Awards & Nominations
KABLOSAN has received the following awards and nominations. Way to go!
Global Nominee
Atmospheric Potential Energy Storage (A.P.E.S.)
High-Level Project Summary
Kablosan has developed a practical solution in order to solve energy storage capability problems that occurs in extreme conditions of Venus. By using specialized carbon fiber capsules, we have designed a potential energy storage device which works as capsules ascent due to buoyancy and pull a special spool in a constant, pre-planned manner, thus creating much needed energy. While capsules are resilient to high pressure gradients and chemical compounds they also work quite similarly to a moor-buoy from a submarine due to dense atmosphere. A.P.E.S. is a mechanical method that creates viable and cheaper energy storage alternative for Venusian probes when compared to radioisotope counterparts.
Link to Final Project
Link to Project "Demo"
Detailed Project Description
The atmosphere of Venus is mostly composed of CO2 and other greenhouse gasses, it is extensively inefficient or impossible for solar panels to produce energy. While also winds near to the surface is almost to non-existent, surface of the Venus is mostly stagnant and shares deep similarities with deep ocean surfaces. So why not buoyancy then ?
A.P.E.S. establishes itself as an alternative mechanical energy storage method in the form of buoyancy for future Venus missions and Venusian probes instead of radioisotopes, solar power, wind etc. Since the atmosphere of Venus is immensely dense, hot and pressurized, achieving lift/buoyancy is fairly easy. Our team have referenced Perseverence's and LLISSE's energy consumption ( 10 Watt/H - 110 Watt/H )as a min-max comparison for our energy system requirements for our imaginary Venus probe. Additionaly we have designed special Carbon Fiber capsules that will get lifted by buoyancy, allowed in a pre-planned manner, to meet our probe's energy requirements.
Carbon Fıber is chosen since it is a viable material that is actively used and proven in modern commercial plane fuselages etc. strong and extendible while it is chemically durable and corrosive resilient. In order to reduce the thickness of Carbon Fiber walls of the capsules and achieve structural support with less weight, we will add Helium gas to inside of the capsules to a certain Pascal value before the launch. While the thickness of Carbon Fiber will be enough to hold Helium inside in the vacuum of space, Helium will provide structural support in Venus' 9300 KPa atmosphere.
As aforementioned before, there will be more than one capsule which would be a desired precaution for cases like main rope breakdown. Ropes of the capsules will be made with Kevlar insidings with sufficient Carbon Fibre coating thus will be resilient to outer effects of the atmosphere and connect capsules to probe. Each capsule, with their individual rope, will be connected to their own seperate spools. Each capsule will have an emergency rope which connects to their nearest selected capsule. Thus if a main rope, from probe to a capsule, fails due to fatigue etc. emergency rope will hold the capsule, take the extra lift and prevent the complete waste of energy.
Space Agency Data
Of these choices, hydrogen is likely to be the better choice, since the Venus atmosphere has no significant helium resources. The worry of hydrogen igniting would be considerably reduced, compared to the risk of hydrogen balloons in the Earth’s atmosphere, because the atmosphere of Venus does not contain oxygen.
(Settling Venus: A City in the Clouds? Geoffrey A. Landis1 NASA Glenn Research Center, 21000 Brookpark Road, Cleveland OH 44135)
Along with hydrogen reaped from condensing atmospheric sulfuric acid droplets
(Settling Venus: A City in the Clouds? Geoffrey A. Landis1 NASA Glenn Research Center, 21000 Brookpark Road, Cleveland OH 44135)
This would essentially be building a “shelf” at the appropriate level in the atmosphere, presumably made from high temperature composite materials, such as graphite (“carbon carbon”) composite or, further in the future, carbon nanotubes, which could be manufactured from the available carbon-dioxide atmosphere.
(Settling Venus: A City in the Clouds? Geoffrey A. Landis1 NASA Glenn Research Center, 21000 Brookpark Road, Cleveland OH 44135)
Hackathon Journey
As a team that is comprised of engineers, SpaceApps Hackathon was a great teambuilding exercise and have tested our ability to come up with a solution, team-working and most importantly being able to make a proper roadmap for urgent projects. The experience we had was fruitful and our challenge was delightful to deal with.
We did choose "Exploring Venus Together" challenge since as a team we find extraterrestrial missions aspecially intriguing. We aimed to challenge ourselves in the area of creativity and worked up in order to find a genuine mechanical solution instead of already existing ones or simply nuclear solutions. We have changed our solution concept several times yet it was never because of desperation. We always found a better solution on top of other and eventually found the most proper and efficient solution that suited our design philosophy that we begin with. We were never worried about catching up or time because we knew that it was not about inventing the wheel but understanding the process. We feel lucky and thankful to have a play in this distinguished event and looking for next ones to come !
References
https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/venus/overview/#:~:text=Venus%20has%20a%20thick%2C%20toxic,is%20closer%20to%20the%20Sun.
(Settling Venus: A City in the Clouds? Geoffrey A. Landis1 NASA Glenn Research Center, 21000 Brookpark Road, Cleveland OH 44135)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_properties_of_carbon_nanotubes
(Venus Rover Design Study Geoffrey A. Landis1 , Rodger Dyson, Steven J. Oleson, and Joseph D. Warner NASA Glenn Research Center, Cleveland, Ohio, 44135 Anthony J. Colozza QinetiQ North America Corporation, Brook Park, Ohio, 44142 Paul C. Schmitz PCS, Avon, Ohio, 44111 )
(MODELS OF VENUS ATMOSPHERE (1968))
Tags
#hardware #venus