Electromechanical Flywheel Battery EDU Development Project.

reportActive / Technical Report | Accession Number: ADA322547 | Open PDF

Abstract:

In January 1993, American Flywheel Systems Inc. AFS initiated a program to develop and commercialize its proprietary Electro-Mechanical Flywheel Battery EMFB for commercial deployment in electric vehicles. The operational prototype was to demonstrate the technical viability and operation of the Electro Mechanical Flywheel Battery EMFB as a commercially feasible replacement to conventional chemical batteries. As an intermediate technical step in that process, and to provide an opportunity to evaluate a pre-prototype EMFB, an Engineering Development Unit EDU was also to be constructed. EMFBs present the prospect of providing an environmentally compatible energy source offering outstanding life and performance for electric vehicles. Contrasted with the chemical species of battery, the EMFB is not an electro-chemical device. Instead it is an electro-mechanical system that efficiently converts through its motor-generator the mechanical kinetic energy stored in a high speed rotating flywheel rotor into usable electrical power. Recharging the EMFB reverses that energy exchange and the battery stores supplied electrical energy as mechanical kinetic energy as the motor spins-up the flywheel rotor to speed. Operating in a vacuum to minimize losses, and enclosed in a safety vessel, the EMFB is a mechanical battery, not a chemical battery, and therefore is not sensitive to the typical thermal degradation and other life limiting factors inherent to chemical batteries. A successfully developed EMFB has the potential of offering high specific energy multiples above lead acid batteries and specific power sufficient to provide outstanding acceleration and capture the available energy of regenerative braking in an environmentally benign package.

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