2 ms·
I've been taking a look at materials for creating a flywheel energy storage system and for the life of me I can't understand why people don't use basalt fibers
by pg_bot 4y ago
I've been taking a look at materials for creating a flywheel energy storage system and for the life of me I can't understand why people don't use basalt fibers as the material for the flywheel. It has similar properties to carbon fiber but is cheaper and heavier. Since the energy storage scales exponentially with speed but linearly with weight, it should make sense to optimize for materials with a high tensile strength. Basalt fiber is pretty easy to manufacture and there are tons of it all over the world.
- moloch-hai 4y agoRight, there is no advantage in maximizing rotational velocity. Flywheels are the best when you need to store only a few seconds' worth of power, and may need to store or retrieve it at a very high rate. Still, spinning spare "Starship" cans on the ends of a girder might be a good way to store solar energy on the moon, during the long night. Maybe the girder is made from basalt fiber.
- nelgaard 4y agoEnergy storage does not scale exponentially with speed. Kinetic energy increases quadratically with the angular velocity.