03-15-2019, 10:01 AM | #1 |
Join Date: Oct 2012
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Fuel Power Equivalencies
Has anyone guesstimated the ratio or equivalency between a power tool that requires liquid fuel, and one using power cells?
1 gallon of fuel = ??? Power cell (s) This is a fuel powered High-Tech tool as a TL9 version. Air Compressor (TL6). Consumes 1 gallon of gasoline per hour. Halve weight at TL8. $100, 125 lbs. LC4. I see a TL9 version using Power Cells. |
03-15-2019, 10:18 AM | #2 | |
Join Date: Aug 2007
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Re: Fuel Power Equivalencies
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You'd need the rating of the fuel-burning engine for the HT version in KW (or even HP which you'd convert to KW) as well as run time. Then ahving the that information you'd need to get the semi-secret values of UT-style Power Cells in KW seconds. There's one set of possibly correct information in Infinite Worlds.
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Fred Brackin |
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03-15-2019, 11:03 AM | #3 | |
Join Date: Jun 2006
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Re: Fuel Power Equivalencies
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You can usually replace the fuel consumption of anything with the something in the vicinity of the same weight of (non-nuclear) power cells and stay somewhere in suspension of disbelief territory. For TL9 cells, which tend to on the physically plausible end, it's probably more like 5 to 10 times the weight of the fuel.
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-- MA Lloyd |
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03-15-2019, 03:13 PM | #4 | |
Join Date: Jul 2006
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Re: Fuel Power Equivalencies
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03-18-2019, 08:33 AM | #5 | |
Join Date: Jun 2006
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Re: Fuel Power Equivalencies
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That said, good fuel cell concepts tend to be something like twice as efficient as internal combustion, and at least a little better than combustion turbines, so 50 or 60% efficient is probably a pretty reasonable guess.
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-- MA Lloyd |
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03-18-2019, 12:29 PM | #6 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: Fuel Power Equivalencies
There's a modest amount of research on diesel fuel cells, though it's basically a two step process where step 1 is to crack some fuel for hydrogen (usually with CO or CO2 as a byproduct) and step 2 is using the hydrogen in a fuel cell.
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03-20-2019, 03:22 PM | #7 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: God's Own Country
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Re: Fuel Power Equivalencies
One thing that's looking rather good for this is purified ammonia and a reformer on a H2 fuel cell. Liquid ammonia has a higher hydrogen density than liquid hydrogen, and the byproduct is N2. The only real problem at the moment is that the reformer is pretty big at the moment, so you won't see a vehicle with a reformer on it.
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Paul May | MIB 1138 (on hiatus) |
03-20-2019, 03:36 PM | #8 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: Fuel Power Equivalencies
Incidentally, fundamentally a battery is equivalent to a power plant with a built-in (normally non-air-breathing) not easily refillable fuel tank, so your best case is generally that the batteries match the weight of the engine plus its fuel tank, not the weight of the fuel tank.
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