Hybrid Electric Boat with large Wind Generator

Discussion in 'Boat Design' started by rainmaking, Jan 4, 2014.

  1. philSweet
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    philSweet Senior Member

  2. gonzo
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    gonzo Senior Member

    Considering the large initial stability required, a catamaran may make more sense.
     
  3. rainmaking
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    rainmaking Junior Member

    Agree about the stability of a cat, but there are issues-
    -only can have about 30' beam in my canal
    -don't like the looks of cats
    -the spaces are awkward and harder to maintain
    -slapping/spitting in heavy seas
    -can a cat be actively stabilized for roll?
    -would like to refit an existing boat -if possible--maybe an old Broward
     
  4. rainmaking
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    rainmaking Junior Member

    We could lower the CG by only using the upper half of the turbine--not using the lower three blades. This would allow the mass to come down maybe 16' and reduce it around 600 lbs. Of course, the power output will also be reduced by slightly more than half...
     
  5. lucdekeyser
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    lucdekeyser Senior Member

    proa for VAWT with autogyro lift

    If looks are important to you even at this trial stage you will hate this proposal: If the rotor suggested is an off shoot of ecovert75 I would suggest an atlantic proa planform whereby the rotor would "sit" down low on the windward hull, while the leeward hull would stay out of the blades' way and keep the people safe. It should come with a warning sign to only dock from the leeward hull.
    Could the powerful rotational inertia from the rotor be used to help stabilize the boat further (beyond the already very stable proa planform) without compromising mechanical integrity of axes and gears?
    Could the central horizontal disk plane of the rotor be made of arrays of photo-voltaic cells to combine wind and solar power in one device?
    Could the endplates of the vertical blades be replaced by pitcheable horizontal blades to provide autogyro type vertical lift and slow down the rotational speed in hard wind?

    Luc
     
  6. rainmaking
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    rainmaking Junior Member

    Luc-
    Yes, it would be the EcoVert 75 modified for the boat. Mainly the generator would be removed and a new spindle and driveshaft would be in its place. And, maybe removing or modifying the lower blades to lower the CG.

    You're right, I don't like the idea of a proa.

    Yes, perhaps the rotating inertia would stabilize the boat further.

    Yes, it's possible to put PV on the horizontal rotor arms but I don't know how effective it would be on the curved surface and the intermittent shading.

    There is no need to control the tip fences, the machine has full pitch control and the maximum rpm is 32.
     

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  7. WestVanHan
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    WestVanHan Not a Senior Member

    Garage for a 30' er?

    Don't need to do 50 knots? Ditch the turbines and KaMeWas and throw in a couple diesels!

    Don't need the supercar? Just don't check that box when ordering!

    Still too much? Ditch the carbon!

    Have it built in China-supervised of course- and maybe you'll be out the door at about $20 million.

    http://www.autoblog.com/2010/05/28/strand-craft-122-super-yacht-comes-with-supercar-and-in-boat-gar/

    Non depleting? load up the top with solar panels!

    ps. If you need someone to field test her,let me know as I have decades of experience-since I was a kid-in the trickiest waters in the world.
     
  8. Tcubed
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    Tcubed Boat Designer

    Wind powered boat with wind energy storage

    I'm glad to have stumbled across this thread.
    As it happens i have been in the preliminary stages of developing a similar concept (but at a considerably smaller scale ~18 M) but using Savonius/Magnus morphing rotors which can be used to harvest energy and/or produce useful wind derived thrust.
    The main design hurdle in my case is devising a suitably simple system for the two halves af the cylinder to slide apart into a savonius rotor as well as having the cylinder diameter slightly stepped such that they can be nested (telescoped) for reduction in high winds, possibly even in three sections.
    There are precedents for reefing , as well as for morphing, but not for both. It may well prove to be an impossible problem. I'm still thinking about possible solutions.

    At any rate, yes you will need an inteligent marine engineer to get this beyond a dream. It is not necessarilly "M.M.", in fact it can be quite viable, but one has to keep one's feet on the ground (water?) in terms of what can and cannot be done with such an arrangement.
    At first glance, i'm pretty certain that there are a number of your wants that are not compatible and you will have to prioritize as to where you can accept the "not quite as you imagined it" parts of the final design. Remember, a main part of the ME 's job is to ensure you won't end up with a crashing dissapointment in the end, not to mention complete waste of money. To that end, someone versed in the matters can offer realistic possibilities, but be prepared to compromise. And be warned that a ME promising the moon is not to be taken seriously!

    My own thoughts;
    The scale alone of this project is a major problem. Scaling laws indicate that it gets harder and harder to achieve enough wind power as the scale goes up. Couple that with the fact that most of the "idyllic" places you may want to spend time in with the boat are in consistently low wind zones, plus the fact that wind power goes to the cube of wind speed...
    Then batteries; i may be behind the curve here but i know of no battery tech that lasts more than five years. Replacing tons of batteries every 5 years is a major exagerator of on going running costs , not to mention quite possibly cancelling out any supposed environmental benefit the boat may have. At that scale i would be looking at storing the energy as hydrogen. You would take an efficiency hit but the hardware is much more long lasting.
    Toy garage in the bow is quite likely a poor concept, depending on the weight. No boat needs on purpose additions to the mass moment of inertia about the pitch axis!
    Roll stabilization is a complex and subtle, but fascinating area, too long to get into right now. But no you cannot roll stabilize a multihull. Boats with very steep righting moment (such as multihulls) curves will follow the water surface, and this is not necessarily what you would want anyways when there is a considerable amount of gyroscopic mass. Anyways it's pretty aparent that a multihull arrangement is out of the question based on your comments so far.

    I could produce for you croquis of realistic design concepts straight away , that you could then take to another ME for further development and the obligatory viability study. I can take it the rest of the way too, but am fully occupied until april 2014 and cannot do anything beyond conceptual design sketches at the moment. Otherwise i would find this a fascinating project to work on later on.
     
  9. rainmaking
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    rainmaking Junior Member

    WVH-
    Your taste is rapidly declining---:)
     
  10. rainmaking
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    rainmaking Junior Member

    T^3-
    You have some interesting points. As for your savonius turbine, you have an interesting idea with it collapsing. It seems plausible to rotate the 'stages' of the rotor slightly WRT each other and reduce its windage at least some.

    As for my concept, of course it is at an early stage and not everything on the wishlist will stick. I am curious why you don't like the bow garage? Lots of boats carry large tenders and they are either on the foredeck, aft deck, or in a garage in one of those locations. I have never seen one carried in the middle of the boat, and realistically the load is small relative to other loads.

    I like the hydrogen idea, NH3 even more so (it stores better), but the conversion losses are just too much. One thing that doesn't seem clear to most of the commenters is that the battery storage is more of a transitional energy buffer, not long term cruising energy. There will need to be a couple of thousand gallons of diesel on board. The 600+kW of diesel generation isn't going to run on methane reclaimed from sea water.

    The idea of the boat is to sacrifice some onboard real estate for a significant amount of the most practical renewable generation for the vessel's environment, and back that up with enough storage to put that energy to use. Running 50nmi's off a 'charge' at 10kt would be great. Cutting the wind turbine in half to lower the CG will not bode well for it doing much other than keeping up with the house load, but that's something. The water current turbine is where the real power is, and of course it is the most work to develop.

    What I need the most help with is the traditional NA work...hull form, stability. As I said I am modeling something in Inventor but to do stability simulations I need a general idea of what shape would be most successful.
     
  11. Tcubed
    Joined: Sep 2008
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    Tcubed Boat Designer

    Like i said it depends on the mass and on the mass as a proportion of the total. But by the sounds of it (30' CC!) it will not be negligible.. And just because you have not seen it does not mean it cannot be done or is a bad idea, as i'm sure you can imagine given the kind of concept you're actually envisaging here for starters. The bow should really be 'weight free', but i don't have enough info at this stage to even begin to suggest how the different components should best be longitudinally ordered.

    Yes, NH3 is likely a good, maybe even best, solution for the big issue of practical H storage.
    It seems you are cognizant of the fact that your desired energy expenditures will be too high to be covered by the turbines alone, hence the diesel as well.
    However, it is crucial to rein in the slide into over-complexification. To me, the ideal would be to scratch the diesels completely and work entirely within the available aeolic energy budget. This would mean great simplification of the operating systems, huge lowering of running costs, and much lower rates of attrition. Now, if you are not willing to compromise on energy expenditure, supplemental fuels will obligatorily have to be designed in- and costs will go up.

    Adding in two energy sources for propulsion adds to the complexity enormously. I would not recommend having both electric and diesel propulsion engines however.
    Some strategies here could be; Use diesel exclusively for propulsion, wind for everything else. This depends on the fraction of the ship hours that are spent at rest. And in conjunction, if wind energy harvesting can happen dockside.
    Or, have the propulsion engines be able to handle both NH3 and diesel. The easiest way to do this is with ECE. The efficiency is the same, but with far less noise and vibration. I do not believe that a feasible diesel nor gasoline engine can be made that can switch between these two quite different fuels, the modifications go very much deeper than just at the fuel injection/carburetor level. (unlike methane) With ECE there is no problem having a variety of burners.

    As you can see i would not be so fast discarding the idea of non battery energy storage, there are many benefits that can outweigh the energy stream cost, but only a mathematical analysis can really objectify the better choices.

    Are you in an area of strong water current to make you so interested in the water turbine? One has to be very considered when adding in systems; they do have to make sense on not only a total energy budget level but also on a long term economic level.

    With the kind of VAWT that you are interested in the total surface area is small enough that there should be no need to reef ever (at that scale) provided the feathering mechanisms are engineeered 100 % fullproof.

    Hull form, stability, etc is second nature to me, my strong point is fluid dynamics. Although i can do most of all the design, i recognise when to delegate and have specific experts for electrical engineering/energy systems analysis and the structural analysis/materials engineering. This would be a large project and a team is the correct way to get it done. Another highly important thing, without which there is not much point following through, is your alocatable budget. You must get a clear idea as to what you are prepared to spend, or your "budget window". Without that, the rest is meaningless..

    You can pm me if you want to take this to the next level, even if it's just the first step of many.
     
  12. rainmaking
    Joined: Jan 2014
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    rainmaking Junior Member

    Just for a visual on the aesthetics I modeled up what was in my head. I started with lines from a '90's 110' Broward...that is what you see from the shearline down. Of course there is nothing beneath the waterline. Yet. It needs a lot of work and keep in mind I only spent a half-dozen hours on it at this point. Right now I just want to play with the looks and layout to see if it might do what we need before starting any serious engineering.
     

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  13. rainmaking
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    rainmaking Junior Member

    I uploaded 3 images but only one showed up...
     

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  14. rainmaking
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    rainmaking Junior Member

    Third image
     

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  15. rainmaking
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    rainmaking Junior Member

    T^3-
    Yes, I would love to nix the diesels and trim the energy budget! Unfortunately, I am afraid that is impractical based on my estimates. Just on propulsion alone I must be looking at at least 200kW at 10kt even with a fine displacement hull this size, and that is 8 hours with as much a battery cycle as practical, and assuming wind is maintaining house loads.

    Other energy storage technology I think just adds too much risk. Diesels actually run quite well with a high mix of NH3 but dual fueling is just complicating things further. You are right about NH3 not running alone easily in any engine. Only a few conversions have been done worldwide at this point...not ready for prime time. This not even mentioning the conversion losses both directions.

    With electric propulsion adding the diesel generation really isn't complicated. Again, I would love to do without, but I am afraid it cuts the usability too much.

    Ocean Currents: yes, they are everywhere. Gulf stream off the FL coast to tidal currents in the islands. The 70kW is calculated at a conservative efficiency in a 4kt current the way I plan to do the turbine. I have resources to do full feasibility but that will need to wait a while for availability.

    Also keep in mind once again at the dock the turbine will not run--running it would overhang the dock and potentially other boats, however; shore power is a fine substitute.
     
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