Jimmy Cornell goes Electric, with a Cat

[Yihang]

Originally Posted by Pete7

The real problem is heating, propulsion well you could wait for wind on a yacht. Bit tricky if your cold and the boat is damp. Dockhead has already looked up the energy density of diesel which I was wondering about. There is no getting away from the fact, its an ideal heating source or storage of energy for heating.

Pete

Maybe Biodiesel? Not sure how the industry will go with that. Might be a niche thing in the future. I read somewhere the economics of pure biodiesel doesn't make sense. It's a good way to make current fossil fuels go a bit further but growing it organically has it's inefficiencies.

[Yihang]

Originally Posted by CatNewBee

With a 40hp diesel and 200l tank you can easily motor 100+ hours, or more than 4 days. Current batteries are far away of this range.

Maybe? Never motored that long. Was just taking it off the yanmar manual. They reckon 5ltrs/hr at 2400rpm so with sea state I figured 7 at least. But If you have first hand experience then I'm sure your right.

https://www.yanmar.com/media/global/...CommonRail.pdf

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Yihang

Unless I read it wrong the 5 year timeline is for ground support vehicles to use hydrogen. That seems quite doable. Airliners are another story, a lot of developments before that happens. . .

The Russians flew a hydrogen-powered Tu-154 already in the 1980's, more than 30 years ago. It made several hundred successful flights, IIRC. I've seen the actual aircraft, which still exists, at the Ramenskoe air force base near Moscow. Hydrogen powered airliners are not, err, rocket science.


Thread drift, but if you grew up in China, maybe you have some miles in Tu-154's, like I do. I guess the last one of those was retired some years ago already. How I miss that characteristic shriek of those massive Kuznetsov engines, so different from the sound of Western jets, more like the sound of a military jet. The 1.5g+ takeoff roll. What a plane.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Yihang

Maybe? Never motored that long. Was just taking it off the yanmar manual. They reckon 5ltrs/hr at 2400rpm so with sea state I figured 7 at least. But If you have first hand experience then I'm sure your right.

https://www.yanmar.com/media/global/...CommonRail.pdf

The Yanmar fuel curves are for max power at a given RPM. The propeller curve will show you how much of max power is used at that RPM -- at cruising speeds it's a fraction.


My 100hp 4JH3HTE uses 2 or 3 l/h at very slow cruise -- 6 knots -- in a dead calm. That's moving 25 tonnes or so of boat. At say 1700 RPM. The fuel curve shows 6 l/h at that RPM, but even with a variable pitch prop like I have, you need less than half of that.

[Yihang]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

The Russians flew a hydrogen-powered Tu-154 already in the 1980's, more than 30 years ago. It made several hundred successful flights, IIRC. I've seen the actual aircraft, which still exists, at the Ramenskoe air force base near Moscow. Hydrogen powered airliners are not, err, rocket science.


Thread drift, but if you grew up in China, maybe you have some miles in Tu-154's, like I do. I guess the last one of those was retired some years ago already. How I miss that characteristic shriek of those massive Kuznetsov engines, so different from the sound of Western jets, more like the sound of a military jet. The 1.5g+ takeoff roll. What a plane.

Nope, first flight was on a 747 to Sydney when I was a wee lad.

Didn't know liquid hydrogen was used as a combusting fuel commercially. But looks like airbus is looking into it for 2035. That's cool. I've only known about ultralight hydrogen fuel cell electric propulsion planes.

https://www.airbus.com/innovation/ze...gen/zeroe.html

[250224]

Originally Posted by Pete7

A small say 500cc (30cu) hydrogen fuelled piston engine as a inboard to drive a prop with an option to to disconnect the shaft and drive a large generator instead powering the house bank for cooking or heating would be tempting.

A Beta Hybrid which (probably??) could be run with BioDiesel comes quite close to this already. Tempting?

As I don't know anyone who has such a hybrid motor, I have no idea if this functions well. The hybrid machinery adds quite some weight and complexity. And under ~6 kts not much energy will be produced.

(https://betamarine.co.uk/he-hybrid-propulsion/)

[BigBeakie]

Originally Posted by blu3534

A Beta Hybrid which (probably??) could be run with BioDiesel comes quite close to this already. Tempting?

As I don't know anyone who has such a hybrid motor, I have no idea if this functions well. The hybrid machinery adds quite some weight and complexity. And under ~6 kts not much energy will be produced.

(https://betamarine.co.uk/he-hybrid-propulsion/)

FWIW, I investigated this a couple of years ago and got uncomfortable with the level of support just getting answers to questions, so we dropped it. There were no issues on the Betamarine side of things, but the supplier of the EP side seemed incapable of supporting the solution if it was not located in the UK.

[mcarthur]

Originally Posted by BigBeakie

FWIW, I investigated this a couple of years ago and got uncomfortable with the level of support just getting answers to questions, so we dropped it. There were no issues on the Betamarine side of things, but the supplier of the EP side seemed incapable of supporting the solution if it was not located in the UK.

Similar experience - supplier of the EP was apparently incredibly busy and essentially wasn't taking on any new work (good luck getting support was my takehome). This was last year.

[KompetentKrew]

Originally Posted by Yihang

Several companies including tesla are saying around 400-500wh/kg in 5 years. current tesla 3 batteries are 260wh/hr.

Sorry, Yihang, was that last figure a typo? Did you mean /kg?

[Yihang]

Originally Posted by KompetentKrew

Sorry, Yihang, was that last figure a typo? Did you mean /kg?

Yes, per kilo.

[BigBeakie]

Originally Posted by mcarthur

Similar experience - supplier of the EP was apparently incredibly busy and essentially wasn't taking on any new work (good luck getting support was my takehome). This was last year.

I've come to the conclusion during this build project that the recreational marine industry is full ( well maybe not full, but they are out there if you search ) of technically competent people, that have virtually zero customer focus or interest in support.

Buyer beware indeed.

[Adelie]

Originally Posted by harlem24

I don't live as far west as you might think, far from below sealevel...

Nuclear power will be banned here by the end of 2022.

And if you look at Hinkley Point C or the one France tries to build for 12 years, you will see that those plants are not a solution for the problems we are facing in the coming years. It simple takes to long to build from scratch and is far too exspansive...

Germany just build a grid connection to Norway, it will go live sometime next month. But everybody else needs to step up when it comes to renewables...

Putting solar up in Spain, Italy and South France, wind in the northern parts of the continent should solve most of our energy problems.

Sean was being sarcastic.

[seandepagnier]

Originally Posted by CatNewBee

With a 40hp diesel and 200l tank you can easily motor 100+ hours, or more than 4 days. Current batteries are far away of this range.

with a 90% efficient electric drive (ocean volt is about 30%) and sufficient solar as well as hydro generators you can motor indefinitely because you won't run out of both sun and wind for long enough to deplete the battery.



Diesel power has never worked in reverse being able to fill the tank from extra energy sources and is far away from this range.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by harlem24

I don't live as far west as you might think, far from below sealevel...
Nuclear power will be banned here by the end of 2022.
And if you look at Hinkley Point C or the one France tries to build for 12 years, you will see that those plants are not a solution for the problems we are facing in the coming years. It simple takes to long to build from scratch and is far too exspansive...
Germany just build a grid connection to Norway, it will go live sometime next month. But everybody else needs to step up when it comes to renewables...
Putting solar up in Spain, Italy and South France, wind in the northern parts of the continent should solve most of our energy problems.

Ah, so Germany.

Germany's shutting down nuclear power, while it continues to build new coal power plants (https://www.powermag.com/germany-bri...-plant-online/), and continuing to spew vast amounts of coal emissions into the atmosphere, killing up to tens of thousands of people per year, seems volkommend verrückt to many people, or as they used to say in Munich where I used to live -- zerdeppert. The damage to human life in one year of German coal burning exceeds the damage caused by the entire world wide nuclear power industry for the last 50 years. I'm not even getting to climate change. What are you guys thinking down there?

Up here on the contrary we are building more nuclear (and wind), and shutting down coal. Not in Norway or Denmark (Norway is 100% hydro; Denmark has vast amounts of wind), but in Sweden and Finland. Finland aims to be 60% nuclear in five years and is already less than 10% coal. Sweden is presently at 40% nuclear and is aiming to expand that. Sweden just shut down its last coal power plant, so 0% coal there. I guess we take public health and climate change just a little bit more seriously.

[harlem24]

As far as I am aware there are no new coal plant in the making.
They are shutting down a 5 year old one in Hamburg, because the production is too expansive.
We'll see what will happen in two years.