119 points by Jeff_Brown 3 days ago | 53 comments
Animats 3 days ago
Electrolytic capacitors can have far more capacitance than air capacitors. That's the basic concept here.
Here's their patent.[1] Just scroll through the drawings and you'll see how it works.
Here's the key concept: "Numerous aspects of the present disclosure cooperate to increase the breakdown field strength 8406, and / or adjust (e.g. , flatten) the field strength trajectory such as : the permittivity of the dielectric fluid; a selection of fluid constituents to maintain a permittivity profile related to operating temperatures; protection of the dielectric fluid from impurities, presence of water, and / or presence of gases ; providing a surface smoothness of the electrodes 8402, 8404 (or portions thereof), related surfaces, and/ or a housing inner surface ; rinsing / removal of particles and / or impurities (e.g., from manufacturing residue, etc.); provision of a surface treatment on at least a portion of an electrode, and / or on a surface adjacent to the electrode, including varying surface treatments for different electrodes; provision of a coating on at least a portion of an electrode and / or on a surface adjacent to the electrode, including varying the coating for different electrodes; provision of a surface treatment and / or coating on a component at least selectively contacting the dielectric fluid (e.g., a housing inner surface, a packed bed, a side chamber, flow path, and / or eddy region ); protection of composition integrity of the dielectric fluid (e.g., managing materials of bearings, seals , plates , etc. to avoid material breakdown and / or introduction of degradation constituents that negatively affect the performance of the dielectric fluid ); introduction of a field disrupting additive into the dielectric fluid ( e.g., a coated metal oxide, a nano-particle, and /or a conductive particle having a conductor that isolate the conductive particle from physical contact with the dielectric fluid ); introduction of an ion scavenging additive into the dielectric fluid ( e.g., BHT, antioxidants, etc. ); management of gap distance (e.g., using bearings, magnetic separation, a separation assembly, etc.); and / or selected field weakening at certain operating conditions. The utilization of various field management aspects of the present disclosure allows for an increased average field strength in the gap, while maintaining a peak field strength below a breakdown threshold 8406, thereby increasing capacitive energy storage and consequent performance of the ESM 1002."
This thing is sort of like a high voltage electrolytic capacitor with moving parts. They go to a lot of trouble to deal with most of the problems that happen inside capacitors, plus the special problems from moving parts. They had to go all the way to a pumped fluid system with filters, to keep the dielectric fluid cool and clean. Many electric car motors have liquid cooling, so it's no worse than that. It does mean this is probably a technology for larger motors, because the motor requires some accessory systems.
It's not clear that this is a win over magnetic motors, but it's reasonable engineering.
[1] https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/cf/eb/f0/6d48f07...
nine_k 2 days ago
Interestingly, they never mention anything about the need of a pump for the fluid, and claim that their motors are "naturally" sealed.
Animats 2 days ago
01100011 3 days ago
Geee 2 days ago
calmbonsai 2 days ago
Are you simply making a joke about permanent magnets?
01100011 1 day ago
giantg2 3 days ago
If it's capable of up to about 3000 RPM, and it doesn't weigh too much it could be interesting as an ultralight aircraft power plant.
marcosdumay 3 days ago
There's a video with some waves in unlabeled axis. I didn't watch it.
Anyway, it's almost certainly not aimed at aircraft propulsion or power generation. You may want something like it for robotics, but last time a paper from them circulated around here, they seemed to be focusing on instrument actuators and chip fabrication.
mppm 3 days ago
marcosdumay 3 days ago
"Electric drivetrains" can mean anything from an excavator moving at 5km/h with 3m large wheels in a frequency of less then 0.2Hz up to extreme race RC vehicles, at 100km/h with 5cm wheels at ~100Hz. A car wheels go barely over 1k RPM, but I don't really expect them to do anything useful for those.
Szpadel 2 days ago
giantg2 3 days ago
sangnoir 2 days ago
left-struck 2 days ago
humanpotato 2 days ago
nomel 2 days ago
I suspect the gap between the plates needs to be kept small to keep forces high (force is something similar to 0.5QV/d), giving high viscous losses that would increase with RPM (proportional?). I suspect that's what eventually limits the speed.
mNovak 3 days ago
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=919...