@S1-A.ARPA,@MIT-MC.ARPA:DIETZ@RUTGERS.ARPA (06/23/85)
From: DIETZ@RUTGERS.ARPA
Business Week, July 1, 1985, page 79
"A Giant Flywheel That `Banks' Energy"
"What do you get by combining a giant underground atom smasher with
a magnetic leviation `train' of little metal cubes? A revolutionary
way of storing massive amounts of energy, according to researchers
at Argonne National Laboratory. They propose building a monstrous
flywheel: a chain of magnetically suspended metal cubes in a circular
vacuum chamber 1.2 mi. in diameter. The cubes would be accelerated
to a speed of thousands of miles per hour by superconducting magnets,
just as similar magnets send atomic particles zipping around an
atom-smasher at close to the speed of light.
"A utility could rev up this flywheel at night, using surplus power.
The next day, the energy would be retrieved by reversing the process
and using the ring as a generator. Argonne scientist John R. Hull
says that a kinetic-energy ring would be three times as efficient as
hydroelectric systems that store energy by pumping water back up behind
a dam.
Looks like ANL is doing research that could lead to a launch loop. The
kinetic energy ring looks like a winner if it makes sense on as small a scale
as 1.2 miles; capital costs should scale linearly with radius while energy
stored scales as the square of the radius.
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