLCHECKER AND PROOFREAD YOUR POST BEFORE SENDING IT!

(Yes, I know I was shouting.)

What if someone where to take something like moderately large gathering cone on the input side funneling it down to a smaller tube and use the higher velocity air being discharged from this smaller tube to rotate the fans at higher RPM's this being connected to an anternator or something like that.

Or would there still not be enough force being applied to the fans.

I don't know the physics of this so just trying to think a bit out of the box.

The big picture remains the same. You will use more energy than you will supply. What you need is a van and form a carpool gang and make all the passengers pedal a system that is attached to an alternator. You can also make the entire top of the vehicle covered with solar cells ($$$$$$).

You can also make the entire top of the vehicle covered with solar cells ($$$$$$).

Yeah, reminds me of an episode of Eureka, the somewhat tongue-in-cheek series based on the problems of a fictional small town populated by scientific geniuses who work for the local High Tech research center. In this episode the non-technical Sherrif is searching through a storage area of the research center and encounters a box labeled "Cure for the Common Cold".

"You guys discovered that?" he inquires of his host. "Yes," came the reply, "but it was too expensive to ever produce."

Like this (look out for Pebbles in the front seat with no seat belt!)?

Well, I would have thought this would be in reply to Kris in his #41 where he said:

Personally I'd go for a flintstonevator - a normal tram car with 2 holes cut in front of each passenger seat.

Because in #37, the suggestion is a carpool that everyone pedals to power an alternator, but it looks to me like Fred is doing all the work!

ROFL

Like this?

Hey Cool!! It comes with its own garage??

Yep. It needs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HO_scale train track to operate it, though. Going backwards is a bit of fun, as is braking!