Solving the problem of creating a capacious, lightweight, compact battery can be called one of the most demanded tasks in the modern world. And the opinion of professor, inventor, doctor of technical sciences Nurbey Gulia differs markedly from the generally accepted one - not chemical, electrical, thermal, but mechanical storage - this is what the present future is for!
Nurbey Gulia.
Nurbey Gulia calls the beginning of his research the task he set before himself at the age of fifteen - the creation of an "energy capsule": an energy-intensive accumulator of energy harmless to humans and the environment. Since then, he studied many ways of solving, until he settled on a flywheel, known from the beginning of time - a potter's wheel, what if not a flywheel?
Monolithic (a) and * wound * (b) flywheels.
It is easy to accumulate and release energy in such a system - overclocking - "charging" and stopping - "power output". And the problem of this method is in energy intensity, or rather in insufficient density of stored energy. There are two ways to increase it: make the device larger or increase the flywheel rotation speed. In the first, compactness suffers, in the second - safety of use.
Diagram of the super flywheel Nurbey Gulia.
It was then that Gulia makes an assumption - why should the flywheel be monolithic? After all, you can make it "wound": from a metal tape or cable. In case of destruction, this one does not scatter into small parts, but on the contrary - is inhibited. At the same time, such a structure does not lose energy consumption in comparison with monolithic ones. In 1964, Gulia received a patent for his design, the so-called super flywheel.
Nurbey Gulia and one of his super flywheels.
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It must be said that "ordinary" flywheels could have (in theory) an energy capacity of the order of 30-50 kJ per kilogram of mass. At the same time, conventional lead-acid batteries had 64 kJ / kg, and alkaline ones even higher - 110 kJ / kg. In fact, the energy consumption of the flywheels was three times lower than possible, 10-15 kJ / kg, due to the need to increase the safety margin during manufacture.
Hybrid car Gulia. The front wheels were driven by the internal combustion engine, and the rear wheels were driven by the variator and flywheel.
The first tests of the super flywheel Gulia showed that even the first, not the most perfect design, is capable of overtaking lead-acid batteries in energy density with sufficient safety: a tape break occurred when the rim accelerated to 500 m / s (the density was 100 kJ / kg). At the same time, a proposal was made to use it on a car and the first hybrid based on the UAZ-450D was developed.
Abroad, super flywheels have also been developed since the 60s of the XX century, and later (in the 80s) they find their application and quite successfully - in aviation and spacecraft, in the automotive industry, as well as as possible uninterruptible power supplies for buildings … In this case, the super flywheel accumulates energy during the excess, "peak" generation of electricity by the station, and during an increase in consumption, it gives off. Losses in such a facility are less than two percent.
Diagram of a Lockheed * gyrotrolleybus (USA) and its flywheel drive.
Such installations are engaged, for example, by Beacon Power, where large stationary super flywheels are developed. The stored energy (from 6 to 25 kWh) and power (from 2 to 200 kW) depend on the model. The efficiency, as already mentioned, is 98%. Nurbey Gulia also does not stand still: under his leadership, the Russian company Kinetic Power is developing its stationary kinetic energy storage device based on a super flywheel, which can store up to 100 kWh and provide up to 300 kW.
Beacon Power drives.
Today, a super flywheel is a composite drum housed in an enclosure that creates a vacuum to reduce friction. In theory, such a device can store up to 500 Wh (1.8 MJ) per kg of mass. The use of modern materials can work wonders: the flywheel, wound not from steel, but from carbon fiber, increases energy intensity twenty times, and if you learn to use diamond fiber, then the energy consumption will be 15 MJ / kg!
Carbon fiber super flywheel.
Nanotechnology further enhances the capabilities of super flywheels, because theoretically they make it possible to achieve a fantastic energy density: up to 2500-3500 MJ / kg. Imagine, for a minute, - on one spin of a 150-kg super flywheel, an ordinary passenger car will be able to cover two million kilometers.
Modern super flywheel.
Super flywheel technologies, for some completely incomprehensible reason, cannot interest large investors. Nurbey Gulia is still working on improving his invention, developing the possibility of manufacturing a graphene super flywheel (energy capacity will be 1.2 kW * h / kg).
Of course, such developments require both financial and "engineering" injections, but don't the prospects of use outweigh these issues, which not only can be solved, but, according to Gulia, are needed.