Re: Unlimited Mileage Electric Vehicles (Part 2)
Unfortunately, I don't know enough about combustion engines to comment on the efficacy of injecting hydrogen. I have an opinion on the usefulness of generating HHO on the fly to burn immediately in an ICE which then turns a generator to generate HHO on the fly, but I've already made my opinion known on that front.
Well, the suns mass creates gravity which is energy.
I know that both gravity and magnetism appear to be "energetic" due to their mysterious ability to affect objects at great distances. But in reality, gravity (along with magnetism) isn't energy at all. It is just a force. (Not that that is any small thing, mind you.) But, like any force, gravity can be used to convert energy from one form to another, as it does when (for example) converting potential energy to kinetic energy when coasting down a hill, which can be quite useful at times (like, for instance, when going down a hill). But when all forces balance, there is no energy conversion going on. Though it's a little more complicated, a planet in orbit is in a similar, stable balance of forces that, say, a mug sitting on a desk is in. It requires no energy expenditure (or, more precisely, no energy conversion) to maintain that state since the forces are balanced.
A perfect example is the tides in conjunction to the moons orbit
That is, indeed, a remarkable example! Entire oceans are lifted and dropped again, twice a day! That takes ENORMOUS amounts of energy! That's no stable, steady-state condition. So where does that energy come from if gravity isn't energy?
Actually, what's going on is just energy conversion, facilitated by the force of gravity. The Earth's rotational kinetic energy is converted to rising and falling tides. (Actually, the Moon causes the initial tidal bulge, which would otherwise be steady-state, but the Earth's rotation causes this bulge to move around to make the tides move in and out.) And the rising and falling tides are converted back to kinetic energy as they gravitationally pull on the Moon and speed it up in its orbit. So the Earth is slowing down, making each day slightly longer than the one that preceded it, and the Moon is speeding up, making it creep farther and farther away in its orbit. This is a MASSIVE AMOUNT OF ENERGY TRANSFER from the Earth to the Moon! But gravity, instead of being the source of that energy, merely provides the relentless force that converts that energy and facilitates the transfer. The energy actually comes from (and at the expense of) the kinetic energy of Earth's rotation. Once the Earth slows down enough to match the orbit of the Moon, this energy transfer will stop, steady-state will be achieved, and there will be no more tides moving in and out at the beach. All the rotational kinetic energy available for conversion will be gone, and all the gravity in the universe won't be able to convert any more.
What hydroelectric dams are you refering to? The ones here in canada [...] "use the extra energy during the off peak hours to pump the water from the lower resevoir to the upper resevoir"
They're not hydro-electric dams, actually. Two are privately-owned facilities that do nothing but fill a mountain reservoir at night, and empty it during the day just to sell electricity to a utility company at a higher price during the day than they pay for it at night to run the pump. They do this for a profit, and it consumes more energy than it produces. The utilities don't mind (and even encourage) this, however, because the practice helps them deal with peak loads during the day (load balancing), and alternatives would cost the utilities more than letting these guys run their pumps at night.
The third was a generation plant (not hydro) that built its own reservoir to do this for load balancing purposes. Though I'm not familiar with the hydro dams in Canada, I'd bet even money that they're doing this for load-balancing reasons.
You seem to be very educated in electric vehicles
I'm definitely not. That's why I'm here -- to get an education. But thanks to you and others on this forum, I've begun my education in EVs in earnest. Thanks for helping!
What do you think about my idea of making thermoelectic body panels to help with recharging the battery pack using the heat difference between the engine compartment and the outside temperature of the vehicle as it is accelerating?
I think your idea will work a lot better in Canada than it will in Texas!
I have considerable doubt about whether the motor/controller will produce enough heat to make capturing worthwhile, even with drag and extra weight minimized or even eliminated. Electric motors are pretty efficient. Some waste only 5% of supplied energy as heat. Even if you could recapture and convert ALL of that 5%, it would improve your range by only 5.26%. (Yeah, you heard that right. 5.26%. Take THAT all you over-unity deniers!
) And you're not going to recapture it all in any case. Also, your watts-per-foot-of-pipe value can't hold true for arbitrary lengths of pipe. At some point, no more heat can be extracted, and adding more pipe will be of no value. I have no idea what that point would be, however.
I will say this: The amount of heat to be captured and converted will be the same whether you capture it at the body panels, or in a tight enclosure just an inch away from the heat source (motor). It's like a side serving of distasteful vegetables. Spreading them out all over the plate to make it look like you've eaten some doesn't really change the actual vegetable mass, and bigger dinner plates are less efficient. (Okay, that analogy didn't go where I wanted it to go, but I think you get the idea. Suffice to say that capturing diffuse heat in a large volume is probably more difficult than capturing the exact same amount of heat concentrated at the source.)
Though I'm doubtful that it would be worthwhile, I do concede that there is heat energy there that can be captured and converted to some amount of electrical energy. To determine whether that amount is useful, I'm afraid you'll just have to experiment to find out for yourself!
(Just be sure not to overheat the motor if you use an enclosure.)
plz argue some more
Well, dang! You're easy to please!