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Will Lithium Ion batteries ever have the energy density to be used in rotorcraft?


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There's been a lot of talk recently about electric airplanes and possibly also rotorcraft and I was wondering if you guys think it's total bogus or potentially viable?

I've heard that lithium ion batteries have less energy density that newspaper!

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One factor for electric flight is the battery weight stays the same, charged or discharged. Conventional fuel is burned off during flight effectively getting a bit more flight time due to lighter aircraft.

 

Doubt we will see this for a while. But when every house has solar and battery banks, then the tech may be getting close. I feel much of this is proof of concept to obtain research grants.

 

Turbines are quite the perfect engine for thrust v weight. Hard to replace in the near future.

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One factor for electric flight is the battery weight stays the same, charged or discharged. Conventional fuel is burned off during flight effectively getting a bit more flight time due to lighter aircraft.

 

Doubt we will see this for a while. But when every house has solar and battery banks, then the tech may be getting close. I feel much of this is proof of concept to obtain research grants.

 

Turbines are quite the perfect engine for thrust v weight. Hard to replace in the near future.

Great point

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Is that a comparison for when the lithium ion batteries catch fire?

Well I guess what they mean't is that if you convert volts to BTU you can burn newspaper and get more BTU per amount of mass than Lithium.

I did some math and found that JET A has 550 BTU/per cubic inch and lithium ion has 30 BTU/cubic inch. One gallon is 231 cubic inches.

So considering that most turboshaft engines have a power/weight ratio of 4:1 it doesn't seem that lithium ion will amount to anything.

So for lithium ion to work they would need to increase the energy density by 520 times!!

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