flywheels n such...

[casrip1@gmx.com]

hey, so recently i discovered flywheels and their potential of being the next gen batteries due to magnetic bearings.

 

so i was talking to my teacher about them and how efficient would this be vs the conventional chemical batteries and he mentioned that soon a motor is attached to the flywheel shaft it would cause massive friction, wasting a lot of the stored energy. he also mentioned that if the spinning mass itself was to be magnetic and a coil was to be put around the whole flywheel assembly then the flywheel would be in an isolated, vacuum system and there would be very little resistance and therefore energy stored into the flywheel can be extracted with a great amount of efficiency.

 

but then he mentioned something that's been messing with my mind ever since. he talk about how it could potentially be possible to get more energy out of the system (maybe i just misunderstood him but this is what i gathered). he mentioned how new discoveries are being made that potentially suggest that the laws of thermodynamics might have an exception to them (kinda like how we thought newton's 3 laws governed all motion in the universe and then discovered special relativity) and it could be possible that there is more to conservation of energy than just energy and matter. i'm not sure where he was going with this but we had to cut the conversation short b/c he had to leave.

 

does this make sense to anyone here? or does anyone here have any idea what he might be talking about? and also, is it possible to have a magnetic mass in a flywheel assembly on magnetic bearings? or would that cause some kind of problems?

[imatfaal]

The MIT magnet lab in the 1960s and 1970s used 40 tonne flywheels to produce the vast current / power that they required to get stupidly high magnetic fields - slowly spin up and then rapidly harvested. They are still used for storing energy - well at least till this video was made IIRC

 

from about half way in http://videolectures.net/mit801f99_lewin_lec19/

[swansont]

Without a link to the experiments that might suggest potential violations of the 2nd law, it's difficult to discuss the physics involved.

[Enthalpy]

My own frenzy about flywheels there

http://saposjoint.net/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=66&t=1974

 

In short:

- Made of steel, they look cheap and efficient enough to store electricity produced during night and restore it during day peak hours. From my evaluations, they would be cheaper than building oversized power plants just for the peak hours as is done presently.

- The bearings can be magnetic but don't need to. Roller bearings and hydrostatic bearings suffice.

- Vacuum looks possible but a bit difficult. I'd prefer operation in air, with my flow calmers.