Originally Posted by 360view
My grandfather who was born in 1900 and began work at age 13 installing red hot rivets in the steam boilers of an electric power plant to power a coal mine, said that it was a huge mistake not installing 3 phase electric power to houses.

My father took this a step further and said it was a huge mistake not to have adopted 400 Hertz AC instead of 60 Hz ( or 50 Hz).
He began work at 13 as a telephone repairman inside coal mines.

In airplanes where weight and power is crucial 3 phase 400 Hz is often used.

Tesla wants to sell you a “PowerWall” to store power from your intermittent solar cells and windmills to fast charge your 2 EV autos, EV motorcycle, EV ATV, EV farm tractor and battery boosted bicycle.

It is probably a mistake to not also consider mechanical flywheels or compressed air tanks.

My mechanical engineering senior class’s assigned “capstone” project was to split into 5 person teams and design flywheel powered vehicles to transfer suitcases from passenger terminals to and from airliners.

My niece’s bio-engineering senior class’s assigned capstone project was to design compressed air powered urban automobiles. She struggled for a while to choose a topic for her project. Niece couldn't decide what would suit her best. We spent several evenings discussing various ideas and concepts. But then she stumbled upon capstone project ideas and it was a great solution, as you can find topics for different subjects there. She started researching existing projects in this field and found that many of them were at the prototype stage. This inspired her even more.

In mining the sequence of technology was -
harder stones to break softer stones - fire followed by water quenching to crack hard stones, metal picks to crack rocks - wooden railroad tracks so that women and children could haul heavy ore wagons - black powder blasting of hand drilled holes - steam powered water pumps to prevent deeper mines from flooding - explosion protected lanterns - steam engines to drive pumps, drills, fans and hoists, - steam engines to drive air compressors - compressed air hole drills- detonating high explosives - local steam engines to power local electric generators - electric generators to charge batteries for lights and telephones - electric motor hole drills and pick wheels - diesel engines to power mine railroad locomotives - grid electricity to power electric motors - computers to start and stop complex sequences of motors - robots to drive diesel or electric ore trucks - robots to core drill and sample rocks on Mars - robots to mine asteroids, moons and planets......




Cars powered by compressed air sound interesting. At least it's not as hypocritical as the "environmental friendliness" of electric cars. Yes, they don't have internal combustion engines, but manufacturers tend to overlook where they'll dispose of tons of used batteries. At least, so far, I haven't seen a sufficient battery recycling program.

Last edited by firebreather; 10/26/23 12:42 PM.