Fuel Cells?

Fuel cells will soon be available for laptops, and are being appoved
for use on airliners. Could we be using fuel cells for our gliders soon
too?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4794920.stm

"Doug Haluza" wrote in message
oups.com...
Fuel cells will soon be available for laptops, and are being appoved
for use on airliners. Could we be using fuel cells for our gliders soon
too?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4794920.stm


Interesting question.

Fuel cells use oxygen from the ambient atmosphere which reacts with fuel
such as hydrogen or hydrogen derived from ethanol to produce electricity.
The question I'm interested in is whether there enough O2 available at
soaring altitudes for the fuel cell reaction to work. If so, this is an
interesting solution to the ever increasing power demands.

Bill Daniels

Have you seen the prices? US$500 for a laptop.

kernow


Doug Haluza wrote:
Fuel cells will soon be available for laptops, and are being appoved
for use on airliners. Could we be using fuel cells for our gliders soon
too?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4794920.stm

Bill Daniels wrote:
"Doug Haluza" wrote in message
oups.com...
Fuel cells will soon be available for laptops, and are being appoved
for use on airliners. Could we be using fuel cells for our gliders soon
too?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4794920.stm


Interesting question.

Fuel cells use oxygen from the ambient atmosphere which reacts with fuel
such as hydrogen or hydrogen derived from ethanol to produce electricity.
The question I'm interested in is whether there enough O2 available at
soaring altitudes for the fuel cell reaction to work. If so, this is an
interesting solution to the ever increasing power demands.

Fuel cells to run our radios? My thought was power for electric
motorgliders. The batteries we've got for powering instruments are quite
satisfactory, and making them smaller and/or lighter would have only the
slightest impact on what we do. But, double the energy per pound for
batteries in an electric self-launcher at the same or lower cost and Wow!

--
Change "netto" to "net" to email me directly

Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA

www.motorglider.org - Download "A Guide to Self-launching Sailplane
Operation"

"But, double the energy per pound for batteries in an electric self-launcher
at the same or lower cost and Wow!"

And, any left over fuel after the flight can provide a nice cocktail.

Colin

Well, that's nothing compared to a $150,000 glider.

I wish it was only $150,000 - then we'd sell even more !
See ya, Dave

PS: Remember, the US dollar has fallen significantly
in the last few years...

wrote:
I wish it was only $150,000 - then we'd sell even more !
See ya, Dave

PS: Remember, the US dollar has fallen significantly
in the last few years...

Of course, one will probably be able to get between two and three Apis
Es for the price of one Antares, and the Apis is able to recharge it's
batteries in flight 8^)

COLIN LAMB wrote:
"But, double the energy per pound for batteries in an electric self-launcher
at the same or lower cost and Wow!"

And, any left over fuel after the flight can provide a nice cocktail.

Methanol is rather toxic, I don't think thats such a good plan. In
fact, Indy Racing League is switching from methanol to ethanol because of
environmental issues.

dan

Marc Ramsey wrote:
Of course, one will probably be able to get between two and three Apis
Es for the price of one Antares, and the Apis is able to recharge it's
batteries in flight 8^)

Have you got any performance data on that particular feature?
I'd like to see
- the sink rate you have when on windmilling (charging)
- the charge current produced at that point
- how long does it take to actually get some useful energy back into the
batteries? (like, how long for another 500m climb later on?)

Without these data it's hard to say if it's really practical or not. Mind
you, propellers are bad as windmills, the efficiency will be rather low. I
wonder if anyone would actually use this feature at all if they have to fly
around at 2-3 m/s sink rate for hours instead of just soaring.

The Antares has a windmilling sinkrate of 1.25 m/s, with the prop running
freely. So if you start braking the prop it'll be much more. The charging
feature was dropped just because it seemed rather pointless, even though
the hardware itself is quite capable of doing it.

Cheers,
Ola :-)