That's what I was thinking. I guess it's a race to see which technology will become most cost effective first? Super capacitors certainly seem like the more elegant solution in the long term, but who knows. Maybe something like this will win out for larger vehicles.
Supercapacitors are already being utilised by the Lamborghini Sian hybrid. www.electronicdesign.com/markets/automotive/article/21808589/lamborghini-hybrid-uses-supercapacitors-in-place-of-batteries
@@martinw245 thanks for sharing. “While Li-ion batteries can store around 20 times more energy for their weight than supercapacitors.” This company is looking at range extenders. They mention anywhere from 10kwh to 120 kWh range extenders. That would require huge super capacitors since they hold 10 times less energy than li-ion batteries. I don’t think super capacitors would be the best use case for range extenders?
Because of your calm, gentle demeanor I’ve been thinking of you as the Fred Rogers of nerdy energy talk. But after that hilarious moment with the crisps, or chips, I’m having to adjust my thinking, which is great for the neuroplasticity of a guy my age. So let’s see, ... Fred Rogers with a little touch of... I don’t know... Steve Martin? Do you play the banjo by any chance? Seriously though, I think your attitude really motivates people to listen to what you have to say. Oh by the way, brilliant technical content this time, as usual.
For any who don’t know, Fred Rogers is better known as Mr. Rogers, host of a highly acclaimed children’s TV show called Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. Unfortunately he died in 2003. He reached his audience so powerfully that PBS was able to keep his show on the air for over 30 years. He had some great messages but I think much of his success was due to the gentle, calm, matter-of-fact way he delivered those messages.
Thx very much for yet another great presentation ! Chanels like yours are the positive side of the internet - information for everybody and for free !! 👍🏻✌🏽🖖🏼
Free is a relative term. Keeping quality content alive and ad free involves dipping into your pocket for small change via his patreon account. You’ll feel better too.
i am hooked you are a very forward thinking guy thankyou very much for bringing all this wonderful stuff to us retired stroke survivor dale jnssen in arizona
I really appreciate you covering this concept. For years I saw this as an alternative to the low range and limited recharge cycle batteries of then current EV's. Cryostats have nearly unlimited cycle life and faster recharge and are nearly as good in power/mass as far more expensive batteries. Cryomatik's expander will likely have extremely long MTBF and the low maintenance of gas turbines and if it can be made inexpensively, a vehicle using this tech could be very competitive with battery EV's. BTW it might make sense to add a solar heating panel to the top of that delivery van. Also this seems ideal for refrigerated trucks.
It should be possible to build the expander at reasonable cost since it does not need the high temperature magic of combustion gas turbines. Also auxiliary equipment should be cheaper and simpler than what is required for a fool um fuel cell.
You mentioned an interesting point, the liquid nitrogen used in factories to fill food packages, when being warmed and turned into gas again to fill the food packages can first be used to run a turbine when warmed and create electric energy which might be enough for the food factory and then the warmed nitrogen which is turned into gas can be used to fill the food bags which you showed in the beginning of your video!
It would be interesting to see a comparison of the overall efficiency of this system vs hydrogen fuel cell vs battery for vehicles. As we transition to a low-emission grid the efficiency of the end-use will be increasingly significant.
Actually we're going to have like we have tobacco papers we're going to have the efficiency papers because the fossil fuel industry has used efficiency imposition to maintain market share. For example we have chronically incrementally increased the mandatory efficiency of large electric motors and the consequence of that is the cryptocurrency mining uses the electricity only ones and waste all of the heat that the computers produce instead of with the hundred and twenty degrees Fahrenheit fluid that boils the heat off of a 700 watt CPUs producing additional electricity for example? If Bill Gates had to delay a firing squad by a few seconds he would say he did that to save Capital cost. I don't know why you guys care about delaying Your Fate by mere seconds instead of coming over to the table of the good and getting into heaven obviously after a long enjoyable life?
@@enterprisestobart electric trains are much more powerful than EVs therefore losses are more important, also trains have much powerful stopping power, EV also have losses from regenerative braking.
@@enterprisestobart after you put a bunch of railroad Executives in prison you can installed some liquid metal batteries but only as a temporary measure; thanks for the Intel!
My first time watching your channel. I absolutely love your delivery! It is well explained and even though I didn't understand some words, I still understood the content. Thank you for providing definitions for other things as well. It has been a very informative experience! I look forwards to watching more of your content
This chap draws me in as I have to say some on here are so hyped, even with music in the background as well. We done to this presenter he talks man to man and sensibly making me take interest.
Interesting concept but due to all of the subsystems to keep this working I'd think it would be best suited for large scale transportation or electrical power generation. Thinking large cargo ships, trains, etc... EV's with hybrid battery/supercapacitors offer similar energy benefits at much greater simplicity.
Sorry but I don’t agree that this would only apply to large systems. Says a former RC model aviation builder. I consider myself among early adaptors of best available technologys. I can feel it in my guts when it really is the best solution. And really, this one is!
You talked about the turbine efficiency, whats the overall efficiency? The power it takes to compress Nitrogen into it's liquid state, what about loses during Liquid Nitrogen Storage, still an interesting concept.
And by extension, what is the cost parity comparison? While it may be too early for an economic viability study, it would be useful to know how this compares per unit of energy produced based on the price of the liquified nitrogen.
If we look into the future to where all these solar and wind farms are operational, there will be many hours during a year where the electricity will either be free or the farms turned off. That will offset the need for high efficiency. Btw. Why worry about efficiency now? We never did before. Eventually everything will be a waste product.
@@klausnielsen1537 Efficiency is only relevant to how it affects cost. If the technology doesn't provide an economic advantage then adoption will be limited and isolated to niche use cases. The current uptake of solar and wind farms is because of cost. Similarly the uptake of electric vehicles is based on long term cost reductions in operating costs of maintenance and fuel.
There was a French company working on a noisy little compressed-air vehicle. It was based on a piston that had a very high dwell at TDC so that it could soak up ambient energy and expand the cold charge inside the cylinder. They were claiming fantastical range numbers when augmented with a small external heat source (ie, propane burner or the like).
I wrote an essay at Uni in the early 90's about alternatively fuelled cars. I found out there were VW Beetle taxis in Mexico City running on compressed air. Can't find any info on it now though - not sure if those were DIY conversions or a trial or something similar that never took off.
Sacrifice!!!?? How old are you??? He makes good money!!!! You could have been more absurd though... You could have used the word hero!!!!! Sorry!!!! Peace!
Heat transfer from ambient air to liquid air can produce way under 1000 J/g of energy. Realistically, under 200 J/g. Overall, the efficiency of the whole cycle (starting with energy consumption for air liquifaction) will be quite low. Remember that to produce energy, it will need to absorb *a lot* of heat from ambient air, and it's very difficult. There's a *very* big problem of that heat exchanger frosting over. For reference, gasoline energy density is 46 kJ/g.
Also be a great energy storage system for homes, many homes already have pressurized gas (flammable) , pressurized air would be much safer, and no replacing batteries or worrying about fire! Great videos!
I don't think its simply pressurized air but cryogenically cooled -200 C liquid nitrogen stored at a very high pressure. Also just based on the tanks interaction with air around it is likely to lose its stored energy, you can try to thermally seal it to prevent this but the energy will still leak at a certain rate. You will not have to worry about fires for sure but there will be other considerations, but yeah might still be safer.
Thanks for that presentation very interesting, looking forward to some real world data from working units that will throw more light on viability. The potential is huge if the cost per mile is good enough.
I saw a program on NHK about a containerised powerplant using excess power from a wind generator to compress air, which was then used to generate electricity when the wind didn't blow.
What's hilarious about the containerized version is it's just proud horsepower wise of a diesel electric locomotive and it is shipped and operated in a railcar despite having the alternator which you don't need if you use the system for your motor on a train. if you do that you will find that you have far fewer cars devoted to propulsion a fire higher percentage of the total length of the train is for cargo because you don't have all of the radiator cars to disperse the heat from the burning of diesel. And of course we move Frozen items by Rail and if your locomotive is powered by liquid nitrogen not only are there fewer tanks for liquid nitrogen than the removed radiator thanks for the diesel-electric but you load the food raw and freeze it in route!
At only 125Wh/KG might as well stick with adding extra battery capacity. Yes theoretically it has the advantage that you can quickly 'refuel' faster with liquid nitrogen, but then you gotta faf around with pressurized vessels. Not to mention adding a whole new technical system to the vehicle with moving parts that can (and will) go wrong. Interesting engineering but at that weight I can't see an overall advantage.
a bit of steel, some tubing and compressed air is a lot more environmentally friendly than batteries some way of scraping the last bits of energy out of the thermal loss of your system seems neat
LMAO on the humorist intro! Liked hearing about these units, was previously totally unaware. Another piece of the puzzle getting sorted. Looking forward to your next video. Cheers!
Very clever concept. I can see the efficiencies of using these. However, I have to wonder, given that these are so close to a jet engine, how loud this turbine would be, and if they can be used with sufficiently good noise mitigation devices? EVs are renown for being delightfully quiet after all.
Your final thought about using the engine to make electricity for remote areas… How do you get the liquid nitrogen to the generator? Like using Hydrogen as a power source it’ll take more energy to produce the nitrogen than the generator supplies. The reason that a petrol engine is so effective is that the energy used to make the oil has been used already by the planet so the energy cost of making petrol is much lower than what we get from burning it. It has a net positive energy ratio. The energy required to convert oil to petrol is lower than the created petrol. It’s self sustaining. It’ll always take more energy to make the H2 or LN than you get from the final product.
"It’ll always take more energy to make the H2 or LN than you get from the final product" Yes of course but that efficiency no matter how low doesn't violate any energy law because all of this energy is manufactured by nuclear fusion in the Sun's core. I think your real point is the use of land area and natural resources, with the further loss/degradation of land area to get all these complicated machines in serial progression doing the job of "work" rather than pointing out some innate Law of The Universe supposedly being violated.
@@grindupBaker No, that wasn’t my real point. My real point is that people expect alternative fuel supplies to magically make energy whilst ignoring the fact that oil is stored energy that took a long time to make. With oil, once you’ve pulled your first barrel up the pipe it can be used to extract more oil so there’s a net gain in energy. LN or LH can’t work that way. If you used the LN or LH to make more LN or LH then you’ll quickly run out. Net loss.
liquid air power would be great for marine propulsion!!! especially in large warships such as CTOL aircraft carriers, non amphibious assault ships & LHDs!!! even mobile offshore vessels (also called mobile offshore base)!!! this would also enable large surface combatants to be incorporated with much smaller & compact marine gas/fuel turbines!!! cryomatics would work as a range extender for all electric semi trucks in the near future!!!
Very interesting. Another arrow in the quiver against carbon pollution by vehicles and maybe more. As always, your programs are enlightening and appreciated. Thank you. John L in Fairlawn Virginia USA
Turbine engines are pretty sophisticated, and maintain very tight tolerances. They don't like to inhale the kind of junk you might find around a farm. They're happier in the stark dry stratosphere. This is a mildly interesting system, but rugged is not the first thing that comes to mind for me.
@@incognitotorpedo42 Its no more problematic than Turbocharger in large machinery. Decent air filters are all that are required. And we will probably find once the performance specs are available, the critical tolerances are way less than say an aviation engine or high speed gas turbine engine. You can put three or four birds through a jet turbine that only makes it cough a bit, after all.
I got only one concern about liquid nitrogen in a car. If you get into a crash you'll turn into a solid while boiling in liquid nitrogen. Then some muscular dude comes up to you with a gun and says "hasta la vista baby" and blows you into a million bits.
A semi going 80mph weighing 80000lbs has about 25MJ, you would need approximately 14,000 - 2.7v 500F ultracapacitors to completely stop it. Also if you try to stop the semi in one minute a 800volt system would push about 500amps
@@l1u1c1k - that’s a racist caricature, as if all Arabs are into oil or that Arabs wouldn’t be able to acknowledge the damage fossil fuels are doing, and could venture into green energy... for one the Middle East peninsula is also ideal for wind and solar farming. Also, the west is all to eager to buy Arab oil, so who loves it more.. the dealer or the addict?
Another quality video, thanks. Liquid Air is the way forward, love the concept. Trying to get a look round the Manchester plant as an interested member of the public is not easy
THe heat transfer fluid is a mixture of water and glycol and injected into the gas stream...where does this go? Is it re-used somehow, or does this consume glycol, which is carbon heavy and also toxic?
I was so looking forward to the simplicity of the pure electric vehicle and now you've gone a mucked it up with liquid nitrogen and heat exchangers. :)
you will see tesla like technology get vastly better in the next 1-2-3 decades that you will be able to have your dream no problem! Look what has already been accomplished in only about a decade from basically nothing! Remember what happened to the automobile from 1900-2000 and this will be even better progress!
@@carlsapartments8931 tesla and other companies can achieve improvements on batteries in decades to come but we are still in the present, trust me there is simply no other/better solution. The mining industry needs fuel to make exploitation of sites possible and to be able to operate. Agriculture, transport...... its not coming tomorrow the electrification.
We need to apply this heat ladder to our homes, too. AC to hot water, heating to refrigerator, the stove and oven, air to air…. (OSA to ISA)… All sensible & latent heat recovery systems.
Instead of paraphrasing what others say (especially when direct video/audio seems to have been available) I think it would be nicer to briefly let the person present the idea in his/her own words, also to give the video that tad bit more dynamism (and perhaps credibility as well!). In any case, great work, I love this channel!
first use that struck my mind was small portable generators that one may use on a farm on a construction project. Pros would be no smells and pollutants which and possibly noise which is great in urban setting or maybe even camping. Cons were weight, price, difficulty of repairing it and possibly safety (compressed gasses are no joke)
Have you seen the liquid nitrogen cylinders punctured by Starship testing crashes flying off on their own? It would release enough energy to make a car fly and probably rip itself out of a bus. I wouldn't want to be near that event.
I've always wondered about the idea of using the heat from a nitrogen liquefier unit to heat buildings during cold weather periods in the north as a way to have a 2ndary use for the waste heat. I wonder if anyone has crunched the numbers. There already exist many uses for liquid nitrogen
District heating and cooling should be mandatory for all new larger scale construction and development sites. It seems like a win win for everyone once the infrastructure is in place. Obviously individual home owners won't benefit unless they opt in on their own and the buildings need to be designed for central air but still - seems awesome and hope more places do it. Tons of places that produce heat then should benefit from giving that heat back in one way or an other.
As part of a large scale HVAC system it could provide all the storage for intermittent power stored in the most convenient place for both the consumer and producer.
Nice science experiment for now. Good to have all types of people trying different things. Initially, this doesn't seem cost effective nor mechanically simple for maintenance and reliability.
Ummm water and glycol? So you need a tank that you have to fill? Was that taken into account in the watts per kg? Are there any issues with just spraying this out into the air everywhere you go?
Had the same thoughts. Ethylene glycol is the simplest of the glycol class of organic compounds. It is sweet tasting and deadly if injected in sufficient amounts. Often a source of death for dogs from anti-freeze spills. That said, there are pathways for biodegration and is has general low toxicity to aquatic organisms. So would say jury is still out for use of ethylene glycol. Propylene glycol is a non-toxic cousin but is a less effective heat transfer fluid.
You're thinking of this all wrong. Think of a typical coal-rollin' pickup truck U.S. American cabbage brain (married to his aunt) and now you offer him a pickup truck that sounds like a bloody jet engine (he don't know there's no CO2, he never went to school, he's American). This is brilliant salesmanship.
Jet engines are internal combustion engines working on the same thermodynamic cycle as a Diesel engine. The turbine described here is more like a steam turbine which are relatively quiet machines in my experience.
I'm hoping that is just a simplified overview, and they use a heat exchanger (maybe run the fluid through a channel around the turbine body) to get the heat from the fluid to the gas. If not, then they'll need an extra section on their exhaust to condense the glycol/water mix for recirculation... Fortunately, they'll have liquid nitrogen on board to cool it with.
Had a friend who paid an insurance claim for a load of potato chips. The truck driver was given a low altitude route, but took a high altitude route. When he got to his destination ALL the bags had exploded.
LOL. I got a crisps anecdote but not gas-related. Summer 1963 I worked in my Grammar School holiday for Edward Saunders paper bag manufacturers, Minerva Road, Harlesden, London and one day a lorry arrived full of pallets of Smiths Crisps & they told me & my mate where to take them to storage with the hydraulic hand Palitons and we asked why they're here and the manager said their (old grease-proof paper type) bags seals had failed so Smiths returned our defective bags with the crisps in them. I dunno who paid for what I was 16 years old.
We dont seem to consider nitrogen as a greenhouse gas, but it's used on a vast industrial scale. Its apparently 300 times more insulating than carbon. Makes the climate change discussion and its focus on carbon somewhat silly. Thanks for this video. Learned alot.
This is a very interesting concept. I think having a last mile delivery van that uses ultra capacitors to provide initial pull off power, batteries that provide cruise power and liquid air extender to Add to the range.
You better tell Toyota they do not have the rights to make, use or sell cars with Ni-Mhydride batteries. Both all-wheel drive Toyota Prius grades come with a Nickel-Metal Hydride battery. Nickel batteries can withstand harsher temperature changes.
I live in Bulgaria now. The old people hear eat salted pig fat on a morning. the old people hare are ALL slim, its only the younger generations that are starting to get fat on snacks. I have tried it this week. Only about 1oz, 25g in tiny cubes with salt on. There is NO BETTER appetite suppressant.
You seriously compared energy density of the liquid nitrogen itself with energy density of a complete battery system? The claim that around 50% of regenerative breaking energy typically is lost is just not true. Vehicles with more mass has more battery capacity, and therefore can handle more energy input, because of that the battery pack will in most cases be able regenerative breaking, from "normal" driving. Using mechanical or electric energy to produce heat, in order to reduce the inefficiency of a gas turbine slightly, for propulsion, is just stupid. Perhaps in hot cities it could be of more than insignificant value, because of the cooling. Let's assume we have a battery nitrogen hybrid bus, and the battery is discharged, so, it relies on the nitrogen. It's an urban area, so we only need about 10 kW average output from the nitrogen turbine. Ambient air is 27 °C, how much ambient air do you think you need to raise the temperature of 1 kg of liquid nitrogen to 27 °C? The answer is an infinite amount of ambient air. So, we lower our expectations, we still have 27 °C ambient temperature, and 1 kg of liquid nitrogen, at -196 °C, and we settle on using 80% of that difference, so about - 18 °C, 80% of your 77% means leaving about 60% max theoretically possible efficiency, or less than 128 Wh/kg, theoretically available energy, 100 Wh/kg in reality is very optimistic, lets go for that-. For each kg of nitrogen gas at -196 °C you want to heat to -18 °C with heat from 27 °C ambient air you need about 5 kg of that ambient air. But that's from nitrogen gas, we still have to provide heat to make it boil, with 27 °C air you need well over 1.5 of air to make 1 kg of liquid nitrogen to boil off. So, to turn 1 kg of liquid nitrogen into -18 °C nitrogen gas you would need well over 6.5 kg 27 °C air. In "our" bus, we needed 10 kW average output, that means we need 100 kg liquid nitrogen per hour, if we can achieve 100 usable Wh per kg of nitrogen, which is highly optimistic. That means we need well over 650 kg of 27 °C air per hour, that's over 400 cubic meters of air, at standard conditions, per hour. Of course that's not exact, but should be about correct. And of course, as a range extender you could have it work in parallell with the battery, at a lower rate, to make the charge last longer, which would be less difficult. Still, any part of the energy for propulsion would need similar amount of energy in form of heat from somewhere. Perhaps someone thinks I'm not fair, as a counter current heat exchanger could heat the liquid very close to ambient air temperature, but we're still on a bus, we need room for passengers, and we need to waste as little energy as possible on pushing huge amounts air through huge heat exchangers. So, the usefulness in my opinion, for buses, is limited to cities where excessive heat is a problem a most of the time. Even there it's a big "maybe". Have the liquid first cool the inside of the bus, then cool solarpanels that's on the roof of the bus, and by that reach higher than ambient temperature, when it's sunny. Even then you'd need essentially free energy to produce the liquid nitrogen, or, very good use for the huge amounts of heat that is released in production of liquid nitrogen.
Good idea if renewable energy is used to produce the liquid nitrogen. Another good way to utilize solar energy transferring that solar energy into other more usable forms of energy that can be used at any time. Interesting concept even for the potential to be used for air conditioning system. In public transit
You can always tell a Brit on screen; being raised on a diet of advertising-free BBC programmes means that identifying products by label or name is strictly taboo. Yes, Dave, we all know they're Walkers crisps. Oh no! Accidental endorsement! Before my Legal Department throws a wobbler, I should point out that many other brands of crisps are available... 😁
I did looks at this kind of technologies long time ago. Say given it cost 50 cent per gallons for liquid nitrogen and you only used half of the tank and the rest are still in the tank. Given on average 2% will boil off after ever 24 hours. Its ideal for system that are used almost 24 hours a day and less for system only every-so-often.
The nitrogen gas they put in crisp (chip) bags serves two purposes: 1. It helps preserve the food longer. 2. It helps to prevent the crisps (chips) from being crushed during storage and handling.
Essentially this is thermal energy storage and recuperation. I have often thought that we could do relatively efficient energy storage and recuperation with storage of heat in (for example) rocks. If the efficiency is proportional to the absolute temperature, then using electricity to heat up a large mass and then using it to make electricity later using (for example) the Carnot cycle. Storage at 1200K with the cold side at ambient, you will get about 75% efficiency.
Thank you for another great video! I'm sorry you had to make that sacrifice with the crisps, but it was for science. This device is a bit complicated, but it sounds like a very good idea. There are a lot of delivery vehicles out there, but there are even more buses. If the larger version of the range extender can make electric buses economical it could cut huge amounts of CO2 from the air. And electric tractors... Wow, that would be a real game changer! Around here most farms operate on the ragged edge of insolvency, so something that eliminates fuel costs might change the economics of farming completely. Of course it would take time (and maybe government programs) to replace the existing tractors, but if an organized effort was made it could probably be done as the old ones wear out.
