Friday, Aug 26, 2016 at 11:08
The company that perfected the industrial diesel - Caterpillar - in 1931 - now have diesel/electric hybrid machines.
When Cat produced the first successful diesel tractor engine, diesel was actually an unknown product and no refinery standard had even been produced for it.
Diesel fuel, up to 1930, was merely the leftovers from refining the lighter fractions of crude, and it varied enormously in quality and grade.
The ASTM D975 standard had to be instituted (during 1931) to ensure a reasonable standard for diesel fuel.
The first diesel/electric drive bulldozer (the D7E) was produced by Cat in 2009, and is regarded as a commercial success.
The Cat D7E
The D7E will not be the last Cat to incorporate electrics into its drivetrain, there will be a lot more electric Cats in the future.
In the early 2000's, Cat invested a lot of money into the advanced development of batteries, in a joint venture with a company called Firefly.
Cat's aim was primarily to develop new improved batteries that only used commonly-available basic elements, such as carbon, nitrogen, silicon, etc.
Their aim was to ensure that they could not be held hostage in their advanced battery production by countries/miners/dictators who controlled the worlds output and
reserves of rare-earth minerals and compounds.
The Firefly JV was dissolved, and regarded as a failure, as regards Cat's aim - as it failed to produce a substantially superior battery using only simple elements.
Rare earths and exotic minerals are still used in superior battery construction - however, that may still change.
The areas producing these rare earths and exotic minerals have been found to be more widespread than initially thought.
Cat's concern was that China would hold all the aces as regards the sources of the raw materials for superior batteries.
However, that is no longer the case, the raw materials are readily available in numerous other countries.
The reason the Firefly JV failed was perhaps an aim that was too high - and also because Cat only threw $20-30M into the JV.
It seems that it will take a lot more money, and a lot more research by combined groups, in
places such as universities and large companies, where big research teams and sizeable sums of money are available.
Tesla is likely to be the company that will make a major battery breakthrough, because of the massive amounts of money it has available, and the size of the teams it can put together.
Firefly learnt quite a bit from its research with Cat and are now producing the advanced Carbon-Foam battery.
However, Firefly only make one version of its battery - the N70 sized, 12V G31. It's claimed that the G31 has up to 5 times the life of a common lead-acid battery.
The major disadvantages of the Firefly G31 are - it weighs 33kgs - and it retails at US$486.
Thus, Firefly have achieved nothing as regards weight reduction, and cost reduction - the two current "bugbears" of lead acid batteries.
For a major battery advance, for automotive use, there needs to be a massive weight reduction, a major improvement in output, and a vastly improved ability for rapid recharge - along with modest and affordable purchase cost.
I personally feel that super-capacitors will play a big part in any further battery and electric power development - and to that end, the CSIRO-developed super-capacitor battery has great potential.
The CSIRO-developed UltraBattery
The super-capacitors are the needed requirement for major surges in power demands, as happens with rapid acceleration of a vehicle.
The power required to roll along steadily, even at highway speeds, is not huge, and the IC engine wastes a lot of energy running at high RPM at highway speeds, with only a portion of the power being produced at highway speeds, actually being used to drive the vehicle along.
This is the forte of the electric motor, it only produces the power needed as required, and energy losses are extremely low.
Cheers, Ron.
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