Good morning blueskins, take a look at the video that this link will take you to. This is how flexible thin film photo voltaics are made. These new hyperlight, bendable, printable panels could cover the upper surface of the wing and fuselage of an electric powered aircraft, giving it both ZERO pollutants, AND UNLIMITED RANGE. THIS is the technology that I was discussing with Billy Mitchell, the then Director of the Sun-N-Fun Airshow, (2nd largest in the world), for a solar powered blimp that I would like to fly around the World back in 1987. This link will lead to other links, one of which, shows how the flexible panels are made.


Argonne National Laboratory



Niri Tawä

Solar powered blimp sounds kind of like an oxymoron

The blimp wouldn't be fast, it would probably only go 30 to 35 MPH indicated, but by using tailwinds at different altitudes, you could get a ground track of 60 to 80 MPH. It would have been used as proof of concept, a blimp's solar power would be used strictly to propel the ship, whereas a conventional aircraft would have to expend more of it's incoming power to make the craft fly faster than it's stall speed in order to generate lift. That would require MANY panels, and be extremely expensive.
Back when I wanted to do this, the only panels available were the heavy panels, so a small, single person Blimp would be the only thing that would work.

Solar powered blimp - that sounds great!!! will it be done?? I love airships...

The article and video was a promotional about some company doing R&D mostly for batteries though, it seems, I did not see solar panels except behind the speaker who probably chose carefully that background to show how green they are

I approached the movers and shakers of Solar power back in 1984 with the idea, when a "Friendship Flight" around the World in an Ultralight legal Mini Blimp that didn't burn a DROP of fuel, or pollute ONE BIT, would have set the world on it's collective EAR, and NO ONE was interested.

NOW? This Planet is going straight to HELL on a high speed rocket, and at 63, I will STILL be home with Eywa before it impacts, so I couldn't care less. They could approach me with a hundred million dollars and beg me to help them fix something, and I would tell then "GO TO HELL".

If you were to ever come waaaay out here in the middle of NOWHERE, and I were to let you on my acreage, you would see some pretty cutting edge stuff, some that no one has EVER seen, and we use it to make OUR lives better, and the rest of the species can just keep heading for the cliff like the Lemmings that they are. I am THROUGH.

Thank you for aptly demonstrating why we're in this mess in the first place.

You JUST DON'T GET IT, DO YOU. I TRIED to help them, we BUILT a motor that did NOT burn a hydrocarbon fuel, and had the then United States SENATOR from the state of Tennessee visit the shop where we HAD one of these engines RUNNING. While I was TALKING TO HIM, I put on a modified WW2 oxygen mask, and continued to talk to him WHILE BREATHING THE EXHAUST, (75 % supersaturated steam and 25% diatomic Oxygen) after it had been run through a cooler which distilled a lot of the water in the steam before the mix was allowed into the mask. After I was done with that part of the demonstration, I DRANK THE WATER that was distilled from the supersaturated steam.
Before he left, he told us, that for the first time in his life, he was speechless, and he would make SURE that we would get the lion's share of the development money that was up for grabs for alternative energy systems to fuel vehicles. We eventually got NOTHING, someone who was trying to make something from WALNUT SHELLS, got the money, and there were FIVE ATTEMPTS ON MY LIFE.
NOW, say WHAT?? How DARE you accuse me of not trying. I am just FINISHED, that's all, and I have EVERY RIGHT to not give a DAMN as to what you people do.

Sounds interesting, but do you have any proof or documentation of it? A person's word isn't enough on its own for investors. I find it difficult to believe that two people can outdo all of humanity - I'm perfectly willing to be proved wrong, but can't take that on faith.

Who are you talking about HNM? If you are talking about the six of us that built this motor, we had more than paperwork, we had a running Engine that was looked at for a couple of hours by Senator Howard Baker the United States Senator from the State of Tennessee, where all of us lived, where the machine shop was located, and where thew engine was undergoing its reliability tests. Did people take it seriously? hey took it seriously enough to try and kill me several times, yes, they knew the motor was REAL
I'm not looking for ANYONE to back the engine anymore, I couldn't care how anyone needs it now. Several years ago, I destroyed all the engineering drawings, there are two photographs of it, and NO ONE would be able to build the engine from those photos. That engine design is inside my head only, and when I check out, that engine, and several other designs go with me.

What was it running on? Hydrogen+Oxygen? Sounds like it from the description... Did you use hydrogen as a storage for solar generated power? I imagine however that such things are not really lightweight, so for a blimp they sound rather heavy, especially the 1980ies solar panels. With these thin film ones, I can imagine it would really work to have a 100% solar powered blimp, if some storage capacity can be made for the cloudy times (if you go above the clouds, that problem would go away of course).

It is a VERY efficient steam engine that I was chemically generating the steam for, by the Exothermic Decomposition of Hydrogen Peroxide. (90% propellant grade stuff). NOW you know why I needed the coolers for the exhaust, 1,475 degrees F, is hot stuff. I REALLY like your mind Aurora.

Ah interesting concept. I wonder though - what is the energy content and storability compared to other sources of energy? This is what sadly rules out so many alternative ways to store energy - few things are as efficient as gasoline which is a very compact and easily stored energy source. Natural gas or hydrogen needs pressure tanks, electricity needs large and heavy batteries...etc.
This is the famous graph about that:
File:Energy density.svg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(ideal fuels are on the top-right)
A back of the envelope calculation gave be about 3 MJ/kg and 2 MJ/L 4.5 MJ/L which would place it a bit above Lithium Ion batteries but sadly not close to any of the fossil liquid fuels...Is that about right?

If you are talking about the energy release in the exothermal decomposition of Hydrogen peroxide, what happens is that the extra oxygen is stripped off the compound, releasing enough heat energy to ignite the free hydrogen, giving us 1,475 degree supersaturated steam. It's saturation levels are so high, that it is VERY close to being a non-compressible fluid, and it's temperature puts it under extreme pressure. Due to this, the torque produced by the engine was so high, there were no mechanical transmissions that could handle it. Because of that, we used an electric drive, to power things, and even with the conversion losses, the net power coming off this engine that was only a foot and a half by two feet in size was astounding.
But I digress. because of how this stuff worked chemically, you would have to figure it;s stored energy by the stored energy of Hydrogen gas. without the explosion hazard.
What you noted in your post about the fossil fuels, is why we as a species, are addicted to it,.
Niri Tawa

My answers are 2.8MJ/kg, and 4.1MJ/L, but I suspect I did the latter one wrong somehow, sine that seems rather high. Unfortunately, I don't have the time right now, or I'd calculate an estimate of the maximum hover time you'd get out of it.

Clarke: Yes - I got 2.9 (rounded to 3). And I miscalculated the second - it has to be 3*1.5 of course and thus indeed has to be more than 4. Still it is in the same field in the graph.

Niri Te: I did not get the part about free hydrogen - where does that one come from? You also add hydrogen gas as a fuel source? That would of course make sense to use hydrogen peroxide, take the energy it gives off as it splits into water and oxygen gas and then use that pure oxygen gas to burn hydrogen gas with it. I can imagine that this really gives off a lot of energy, but the storability and energy density of hydrogen peroxide and hydrogen gas is still not close to fossil fuels, hence I think it would be hard to fuel an airplane with it because of all the weight it would have to carry (this is why without fossil fuels, airplanes would be a thing of the past). A blimp might work as it does not have to actively use energy to float the heavy weight, but its payload would be small compared to the size - smaller than in fossil fuel driven blimps. Again, that is of course assuming that the fuel would be loaded on the vessel at takeoff and used up. If it is refueled by solar energy in some way during flight, it basically is just a temporary storage and could be much smaller.
What I am trying to say is that it is not so much the size of the motor that counts, but mainly the size and weight of the fuel tanks...

And indeed - the addiction of the "civilized" part of the human species is due to these properties of fossil fuels. Plus that there is a stash of it that does not have to refill itself by solar energy (at least not until it runs out)