please help with a project

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hello, im in 4th year university and have some questions about a project i was assigned. my objective is to provide electricity using a NiCd cell at 2kW for 4 hours a day. The power required is 110V AC steady-state.

I have decided to use a 10 cell stack, each NiCd cell being 1.2V, giving 12V DC total. Then use a DC-AC converter to give 110V AC. Does this make sense? Do i need a transformer? I can't find a voltage-current curve anywhere to use, so i dont know what current i should run it at. I'm also not sure how to find how much heat is produced (kJ), and the total energy used (kW).

I am then asked to size the NiCd cell come up with a block diagram of how it works.

can anyone give me advice on how to design the cell? i just have to design it on paper, not actually make a cell. i'd greatly appreciate any help. thanks
 
OmG, good luck!

universitystudent said:
I'm also not sure how to find how much heat is produced (kJ), and the total energy used (kW).

I'm sure you'll find the answers for those questions in your High-School Physics book!
 
2000 watts of energy, for 4 hours is 8000 watts ... unless your dimension is goverened by a different set of physics from mine, there is no way you'll get 8kW out of 10 nicd batteries

a 1.2v 10a nimh d-cell is 12 watts, for one hour, provided the cell can maintain that rate of discharge ... so ten cells gives you 120 watts, a long way to go to reach 8000!
 
The fun is when you design a sine-wave inverter for 2kW at 120VAC.
Usually magic is used to stepup the 12V from the battery to the much higher voltage. Didn't you study about magic in your 4 years at university?
 
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good grief ... 210v at 480a for > 13 min ... since they're for torpedoes; my guess is non-rechargeable!
 
Those new hybrid cars use hundreds of volts from many tiny AA Ni-MH cells. If they can power the car up the side of a mountain when fully loaded then surely they can run an inverter for a while.
 
Use 134 AA cells then you won't need a transformer. All you need to do is build a large bridged class D amplifier to get your sine wave, or use an h-bridge an suffer a modified sinewave.
 
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