US US Politics General - Discussion of President Biden and other politicians

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Thomas Talus said:
They're a neat idea, but imagine what happens when something in the flywheel system wears down or gets bumped out of place, and suddenly a part or all of that rotational energy gets applied to the vehicle as a whole.
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Oh, flywheels are absolutely not practical for mobile energy storage, they have absolutely garbage energy density compared to the energy that can be stored in chemical bonds. Just by some back-of-the-napkin calcs, a kilogram of steel spun up to the maximum possible speed before internal stresses tear it apart has just about 1/1000 the energy potential of a kilogram of gasoline. NOTHING can beat chemical bonds in terms of energy density thanks to E=mc^2.

What is remarkable about flywheels is that they can be scaled up to massive proportions without increasing the system’s complexity or volatility (unlike batteries) and can easily deal with irregular power production and loads (unlike gasoline engines). These two qualities make them the ideal method of energy storage for large-scale power generation, where you need to safely deal with extremely large amounts of energy as well as varying load demands and generation rates throughout the day.
 
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Gar For Archer said:
Oh, flywheels are absolutely not practical for mobile energy storage
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Back in my undergrad physics class, there was a bit about using flywheels as a replacement for gas in cars, with the idea that downhill speed could be used to recharge the wheel a bit. All I could think of was cars abruptly spinning off the road whenever something went wrong.
 
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Mega Man 2 Intro - NES said:
imagine the videos of chinks getting killed by runaway flywheels
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I've read enough BattleTech lore to know what happens when giant spinning flywheels decide to commit existence failure. Protip: gyros in BT are so big and heavy not just because of the flywheels themselves but also to protect the rest of the 'Mech from the gyro deciding to shed pieces into it at high velocity thanks to combat damage.
 
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Open Window Maniac said:
That sounds interesting. Care to share some more info and sources on that?
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Basically, cheap natural gas meant places had a serious incentive to swap over to it instead of coal, since not only was the price good but burning coal emits a lot of really icky stuff that needs to be scrubbed or captured or otherwise ameliorated that relatively pure NG doesn't, further increasing its cost effectiveness as a fuel.

EDIT: Coal as a fuel is pretty fucking terrible since its got a lot of nasty impurities in it, which is why we're likely going to see it switched from fuel to refinery input, since you can get a lot of useful stuff out of coal thanks to it having more in common with crude oil in terms of being a mixture of hydrocarbon compounds than anything resembling a finished product.
 
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Thomas Talus said:
Back in my undergrad physics class, there was a bit about using flywheels as a replacement for gas in cars, with the idea that downhill speed could be used to recharge the wheel a bit. All I could think of was cars abruptly spinning off the road whenever something went wrong.
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I dont know if anything bad ever happened with one of those flywheel busses.
 
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