Flywheels technology

As East German socialism collapsed, the flywheels and pumps of the Leuna Works slowed and stopped forever. In the mid-1990s, the old factories were demolished and carted off as waste. The technological momentum of the Haber-Bosch era finally was exhausted. 

As part of an interdisciplinary study we are working on emission control catalysis for an extended parallel hybrid concept [1-5]. The main elements of the experimental car developed at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology are the combustion engine, operating in a fixed cycle mode, a flywheel as a short term energy storage device, an electrical machine and a continuous variable transmission. One of the features of this hybrid vehicle is the so called intermittent... 

The content of Figs. 10.1 and 10.2 is summarized in Fig. 10.3 by showing power as a function of discharge duration for both applications and energy-storage technologies. Supercapacitors, flywheels, and SMES are shown to be primarily useful for power-quality applications. Batteries are suitable for a broad spectrum of applications, and pumped-hydro and CAES are shown to be primarily useful for load levelling [9]. 

The combined efforts of American Flywheel Systems and Trinity Flywheel Power (AFST) have become established in flywheel energy storage technology and rotors are made from carbon fiber by filament winding and a current production rotor spins at 44,000 rpm with a projected service life of 20 years. 

Recent advances in composite materials technology may allow nearly an order of magnitude advantage in the specific strength of composites when compared to even the best common engineering metals. The result of this continuous research in composites has been flywheels capable of operation at rotational speeds in excess of 100,000 rpm, with tip speeds in excess of 1000 m/s. 

Another possibUily for storing energy by applying superconductor technology is the frictionless flying wheel energy storage (flywheel). 

Mellor, P.H., N. Schofield, and D. Howe. 2000. Flywheel and ES peak power buffer technologies. Proceedings of IEEE Conference on Electric, Hybrid and Fuel Cell Vehicles, 8/1-8/5. 

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