racookpe1978
Nuclear
Question came up on a different "science" and energy forum about using high-speed (or verylarge) centrifuges to "store" wind or solar energy for use later in the day or at night to balance out their irregular power outputs.
1. Getting outside of the politicals/money/CAGW and usefulness of the idea at large - which is impossible in the real world, but bear with me on that - for a house-sized unit ( 1-2 kw size) what would be the needed weight (inertia) rotating at 15:00 pm to still generate power the next morning at 9:00 am?
2. Could those assumptions be "built up" to a 2-3 megawatt unit - as if one windmill running one centrifuge M-G set?
Overall, I can't see it working at anything but a government-funded Sandia-type national lab.
Problems:
Clearly balancing, bearings, lube oil system and storage and cleanliness and cooling and maintenance.
If the centrifuge were ultra-high speed, seems you be buying the reduction gear issues and problems as cost as well.
Air resistance of the rotating centrifuges and MG-Set, unless a nearly-impossible vacuum or hydrogen-cooled gas cooling system were used. And those are tough to build and maintain even on the big power generators!
Brushes and and all those DC-side problems, or could they be avoided by an AC-AC motor generator with an outlet
AC-AC frequency converter to "pickup" the slowly lowering AC output from the centrifuges as it slows down?
Thus, you'd have a transformer <-> grid connection <-> AC-AC static frequency converter <-> AC motor-generator <-> clutch/coupling <-> (optional reduction gear) <-> centrifuge.
It seems like you'd need to setup the ac-ac MG to be able to over-speed the centrifuge up past the MG set synchronous speed (to build up stored inertial energy in the centrifuge) during off-production hours, then pull that inertial energy down from centrifuge max speed though the unit's nominal speed down to the generator's cut-off speed
As a guess, I estimated a house-sized unit would be about the weight of two cars. Way too big, or way too small?
1. Getting outside of the politicals/money/CAGW and usefulness of the idea at large - which is impossible in the real world, but bear with me on that - for a house-sized unit ( 1-2 kw size) what would be the needed weight (inertia) rotating at 15:00 pm to still generate power the next morning at 9:00 am?
2. Could those assumptions be "built up" to a 2-3 megawatt unit - as if one windmill running one centrifuge M-G set?
Overall, I can't see it working at anything but a government-funded Sandia-type national lab.
Problems:
Clearly balancing, bearings, lube oil system and storage and cleanliness and cooling and maintenance.
If the centrifuge were ultra-high speed, seems you be buying the reduction gear issues and problems as cost as well.
Air resistance of the rotating centrifuges and MG-Set, unless a nearly-impossible vacuum or hydrogen-cooled gas cooling system were used. And those are tough to build and maintain even on the big power generators!
Brushes and and all those DC-side problems, or could they be avoided by an AC-AC motor generator with an outlet
AC-AC frequency converter to "pickup" the slowly lowering AC output from the centrifuges as it slows down?
Thus, you'd have a transformer <-> grid connection <-> AC-AC static frequency converter <-> AC motor-generator <-> clutch/coupling <-> (optional reduction gear) <-> centrifuge.
It seems like you'd need to setup the ac-ac MG to be able to over-speed the centrifuge up past the MG set synchronous speed (to build up stored inertial energy in the centrifuge) during off-production hours, then pull that inertial energy down from centrifuge max speed though the unit's nominal speed down to the generator's cut-off speed
As a guess, I estimated a house-sized unit would be about the weight of two cars. Way too big, or way too small?
