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Non-Tech : Alternative energy
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To: Road Walker who wrote (4339)2/25/2008 8:55:32 PM
From: Eric  Read Replies (1) of 16955
 
John

Let me take a stab at it.

In the case of a car the airmass going thru the engine compartment via the radiator removes heat. Air is moving with "resistance" through the car. It actually slows down compared to the air outside the car. If we add propeller blades and take energy away we are increasing the "resistance" and the airmass slows down even more as it flows through the car. Thus the car is experiencing more total drag as it goes through the airmass it is driving in. If there is more drag then more power is called for to maintain a steady speed. This requires the expenditure of more energy to keep the car moving at a constant speed.

Regenerative braking is very useful to capture the energy we would otherwise throw away with current friction brakes. In stop and go driving this saves a significant amount of energy because it goes back into the battery of the hybrid or pure electric vehicle to be reused. It's not 100% efficient but probably around 70%. In a stop and go environment where the car is not accelerating beyond about 35 mph where air drag starts to build significantly this will add to the range of the vehicle.

The equivalent parallel would be to put generators on the body of an aircraft. This would increase the total drag and thus the energy required to maintain flight.

If you could look at the airmass blowing through a wind farm and specifically one turbine, the air slows down as it goes through the blades and thus the wind turbine is taking energy away from the moving airmass and converting it to electricity.

regards,

Eric
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