[ale] Off the Wall

[Thompson Freeman]

On Wed, 19 Dec 2001, Irv Mullins wrote:

> On Wednesday 19 December 2001 06:36 am, Lee wrote:
> > Ok..speaking of all this lightning and power consumption..I have something
> > I've been wondering about. I think a great new power source would be if it
> > were somehow possible to capture lightning and store this on "mondo sized"
> > batteries for distribution under more a "controlled" enviroment. I'd
> > imagine the capacitors would have to be of pretty good size as well, and a
> > by-pass for any overflow that would almost certainly occur.
> >
> > Am I even close to being onto something here,or should I let these paint
> > fumes air a bit longer before working so long in the office :-)

Uggh - let the fumes air out a bit longer...

> 
> Shades of Ben Franklin. 
> 
> Actually, ol' Ben was extremely lucky that he wasn't fried to a crisp during 
> that kite experiment. 
> 
> Other than the difficulty of finding volunteers to fly the kite, the other 
> big problem is that you would need batteries or capacitors which were pretty 
> well insulated - several zillion volts can really arc.  That means some 
> *thick* insulation, which means big batteries. More or less the size of 
> downtown Pittsburgh, say.. Also, you'd have to use something bigger 
> than #12 wire to connect the batteries - NASA measured a current flow of 
> 100,000 amperes when lightning struck a launch tower at the cape some
> years ago. 
> 
> Then, there's the problem of actually finding the batteries, etc, after 
> lightning has hit them.

Well, I'm not a battery engineer, but once you found them, I doubt that
you would find much, if any charging. Batteries require mass transfer to
charge, which isn't fast like a lightning strike. Capacitors might charge
quickly enough tho, but for longterm storage and attaining useful
voltages, I'd guess you would need to bleed the charge energy onto
something else like a flywheel. At least the flywheel can charge quickly
compaired to a battery, although probably not as fast as a lightning
strike. Plus each battery cell wants to operate in a limited voltage
region. Over voltage will just create parasitic currents, and result in
heat, under voltage isn't going to be of much use.

Of course, there might be a way of attracting and harnessing lots of
little (relatively speaking) bolts...


> 
> Regards,
> Irv
> 
> ---
> This message has been sent through the ALE general discussion list.
> See http://www.ale.org/mailing-lists.shtml for more info. Problems should be 
> sent to listmaster at ale dot org.
> 
> 

-- 
===========================================
The harder I work, the luckier I get.
                    Lee Iacocca
===========================================
Thompson Freeman          tfreeman at intel.digichem.net


---
This message has been sent through the ALE general discussion list.
See http://www.ale.org/mailing-lists.shtml for more info. Problems should be 
sent to listmaster at ale dot org.