PPPM: Pedal Powered Smoothie!

The PPPM makes quick work of a mountain of smoothie ingredients (more than a liter when blended). The 500 Watt blender, powered by the 1,000 Watt inverter, drains the 58 Farad Ultracapacitor down to 11 Volts in about 5 seconds, even with help from the PPPM. The rider averages an easy 75 Watts throughout the movie. Total pedaling time needed to generate the smoothie energy - about 45 delicious seconds. A fit rider, pedaling hard, could power a smoothie cart turning out a half-liter smoothie every 30 seconds or so. Mmmmmmmmmmm. Other tasty Pedal Generator videos at http://www.los-gatos.ca.us/davidbu/pedgen.html

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• pedal
• power
• pppm
• generator
• bicycle
• exercycle
• human
• green
• energy
• exercise
• electricity
• diy

[maez409]

didn't the professor make the same thing on Gilligan's island ?

[mjnesbitt]

After a long cell phone call with me, yes.

[ustice]

Cool, but wouldn't it be easier to remove the electric motor, and replace it with a gear system which is powered by the petals? There would be a lot less energy lost, and you would likely get your smoothie a lot faster, not to mention it would be cheaper (if less generalized).

[mjnesbitt]

While gears (or hopefully no gears, just direct drive to the blender) would possibly be more efficient, you would be limited to your own personal maximum power output, and maximum power output would mean "as hard and fast as you can possible pedal in a total all-out sprint."

[mjnesbitt]

Another way to look at it: I could pedal at the pace of the movie all day and make a smoothie every minute or so with no strain (in a Green Expo, for example). With direct drive, I would have to sprint HARD for 5 seconds every minute to accomplish the same thing. That would get old fast.

[111110001]

Great job.

[mjnesbitt]

Bottom bracket = 5 years of daily 1hr workouts and no wear. Leg thrust is 10x weight of flywheel.

[mjnesbitt]

The UC is a better way to match Human Power to a task that requires a burst of power than gears. In the movie, it stored a long stretch of easy pedaling and released it in 5 seconds. Gears can't do that. Batteries, capacitors, and flywheels (larger/faster than the one I am pedaling) can.

[mjnesbitt]

I turned the blender off just before the inverter would have automatically shut down. I have a voltmeter mounted on the handlebars so I knew what was going on. It was easy to pedal. No increased resistance - the UC did the work. 500 Watts continuously is equivalent to running up flights of stairs. That's how hard you would have to pedal. In the movie the blender drew around 450 Watts. More power = more torque at a given voltage.

[macgyver444]

You say the load brought the Ultracapacitor down to 11 Volts in about 5 seconds. Did the inverter turn itself off at that point? It sounded like a high pitch alarm going off at around 1:53. How hard is it to pedal? do you feel increased Resistance when you turn the blender on? what would it take to generate the full 500 watts continuously? would you need more rpm at the generator or more torque or both? 500 watts=.67 horse power which seems like it might be humanly possible for short durations.