TTXGP? (zero emissions racing)

[Nai]

For those that haven't heard of it : https://www.egrandprix.com/index.php

Just curious... ESPN have the rights unfortunately so wont be able to watch it here. Guessing to a degree it will be the way of the future with the lowering of emissions in road and race vehicles.

Is it all just electric bikes or are there any hydrogen bikes in there yet?

[Frost]

It was shown on ITV4 along with the rest of the TT. They were all electric as the distance is easily travelled on a single charge and the health and safety, cost, complexity or a fuel cell bike isn't within the budgets of the teams competing.

As for the future of racing, i'm not so sure. Race teams have so much money that they will be able to continue running petrol cars long after we've all given them up. I'm certain that the world will NEVER run out of petrol, the price will just go up exponentially and we will all stop buying it before it's all actually gone.

[hmmmnz]

or everyone will switch to bio fuels, its as cheap to buy vege oil now as diesel, actually cheaper 75p/l so i dare say we'll start seeing more of that sort of thing
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the humans are dead
I kick arse for the lord
Wiring Diagrams BIDNIP it bitches

[blurredman]

I just don't like to talk about this sort of stuff.

I will feel sorry when the combustion engine disappears

There is nothing better
____________________
CBT: 12/06/10, Theory: 22/09/10, Module 1: 09/11/10, Module 2: 19/01/11
Past: 1991 Honda CG125BR-J, 1992 (1980) Honda XL125S, 1996 Kawasaki GPZ500S, 1979 MZ TS150.
Current: 1973 MZ ES250/2 - 18k, 1979 Suzuki TS185ER - 10k, 1981 Honda CX500B - 91k, 1987 MZ ETZ250 (295cc) - 40k, 1989 MZ ETZ251 - 51k.

[stinkwheel]

Surely it should say "Remote emissions racing". They still have to charge the batteries.
____________________
“Rule one: Always stick around for one more drink. That's when things happen. That's when you find out everything you want to know.”
I did the 2010 Round Britain Rally on my 350 Bullet. 89 landmarks, 3 months, 9,500 miles.

[Kal]

[Nai]

I am eager to see hydrogen vehicles. Simply filling up and going sounds far more convincing than waiting for battery's to charge overnight. I am sure there was a top gear comment along them lines.

Humans want things that don't cause them any extra thought or work, we want the least impact on our lives and for things to stay as easy as they have always been. Which is why hydrogen vehicles have a much better chance of succeeding than electric vehicles.

Kinda makes sense to me.

[Frost]

[blurredman]

[quote="Kal"]

[stinkwheel]

[pepperami]

I think that the way we are geared towards fossil fuels will dictate how we want our next fuel source/type to be.
Along those lines, I am thinking that bio-fuels will come into their own over the next decade or so.

If water is made of Hydrogen & Oxygen, surely there must be an almost limitless supply of fuel with-in our own water supplies?
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I am the sum total of my own existence, what went before makes me who I am now!

[Gone]

Who would really want to race milk floats anyway?

[Frost]

From what i remember car & bike engines are about 20% efficient, 2 stroke diesel generators are over 50%. Electric motors are over 95% efficient, so he transmission of the power would have to cost a hell of a lot to reduce the efficiency to that or an internal combustion engine in a car / bike.

Edit: I looked it up:
"Transmission and distribution losses in the USA were estimated at 6.6% in 1997[13] and 6.5% in 2007[14]. In general, losses are estimated from the discrepancy between energy produced (as reported by power plants) and energy sold to end customers; the difference between what is produced and what is consumed constitute transmission and distribution losses."

So for every Megawatt of fuel put into a car, you'd get 200 kilowatt's of kinetic energy.
For every Megawatt of fuel burned at a power station you'd get 500 kilowatts, transmitted that would be down to 465kilowatts, assuming complete charging efficiency or a direct mains powered bike with a 95% efficient electric motor you'd get 440 kilowatts of kinetic energy, more than double that of the traditional IC engine. That might be an idealised figure that would drop in the real world, but i still think you'd get twice as many miles per gallon.

Car and bike engines have to change speed and load during their operation rather than running permanently at the optimum speed. They also have to work in various conditions such as when hot / cold, wet / dry but a power generator can be run in more controlled conditions.

The fact of the matter is that fossil fuels are going to get rarer, an increasing global population is going to require more energy and importantly more food making conversion of land to the production of bio fuels difficult. So an electric bike or car is more of a multi fuel vehicle and can run on energy created from whatever is most economically viable. Hydrogen can been seen as being a battery technology too as the hydrogen would be made using electricity, then converted back to water to produce electricity.

As for the lithium thing, it's not the biggest issue as batteries could well be zinc-air or silver-zinc. Rare earth metals like Neodymium are likely to be the big issues for 'green' technologies as they come almost exclusively from china. Piss off the chinese and they cut you off.

https://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iWSMN6kpJ6HV80LQLcJrjzeM18hwD9IKONC00?docId=D9IKONC00

[Kal]

[Frost]

[truslack]

[Kickstart]

Hi

Very crude rule of thumb you get about 1/3 efficiency converting from one form of energy to another, so you lose 2/3 from fuel to forward motion, or 2/3 plus another 2/3 from fuel to electricity and then from electricity to motion.

Electric motors themselves are pretty efficient (a lot better then 1/3, but 95%+ is about the best you will get, not what you would expect), but there is about 6~7% loss in distribution, plus you have the losses in charging a battery (another ~25% loss it seems). Add the weight of batteries and the efficiency of the vehicle (as opposed to the motor) drops.

Then we get the nasty problems of making and recycling the short lives batteries.

All the best

Keith
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Traxpics, track day and racing photographs - Bimota Forum - Bike performance / thrust graphs for choosing gearing

[Nai]

Ok, I have been reading Wiki... Sorry...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_vehicle

Looking at this the change in infrastructure could take 40 + years for Hydrogen cars / bikes to get anywhere in the market. Seeing as Electric cars / bikes already semi have a infrastructure for refuelling (plug sockets?) is there any argument for electric cars being a filler until Hydrogen cars / bikes take off? Could there be electric / hydrogen hybrids in the meantime?

[Kickstart]

Hi

You can run a combustion engine on hydrogen, but that doesn't really solve anything. Biggest problem with it is storing it (very difficult to make systems hydrogen proof, so leaks and the resulting leak is explosive).

However the main use for hydrogen would be for fuel cells. But you can use alcohol (or even petrol) as fuel for fuel cells. Advantage here is that it is safe to store and transport, and the infrastructure to store and transport it pretty much already exists. No need for loads of heavy batteries (couple of small ones to take advantage of regenerative braking, etc) and can be easily refued in minutes unlike battery vehicles.

All the best

Keith
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Traxpics, track day and racing photographs - Bimota Forum - Bike performance / thrust graphs for choosing gearing

[Nai]

Cool beans, got any links to good reading material about alcohol in engines?

[pepperami]

[Kickstart]

[Frost]

[stinkwheel]

I'm intrigued on this subject. I thought I'd do some working out using a real-life example. The main crass assumptions are that the moped uses the full charge of the battery to do its claimed maximum distance and that both vehicles are travelling at a constant 30mph on total flat for the duration of a 100 mile journey.

Let's take a Zippe electric moped which uses a 48V, 36Ah Silicone gel battery. Claimed top speed 30mph. Claimed maximum distance travelled on a charge 30 miles.

Let's compare it to a Honda C50. I'm going to use the most efficient fuel consumption in their most recent model (supercub), based on constant speed travel at 30mph on the flat which pans out at an amazing 146km/litre.

Let's travel 100 miles. That's charging the Zippe 3.3 times. Its burning 1.12 litres of unleaded in the C50.

So, assuming the electric moped battery delivered the full 36A at 48V for an hour before going flat and that the motor is 100% efficient (cutting it some slack here, there's no way it would do that in real life any more than the C50 would do 146km/l but lets work with what we've got). That's 1.728Kw/h per charge or 5.76 KW/h for your 100 miles.

Converting that to joules of energy gives you errr. 5.76KJ/second * 3600seconds = 20.74MegaJoules of energy.

Unleaded petrol has 34.8MJ per litre. So the C50 used 38.98MJ to cover the 100 miles. That's an absolute with the C50. That is how much energy it used.

So for the journey. Worked out in raw power consumed. The electric moped is winning Electric moped: 20.74MJ. C50: 38.98MJ

But, lets work back up the chain. A silicone battery has an 85% charging efficiency. That puts us at 24.4MJ to charge it.

The fuel has to get from the power station to the house with a 6.6% loss. We're up to 26MJ.

Ok. Here's the doozy. Assuming a modern, high-tech gas fired power station. You're getting up to 50% fuel conversion efficiency (at best).

So 52MJ or natural gas were burned to allow the electric moped to travel that 100 miles and you should have used the C50.

Conclusion:
1) C50s rule.
2) Electric mopeds can GTFO.

That's before we even consider the comparative ability of each vehicle to pop 12 o'clock wheelies at will.
____________________
“Rule one: Always stick around for one more drink. That's when things happen. That's when you find out everything you want to know.”
I did the 2010 Round Britain Rally on my 350 Bullet. 89 landmarks, 3 months, 9,500 miles.

[Frost]

0.68 litre/100km = 415 MPG
Also that was done at 30km/h not mph, also it says it was done over "30 km/h fixed area travelling test value", i dunno what that means but i suspect it's the reason for that epic mpg figure.