Slashdot Mirror
Car Powered by Compressed Air
gripperzipper writes "CNN reports that a Korean company created a small car powered by compressed air. ENERGINE created its PHEV, or Pneumatic-Hybrid Electric Vehicle, which uses a two-stroke compressed air engine for start, acceleration, and uphill climbs. The car switches to an electric motor when its speed reaches 20-25 km/h (32-40 mi/h). Although major auto manufacturers have invested heavily in gasoline hybrids, it will be interesting to see if a market will open for this type of vehicle." Update: 04/04 17:18 GMT by T : Reader Tapsu spotted the incongruity here, writing "Interesting post, but the speed conversion has gone wrong way: "20-25 km/h
(32-40 mi/h)". ... Thus the correct speed range in miles would be
something like 12-15 mi/h."
I hope it has an external refil port for the compressed air tank. This will be a great way to take advantage of stations that offer "Free Air" (and also, unfortunately, prompt a decrease in the number of stations offering "free air"...)
PHEV? More like PHEW when you finally make it up a steep hill
Not in my backyard. Compressed air tanks can EXPLODE!
But does it take more electricity to compress the air into the tank than it does to just run the car on electric power? Sounds like just another degree of separation from energy we'll be getting from oil, anyway.
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
...this thing is gunna be loud.
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
Havn't they had something like this comercialy avalible in France for a while IIRC? Its has a ridiculously strong carbon fiber airtank that's presurised at home by a compressor using off the grid electricity. Its basically a small comuter car, but it has decent range and speed.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
This website provides the perfect fuel for this car.
But I'm probably just repeating the first several dozen comments...
I hear they're almost as volatile as tanks filled with explosive refined hydrocarbons!
www.farts.com
(coming from a forum member)
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
The car swtiches to electric when it reaches 25 km/hr according to the Energine website which is actually more like 15 miles per hour.
From the manual:
"Should you find yourself approaching the state of being in an accident, please yourself to duck so as to avoid looking at your previously attached body before the shrapnel took off your head." (Safety tips, Appendix A, P.232)
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Here is another take on the same story, but with a little bit more science. The bottom line is there's no such thing as free energy... or lunch. You don't get owt for nowt. CNN needs to learn science
First off, like someone said, that the energy it takes to compress the air can be inefficient and still polute the air if the energy to compress came from fossil fuels/coal. Secondly, while it is an "Engineering Marvel" to drive up a hill using compressed air, it's very dangerous. For any of you who have ever worked on high pressure AC systems, any pressure higher than 500psi or so can be deadly if anything at all goes wrong. It's not like a battery, where a little acid can spill if it's broken. Nor is it like gasoline, cars are built to prevent explosions, and the worst case scenario is lots of fire. If you puncture a high pressure tank or lines, you have a disaster on your hands; theres no avoiding it. Besides, the entire problem with a gas induction engine is that they are horribly inefficient anyways unless they are running at their optimal RPM.
Now we know why this car keeps crashing into Mars.
20km/h != 32m/h
20km/h = 12.4m/h
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Is high torque. This means that it can take the work that electrical engines don't like, low speed high torque work. A air engine give a damn about the speed it is running at...
Assembling etherkillers for fun an profit
This technology will never go anywhere. I worked on a liquid nitrogen powered car at UNT, which is basically the same as this thing except the nitrogen can be stored more densely when it liquifies, at moderate pressures. Expanding the nitrogen requires a rack of heat exchangers on the roof. However, since all the energy is stored mechanically rather than chemically, the Joules/Kg is about 40x lower than than of gasoline. It's even less dense than batteries. About the only market for this technology would be indoors where exhaust fumes are not allowed. But an electric vehicle would do better.
Our car was a VW bug, had 9 hp, got 1/3 mpg in the summer, and once reached 30 mph.
Oh yea, this makes sense, because we all know you get more energy by first compressing air with a battery and then using it to power a motor than you would by powering the motor with the batter directly. Right. And it's not dangerous at all haveing a high pressure air tank sitting in a hot car that sits in the sun, all scuba divers know that. And the inches of travel that you'll manage to get out of any such system if the tank actually fits in a car makes this so worth while.
Does no one think before publishing this stuff???
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
"The car switches to an electric motor when its speed reaches 20-25 km/h (32-40 mi/h)." Isn't that conversion factor waaay off? I thought kilometers were something near three fifths of a mile, so 20km/h would be something just above 15MPH...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I believe they are actually rather more dangerous. Compressed air tanks are inherently prone to explosions when damaged. You get a little hole in your petrol tank, you'll lose your petrol and run a risk of fire if you catch a spark. A hole in a compressed air tank equals instant explosion.
Remember, life isn't like hollywood, not every car crash ends in a massive petrol explosion (or four... how many tanks do they keep in those cars?), but these compressed air tanks sound like shrapnel waiting to be flung.
Man, this gives a new meaning to the phrase "passing gas" ;-)
the average person isn't willing to put their life at risk to try and "save the environment"... what a surprise...
Get your torrents...
The high pressure tank in that vehicle is charged to 300bar, or 4350psi.
That's higher than a SCUBA tank and it requires some heavy duty air compressor rigs to charge it.
I'd hate to be anywhere around that car in a crash or if it catches fire...
Please divide the kph values by 1.6 instead of multiplying it to get the correct mph results! ;)
It switches to electric at 25, what happens at 80?
If you can find a good way to store the compressed gas this is an excellent idea. Expansion engines like this air engine (and steam engines) produce maximum torque at zero RPM, which is perfect for pulling away from a standstill without the complexity of a clutch and a gearbox, whereas internal combustion engines (and turbines) need to be turning quite a bit before they produce and torque.
If intelligent life is too complex to evolve on its own, who designed God?
The tank contains 40 liters of oxygen at 300 bar. According to the specs, it'll run 130~150 times for 3~4 sec. Best case that's 600 s = 10 minutes. Which is pretty awful for 60 kg of added weight.
there are city buses and trucks powered with propane, which would be much more dangerous than compressed air, somehow those are street legal.
tasty electronic music vittles
It takes a LOT of energy to compress air.
And an air tank can't possibly hold enough air to power a compressed air motor for more than a few seconds.
MAYBE, if the air were liquefied, it might be feasible but still, the energy consumbed to liquefy the air would negate any possible savings that the vehicle would hope to achieve.
Sorry, I don't buy it..
34 posts and no references to the elderly in Korea?
What is this site coming to!
I demand some form of witty meme regurgitation!
The air engine is only used to accellerate the car from a standstill, and from TFA:
"EV usually needs 30(A) of electrical current on driving and it consumpts 3~4 times more by starting or go up a hill."
Getting past 'All your base', they're doing all this to get past the high initial power requirements of a pure electric vehicle. IDK if the weight and complexity penalty is worth it, though.
There are french cars that run completely on compressed air around for years.
http://www.gizmo.com.au/go/3523/
slashdot, wake the fsck up.
No, you won't be seeing such cars in western countries. We would use higher tech subsidies to allow for powering bigger vehicles.
But it is ideal for countries where the bike is being replaced with small cars and smog is becoming a problem. All you need is a left wing city council who says no to personal petrol vehicles to reduce the smog, and these tiny compressed air vehicles will take the that market by storm as its the cheapest alternative.
Since when did 20-25 km/h approx to 32-40 mi/h?
It would be 12-15 mi/h.
this is going to be much safer than the compressed propane tanks that are in city buses... and fricken BBQ grills all over the world. you are blowing (har har) this way out of proportion. as to why compressed air, if you read their site you would see that this compressed air engine gets double the power electric motors. as to emissions, if you centralise power production you get enormous efficiency and air quality boosts.
its true but will never work. it takes way more energy to compress the air. then you have liquid co2 or nitrogen or other things others will suggest. it wont work. it costs more. be easier to just stomp your own palm oil and use a diesel
Well, I've been keeping my eyes on thse guys for quite a while.
http://www.theaircar.com/index.html
in fact, I even think I got the link... here?
seems to be a better choice, given higher speeds on pure air, and the possibility for a hybrid engine, a low pricetag and yadda yadda.
Check it out, I've signed myself on the wishlist.
This compressed air engine isn't directly related to a environment-friendly fuel. The fuel of the car itself isn't compressed air - it's electricity, the battery. Electric cars, or hybrid cars, have the problem that they can't obtain high torque instantly. However, compressed air does give high torque. The idea is to store compressed air in a tank, and use it as a booster when high torque is needed. The air will be compressed later on with another compressor.
Now, combine the compressed air engine with an hybrid car. You get an hybrid car with instant high torque when needed.
This is old news. The Frenchies have been there and done it.
It's even been tried in African (same company).
The company's own website seems to have gone. I would be suprised if this wasn't because the company has also gone out of business.
Why does it only get on Slashdot when it's an American company?
Philip
Signatures are broken
If you say anything logical regarding effiency (A power plant running diesel, to power an air compressor, to power a car, which then generates electricity, to run an electric engine). The Slashdot thought police will get you.
I have to turn to competitors like Time Magazine for my occasional goatse fix. Slashdot trolling is dying.
1 mph = 1,6 km/h not viceversa ;)
They are far safer in a fire, too. If there is an overpressure in the cylinder, the gas is slowly vented, where it burns. With a petrol tank, as the fuel heats up the pressure rises until the tank bursts (because they're either plastic or thin steel).
there are huge benefits of decoupling the direct use of energy from the use of petroleum. 1) efficiency: large power production facilities are much, much more efficient than small power plants (like car engines) 2) upgradability: if there is new exhaust cleaning technology invented, its much easier to upgrade central plants than millions of indiviual cars, and ther is a transiition path to large scale alternative power sources like solar towers, wave power, geothermal, nuclear, whatever. 3) cleaning air of urban environments: people in inner cities have really high rates of asthma from all the particulate matter thrown into the air in car exhaust.
tasty electronic music vittles
P.S. The speeds mentioned in the post are probably switched. ;-)
The car switches to an electric motor when its speed reaches 32-40 km/h (20-25 mi/h).
But I guess you figured that one out already...
We had great news of this kind in Europe exaclty one year ago, but at the end card didn't show up in our roads. News in Italian: http://www.ecotrasporti.it/eolo.html
Site of the company in English: http://www.theaircar.com/Lucerne.html
another (small and under the radar) company also has a working 100% air powered car that can either be refilled by plugging it in, or with a high pressure external compressor that could be found at gas stations:
see
http://www.theaircar.com
It's funny to see that the Slashdot editors do not READ the stories submitted and just accept what ever comes in. This conversion mistake is so grave, it burned my eyes when reading over them. ...Oh ... timothy...
The line should read:
The car switches to an electric motor when its speed reaches 20-25 mi/h (32-40 km/h).
If the Toshiba announcement about a better traction battery is correct. Electric motors can have practically an ideal torque/rpm curve, but the current demands for high starting torque are a problem. The holy grail is a battery which has effectively an enormous surface to the electrodes without corresponding fragility, and so can be quickly recharged and discharged. (Traction batteries currently have a long service life but relatively slow charge and discharge. Starter batteries have a fast discharge for starting but are fragile and do not deep discharge well). Such a battery would completely supersede the inefficient compress air/decompress air cycle. So whichever compressed air tools division of this Korean manufacturer came up with this job preservation scheme - forget it and retrain as battery engineers.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
At least some people are trying new car ideas instead of critizing or promoting out dated SUVs.
I think this idea is great (assuming the air tanks don't explode...)
Ben
PS. Funny how not one new innovative idea has come out of Detroit since the EV1. Fuck the big 3...
Ben Schleimer Life is like a sewer, what you get out of it depends on what you put into it.
". . .but I haven't, outside of the realm of entertainment, found any problem for which they are the solution."
Perhaps I spoke too loosely there, loosely enough that someone is likely to upbraid me for it,so I'll point out that one of the things that led me to play around with compressed gas engines in the first place was that they have certain advantages in highly specialized applications, such as the need to operate a motor within a combustable gas.
KFG
The ratio of km to m is, of course, 1000.
I can spot posts on the net at least from year 2000 about Mexico city running taxis and public buses on compressed air.
Am I missing the point ?
Z.
A completely compressed air vehicle has been made before and is a production model called the air car by a company MDI in italy. They have produced models for street use, you can see a video of it here.
...and it should be known by now
I think 'Thermodynamics REALLY needs to be better understood by the general population'.
The article clearly says 20-25 km/h so why should the line read 32-40 km/h?
This car has a novel motor, not a novel energy source (such as a fuel cell). Save your breath about compressed air not being a renewable energy soure, yada yada yada because that's not what it's even meant to be.
The linked articles are short on details, but I'm guessing that the PHEV's proponents believe that the combination of a compressed air motor for burst power and smaller electric motors for sustained power are more economical overall than a larger electric drive system alone, thus justifying the added complexity.
When an electric car is standing still the motor does not draw power. Converting energy expended while braking into compressed air has been done on normal trucks and busses for years. Converting the batteries stored energy into compressed air is gaurenteed to loose some of the energy in the conversion and therefore will not last as long. Every time you convert energy you loose some so it makes sense to save the wasted braking energy. There is nothing really "new" about this car except they have taken a common fuel saving technology used on heavy transport fleets and applied it to an electric car. If it works for an electric car it would work for a normal car but with electric cars you can't just get a bigger fuel tank.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
[ A hole in a compressed air tank equals instant explosion. ]
Err, no. A hole of any size equals a leak and a loss of pressure. I am not sure which science friction books (pun intended) you have been reading but I have suffered many leaks in high pressure air tanks and in only one case was it dangerous. That was when a friend dropped his tank on the side of the pool and the regulator valve broke off and the tank left the scene rapidly. The type of gas was irrelevant as any high pressure tank would have taken the same trip. Do you think we would be allowed to strap these things to our backs if they were as dangerous as you say?
Petrol vapour on the other hand is very explosive so even an empty petrol tank can explode.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
Ah, of course the actual car would be so butt-ugly only a pocket-protected nerd would drive around in the thing.
I spent yesterday afternoon farting about with a Air Hogs Firestormer. The plane makes a faring noise which adds to the fun we had!
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
It might be cheaper for them, and cheaper for us initially (the cost of purchasing the car), but in the long run, it's definitely going to cost us more. As someone stated, it's another degree of seperation for the original energy source. Instead of using the electrical energy directly to drive the car, we're using the energy compress gas. Anyone who's taken physics understands that there will be energy loss for every energy conversion due to heat loss, friction, etc.
In other words, we might be paying a couple thousand less that an electric car, but it'll come back to bite us when we need to pay more for electricity to drive the same distance an electric car can. of course, there's not enough statistics out there to show how much more electricity is required to drive a compressed air engine. that would be something interesting i'd like to see.
i would also like to see some other statistics such as the top speed it can reach. how far it can drive before it needs to be recharged. last i heard, electric cars can usually drive about 100 miles before needing a recharge, but that was a few years back and battery technology and engine technology should have advanced.
another good statistic would be how long it takes to recharge. i'd actually like to see Toshiba's One-Minute-Recharge Li-ion Batteries applied in this field.
HD Trailers
Ok folks,
The compression of a gas is one of the most inefficient ways to store energy imaginable. This is possibly even dumber than the "hydrogen economy". As anyone who has been around an air compressor for long knows, the receiver plumbing get's really hot.
Are you insinuating that the spontaneous creation of energy isn't possible, backing up the 1st Law of Thermodynamics? Are you saying that entropy can't be converted back to usable energy, as the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics has us believe? Preposterous! Everybody knows that entropy is always decreasing in a closed system!
(fill in below)
How can 25 km/h be more mi/h?
-> More Tolerance Is Less Extremism <-
I remember doing it back in middle school. We made the car bodies out of balsa wood and used CO2 cartidges as the fuel source. Looks like Korean technology is catching up...
Ha ha, just kidding! I, for one, welcome our new beowulf cluster of old Korean grits.
Isn't the acronym PHEV already taken by Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle?
great! can the compressed air intake tube be hooked up to the bottom of the driver's seat? This could be the perfect geekmobile!
Are you serious? You weigh 2 tons and swim around at 100 Km/h with thousands of other people of similar stature swimming around at those sorts of speeds, regularly passing within less that a metre of one another, talking on your mobile phones, eating, and doing your makeup while doing so?
... and the air is compressed by a gasoline powered power generator, right? ;-)
This type of car has been around for a while now just check out http://www.theaircar.com/
http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/science/01/23/air.car /
1) Powered by your fart..
2) Eat well, drive more...
3) dont waste your gases to the air, use them to gain speed.
4) The whole family can fart togther happily to enjoy a safer, faster trip.
Care to dig up a reference before I beat you with the "WRONG!" stick?
If you are refering to engine compression ("Jake") braking - not only is it loud as sin, the air is not captured, and if it was - it's compressed to the native compression ratio of the diesel engine - somewhere aroung 12:1 - not dense enough energy storage to justify a tank.
Small wooden car, CO2 cartridge. Mine was big enough for a korean, ;)
This sounds like old news.
This has been around for a while:
http://www.theaircar.com/
Some negative sides I can think of:
1) It's not that clean. The air needs to be compressed, but for that I suppose we can use solar power. It's not available everywhere but atleast it's an option.
2) Electricity in the car. You need to have lights, stereo etc.
3) Heat. I don't think that air powered cars can be used during the winter because of the heating. In "normal" cars, heat usually comes from the warm engine, but in this case... I ahve no idea.
Here's an implementation in retrofit:c trocharger.php
http://www.sigmaautomotive.com/electrocharger/ele
If easily retrofitted to a common car, or offered as an option these low speed, high economy then it's ready to go,
since there are times when we get stuck in slow moving traffic and you can't turn off your engine because some git in front will take the gap (and coasting downhill is illegal...).
Yes there's the hybrid car but I'm not going to buy something like that until it's cheaper. If I could get something to power me round at 30mph at cheaper rates I really would consider it.
A blog I run for the wealth
I think not likely - so there can't be that much energy stored in the compressed air bottle. Even then, compressing that air requires slightly more energy than is retrieved by uncompressing it. When that air is compressed, it heats up, giving heat to the ambient environment. When it uncompresses, it draws heat from the ambient environment.
If there is a phase change involved, it may not work at all if it's really cold out, or when it's really hot out - but at least with a phase change there can be much more energy stored.
Here we go. After reading a few posts, the know it all cynics are out in full karma whoring force.
Only one of the statements hasnt yet been posted, but by now im sure it has:
-"Air isn't free!"
-"Air is really loud to fill a tank!"
-"Air is really dangerous!"
-"Air is ineffecient!"
-"Air is bad for the environment. Michael Chricton said so in his latest book."
But I guess in 20 years from now it wont matter who's right, left or wrong: we'll all be fucked. And some will still be in denial.
It's the MDI Air Cars "The world's cleanest cars", developed by Guy Negre.
It doesn't use any fuel at all, only compressed air, and the features are good:
Weight: 750 kg
Maximum speed: 110 kmh
Mileage: 200 - 300 km
Maximum load: 500 Kg
Recharging time: 4 hours (Mains connector)
Recharging time: 3 minutes (Air station)
Yes, it has a compressed air tank. Compressing air still needs to be done at some point - I presume this task is just offloaded to the power grid, to be performed by our nice clean (sarcasm) environmentally friendly nuclear/coal/gas power plants?
Hmmm....
All this does is relocate the source of the pollution (or handball the problem of environmentally friendly energy source to someone else - take your pick) - its about as useful (IMHO) as me making a rubber band powered car that has to be wound up every day...
smash.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
I doubt the energy potential capable of being stored in a compressed air tank will be useful in practice...
For all intents and purposes, its like a hydrogen powered combustion engine, without the energy available from actual combustion...
smash.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Someone mentioned the problems of having a (scuba) tank of compressed air sitting in the hot sun...yes, it can be a problem, obviously, if the air heats and expands above the pressure rating of the tank. I am assuming they thought of this and would make the tank adequately strong. (With scuba, the shop fills your tank to the limit, and then the hot sun gives you another 1000 psi and your burst disc goes. This is less than the five-thirds working pressure they push your tank to when they hydro it--I'm sure the tanks on the cars would have some kind of overpressure relief like a burst disc.)
The French air car article points out, "In the case of an accident with air tank breakage, there would be no explosion or shattering because the tanks are not metallic but made of glass fibre. The tanks would crack longitudinally, and the air would escape, causing a strong buzzing sound with no dangerous factor."
Well.
It's great to know that it's a carbon fiber tank so it won't turn into a screaming cloud of schrapnel, but isn't there another issue at work here?
Now, I don't know exactly where on that tiny car the tank is, but I'd assume it's under the seat someplace.
The volume of that car is what...two cubic meters? What happens when you instantly put 90 cubic meters of air inside it? (Or under it?)
Have a look at this rather larger car for an example. Look, ma! No fragmentation thanks to a steel tank, but all that air introduced to an enclosed space jiffy-pops a car like a cheap paper cup.
I'm more than willing to admit there's more to carbon-fiber tanks than I know. Maybe there's some property that prevents them from releasing all that energy in less than, say, 10 seconds, no matter how badly crushed. But I'm officially skeptical.
They say there's enough energy in a scuba tank to lift a hook-and-ladder fire truck 20 meters in the air. That's exactly the sort of energy I don't want released near me in a short timeframe. Gasoline is good in comparison because it doesn't tend to do this when the tank is ruptured.
Then again, a compressed air tank explosion might be just what I need to get ahead in today's Bay Area traffic. Up yours, Fastrak!
Hook that sucker up to congress and you'll never stop.
Wishing I was a millionaire since 1969.
I thought the whole reason hybrid cars are the beesknees is the electric takes care of the acceleration from a stand still and then the gas engine sustains it at the desired speed, saving fuel.
Why not just fit a vehicle with a small compressed air tank and use the gasoline engine to sustain speed and recompress the air? Or maybe even use all three? Air for the initial take off, electric to take over at a low speed, gasoline to provide energy to both when needed? Maybe employ all three when you floor it.
I could see this making economy cars more attractive, as they always seem to be very underpowered when starting from a stop.
That and make them actually looks like cars you'd want to be caught dead in (Although the Prius looks pretty neet).
This means that it can take the work that electrical engines don't like, low speed high torque work.
On the contrary, that is exactly the kind of work that electrical motors handle well. Many electric motors - particularly the kind used in industrial applications - offer something close to 100% of peak torque at 0 (zero) RPM.
From the article here that describes the 2005 Toyota Prius:
Thanks to the electric motor's 295 pound-feet of torque at 0 rpm from the engine, the Prius launches without hesitation.
On this page we see the description of a dynamometer used to test electric motors. This excerpt describes the units suitable for testing:
The I-300E electric motor dynamometer is rated at (200 H.R - 149 K.W.) at 1160 RPM, (300 H.P. 224 KW at 3600 RPM), 1050 Ft. lbs. torque - 1425 NM) at 0-1000 RPM. This unit comes standard with a balanced high speed driveline and shield and enables full horsepower-kilowatt testing in the 1800-3600 RPM range. A shear pin release is built into the unit for protection from harmonic vibration and possible torque overload. The unit has a maximum torque rating of 1050 ft. lbs. which occurs at 0 RPM - 1000 RPM. This enables the unit to check torque load of the new high torque/low RPM motors.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
funny that
From Oct. 2000, when we were still innocent, and the world was a sunny, hopeful place.http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/9882 65.stm
...it's just vapourware.
science friction books (pun intended)
That's the problem with all intentional puns - they're never funny.
Producing energy cleanly is another problem, which may certainly addressed easier inside power plants rather than in individual devices.
Solar is an option, wind is an option etc. Nuclear is certainly not a so option if security concerns and recycling/storing are well addressed.
But keeping on having hundred millions motors spreading massively COX and NOX in the air every day is certainly an issue: if you cumulate all the pollution of these individual devices, it's certainly way more than the pollution that would be issued by a power-plant for the same amount of energy.
So storing energy cleanly into individual devices such as cars, by the mean of either clean batteries, compressed air or others, is certainly not a bad idea for the planet.
> Also... don't see any figures regarding range.
Mileage: 200 - 300 km
> I doubt the energy potential capable of being
> stored in a compressed air tank will be useful in
> practice...
> For all intents and purposes, its like a hydrogen
> powered combustion engine, without the energy
> available from actual combustion...
The difference is that a compressed-air powered engine is certainly way more simple to build and maintain than individual hydrogen power combustion engines. And maybe also more "nature-friendly" to build.
http://www.theaircar.com/ -- among other things, this one has its own on board compressor; making it a pretty good alternative to existing electric vehicles (compare times to recharge an EV vs its range with that of this compressed air vehicle)
Why not have a super effiecient gasoline/diesel engine top up the compressed air tank when needed and have the car run primarily on the compressed air engine?
It's not about energy, it's about power.
_O_
.|< The named which can be named is not the true named
Yeah -- I've been watching this guy for a couple years, and have come to the conclusion that he's a complete con-artist.
If you read the website carefully, you'll note that the specifications he displays here http://www.theaircar.com/models.html for the various models (range, top speed, refuel rates, etc) are all based on theoretical measurements made by guessing how much improvement he can get from changing a number of things in his current design. The current design has been tested for a total of 7.2 km. He gets his 200-300km range by extrapolating based on his guesses. See http://www.theaircar.com/tests.html (scroll down to "Mileage comparison between the taxi in development and the final car") for the true specifications, and note that after the top row, they're all extrapolations. He's basically saying he should get x% increase from this change, and y% from that change, and that means the "improved" engine will get (x+y)% better performance.
His site hasn't changed in at least a year -- meaning those figures haven't been updates with actual test results, and I don't think they ever will be. It's real easy to guess how much improvement various changes may make. It's not so easy to get that improvement out of them.
Next, note that he's selling "licenses" to build factories to produce the car. This is his real goal: Grab some $$ from investors before they find out he has no real product. He's a lot like the guys selling free energy based on concepts that violate the laws of thermodynamics, but will have a working model "real soon now".
Go ahead and watch this guy -- it's entertainment at least, -- but don't give him any of your money until he can back up his specifications with real world tests.
Help find a cure for Gidget.
pretend you're a car manufacturer and try to guess what these guys are REALLY up to.
Perhaps...
The HC-fuel Electric hybrid autos charge their own batteries. The fuel economy arises from increased efficiency of running the HC motor at a constant speed and load and regenerative braking.
Manufacturing costs compete with basic physics(IR^2), present battery technology, total mass, etc. to limit the PRACTICAL efficiency of these cars.
Air storage and a pneumatic motor just add another dimension to short term energy storage-utilization options and might make for a bit more flexibility (read competiveness) in manufacturing cost and/or efficiency. Performance of prius for $5k less and same economy would sell better, no?
With air-electric, you can compress air AND charge the batteries for regeneration. You recover more energy! There's atill loss though. Good old PV=nRT and latent heat of vaporization nibbles at our ass a bit.
Of course those clever engineers won't tell us the REAL project but you can bet it's a HC-electric hybrid WITH the addition of compressed air storage. Just Maybe they have some clever idea that will allow them to use the HC-engine as a compressor when braking and perhaps use SOME cylinders as air-motor and some as H-C motor when accelerating.
Actually, the notion that the Hindenburg was doomed by its skin appears to be crank theory that fooled a lot of people.
Compressing air is a pitifully inefficient way to store energy. When you compress a gas, a considerable part of the energy goes into heat. That heat then goes into the storage tank, where it artificaially increases the back-pressure on the compressor, making it even harder to pump. the only up-side is when yu let out the compressed air,the air will be mighty cool, so it might make a fine auto air-conditioner .
From a purely pragmatic perspective: I prefer a nice (nearly) pollution free city full of air/electro/whatever cars to many hundreds of stinking cars driving by my house every few hours.
So it's not totally green. Agreed. But it's a start in the right direction.
In my opinion midsized communal heating power stations are a good step forward to make that happen. They burn the fuel more efficiently and use the excess heat too. They come in ranges from 20 to 300 kW and cover most types of smaller to midsized buildings. They can even be used as a central power/heat station for a small residental area.
So, the pollution gets relocated BUT at the same time the system gets more efficient.
Meme of the day: I browse "Disable Sigs: Checked". So should you.
I was in a east-european car (Shkoda) when the gasoline pupm exploded, causing the back of the car (where the engine is located) to burst into flames. I was sitting at the back seat, with my parents at the front. I didn't hear it explode, but my father said he did. We just saw the car slow down, my father pulled over, I turned my head back and saw the flames through the back window, opened the door and, following the example of the brave Rincewind, ran my ass off forward. My parents stepped out of the car, the inflamable parts of the engine burning, stopped another vehicle and used a big fire extinguisher to put the fire out (we were lucky that the fire had melted one of the back lights, so they used the opening to spray the fire-extinguishing stuff inside).
Well, the car didn't explode, although it was filled up with gasoline just a few minutes before the accident. The back part of it (where the engine was) was badly burned, but the tyres, the seats and everything else was intact; maybe that has something to do with the fact that the fuel tanks are at the front of the car, under the front seats. Major parts of the engine had to be replaced, as well as new painting was needed. But we were towed all the way to our destination, and we had to leave the car for one year at my grandparent's yard. The car is still in motion today. I can't remember the exact year that happened, but it was easter, and it was sometime at the beginning of the 90s. I guess that made us all a little religious.
Then, of course, I could show off showing the molten back light to my peers.
THC engine is most inefficient at low RPM and high load.
So, if you use the compressed air to 'spin it up', so to speak, everytime you need the extra help of the HC engine while under load, then you win BIG.
i.e.
You need extra power because you're starting out from the bottom of a hill. HC has not been running because battery and air tank are full from braking down the hill. Electronic engine control dumps air into HC engine, spinning it up AND getting you moving. As air is used to lower limit, engine control switches from Air to HC combustion in engine that is already at optimal speed. Extra juice is used to get air tank up to upper limit(room left for regen braking storage though, ditto for battery) and then shuts off.
It's cool as hell and this message constitutes publication for my patent, pending! bob at A T L dot O R G. Hell, I'm already working out the control system and engine mechanics!
The engines of large trucks (think 18 wheelers or similar sized cabs) start with compressed air, and have been for years. You know those air guns that service stations use to tighten/loosen lug nuts on car wheels? Same idea, just use that instead of an electric starter. Next time you're standing near a truck when the driver starts the engine, you'll hear it plain as day.
Never hit your grandmother with a shovel, for it leaves a bad impression on her mind...
Instead of having a "Probe" or a "Cirrus" or a "Murano" you can now drive around in a "Fart".
No sig.
No not "engine brakes", I realise they piss people off at two in the morning. The system I am talking about was implemented on busses in South Australia in the early 90's.
The "air" in a Jake brake is exhaust and, as you say, is limited by the compression ratio of the engine (not to mention choking it). The system I saw ran off the drive shaft and engaged when you hit the brake so the engines compression ratio was not a limiting factor. The inertia of the bus was used to drive an air compressor that in turn slows the bus down (ie: the compressor rather than the engine was "Jake"). When I saw the system I thought it was a good idea and assumed it had taken off, maybe it didn't, maybe it died because of cost/benifit. Popular or not the idea is nothing new, so put the "WRONG stick" down before you hurt yourself.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Petrol vapour on the other hand is very explosive so even an empty petrol tank can explode.
Actually, if you want a petrol tank to explode it pretty much has to be empty. Liquid petrol does not burn, drop a match in a completely full tank and it'll go out. Drop one in a tank of a petrol vapour/oxygen mix and you'd better be running...
No one's mentioned the story Running Man yet?
there are in germany after his inventor called stelzer motor which is very simpel uses less fuel and runs much longer und even quicker and does a better use of the fuel. check if you can read german http://www.freikolbenmotor.de/
Loose is something that is not tight. To lose something means that is not found.
I really wish someone would get this right once in a while.
We've talked about an aircar here before. The Korean model is a hybrid, this one the Aircar just uses the compressed air tank.
One perceived advantage of compressed air over batteries is that it can be refilled a lot faster than a battery bank can be recharged.(yes I saw the exception those new lions mentioned with the one minute recharge, that's pretty recent though). Some others are the tank itself is significantly lighter than batteries, probably much cheaper to make as well and doesn't have a lot of toxicity to it as batteries do. Another would be cycles of filling, I wouldn't expect it to wear out near as fast as batteries would.
All these various designs and techniques have plusses and minuses to them. Sort of like the early computer days with a plethora of hardware and differing OSes, etc. One of my pet ideas for this deal of having a high mileage cleaner car is to have a pure electric for the commuter car part, for extended range on trips just attach a trailer where a small diesel generator is located, turning the car into a "hybrid". That way most of the time you don't need to be hauling around two motors inside the vehicle, which the hybrids do, the electric motor and the fuel burning engine. Most of the time it could be recharged at your house overnight, ready to go back in the morning, and if you combined this with some solar panels at home (whatever alt energy do dad you like), it would eventually get to pretty cheap per mile to drive. You could "store" your juice during the day while you are gone back into the grid in those places that mandate netmetering, or have your own battery bank at home to plug into.
Since it's running on compressed air, if the vehicle flips over, you can just depressurize the tank and be flash-frozen until such time as medical science finds a cure for whatever made you think buying that runs on compressed air was a good idea.
Very handy, that.
I mean, c'mon. $2.35/gal is bad, but those little teeny cans go for $10-14 apiece already!
"Cat powered by compressed air"?? I did. But maybe it is caused by the fact that I uhhm, utterly dislike cats. Would be a nice idea though, maybe I should try it with some cats in my neighbourhood. Makes me wonder, what would helium do?
-- # man women
Comment removed based on user account deletion
25 km/h = 15.625 mi/h, not 40 mi/h
Guess someone goofed up on the metric system once again :)
Neocons are children who don't want their toys taken away, and won't clean their room because it isn't fun.
Thank you for recognizing that the distinction between the present domanant "neo-conservative" group think party in the US and true conservatives. True conservatives wouldn't have bought the toys in the first place (we're compulsive savers) and wouldn't have let the room get messy for fear of unspecified adverse consequences. True conservatives (I know, I am one) are more likely to avoid doing things because they are fun (on the principle that the more atractive the lure, the more likely it is to be bait).
--MarkusQ
allow me to spoil the surprise: no, it won't.
As others have pointed out, compressed air can't be stored in sufficient quantities to make this very practical. This has been done before -- for small systems that have to deliver a lot of power quickly it's fine, and it may even offer advantages in situations where using electrical components would be a problem, but it's just doesn't offer many practical advantages over batteries or fuel cells.
How about some sort of hypothetical vehicle which takes the energy in fat stored in your body from delicious foods we eat (such as eclairs) and converts them into kinetic energy. I christen it the auto-locomotion-iola.
heh
But seriously, if we could just get something that incorporated some form of physical activity that would be great because I can hardly find time in my day for it. If I had to charge up a battery by cycling for half an hour before I got out the door that would be an incentive.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
People say that, but I'd like to see them try. ;-)
I'd buy one in a heartbeat. I could envision a small(er) wind compressor continously charging the car for the four or five short, lightly loaded trips a week.
I forever don't see the need of a multi-national coming between me and dropping the kids of at school.
Is there per chance a cranium-piston interface? I know a good many people who could power this car with all the compressed air in their heads...
...
Let's see: girlfriend, boss, future mother-in-law, that professor of whatchamacallit at that univ.. i mean vocational sch... i mean java camp... oh nevermind.
the POINT is that we have this apparently inexhaustable resource occurring in NATURE and all those air headed model types and ugly wannabe's finally can be of use to society.
I for one welcome our new compressed air over.. i mean powersupplies.
the only problem i foresee is that if you started to use the air... maaaaaaybe they would be more tolerable and one might be less inclined to
HEYGUYS! whats this thing sticking out of my forehead...
THUMP. THWACK. PSI 10^17 and falling
No its not another degress of seperation. The wheels drive an air compressor this is almost identical to the regenative braking that hybrids have except that compressed air is more efficient than batteries. For the rest of its power it is a pure electric car.
finally a car that runs on thin air !!
Every time there an article about an alternative fuel vehicle the second paragraph, without fail, includes one of the following buzz phrases "zero emissions" or "pollution free."
The mainstream media needs to wrap their collective brains around the fact that ultimately you need to charge the battery, or get the hydrogen from somewhere, and that's done with the aid of the coal plant somewhere far enough away that you can't see the smokestacks. Until a large portion of our energy is supplied by something other than combustion you're just hiding the pollution.
On a side note why would you power a reciprocating engine with compressed air? Shouldn't a compressor turbine system be more efficient?
Are the air compressors running on petrol?
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
they also developed a helicopter
This is not an air 'powered' car as the article suggests. Did anyone think to question what actually runs the electric motor that compresses the air? Perhaps the large bank of batteries in the trunk? Wouldn't that be classifed as an electric car then, with an incredibly poor energy transfer system to the wheels.
The AIR-JAMMER-ROAD-RAMMER!
John Kramer
God may be my co-pilot, but the devil is my backseat driver.
They did:
c igarettes
http://www.intuitor.com/moviephysics/mpmain.html#
And the main site (framed):
http://www.intuitor.com/moviephysics/
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
Is if there truly would be a net reduction in fossil fuel consumption overall through this scheme, after taking into account all the prerequisite steps
Forget about the energy benefits/costs. The greatest benefit of this technology is that the vehicle should have zero emissions. This would lead to improved air quality in cities, since the dirty energy generation plants can be moved elsewhere, reducing smog and improving lung health.
Air botles don't explode. They are designed to shoot the tap off. The result is that the bottle then takes off like a rocket. In this case, the tank has a 1 ton car hanging off it, so it likely won't go anywhere. To fill one of these cars, you would need a diver's compressor that can go to 400kPa or more. Your average gas station compressor can't do that. Another failure mode would be for the bottle to flay open. Since these bottles are made of steel, they won't fragment.
Heck, why not use the car structure for compressed air storage? It'd be light, flexible, strong, like driving inside the deployed airbag for safety.
And when you wanted to store it, you could just let the air out and put it in the boot of your other car.
So basically you're using a small piston engine and an air tank instead of the capacitor bank and larger motor you'd need otherwise. That might be a sound strategy, but with those new fast-charging lithium ions you may be able to do away with the capacitors.
I can't help but think air hybrids would make more sense, since you can dump the electrical components entirely. But then of course you'd have emissions, especially if you used a 2-stroke.
Here's an obligatory energy density link.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Finally a way to directly address our energy crisis with its greatest enabler: Washington, DC! Let's start building the hot air mines inside the Beltway immediately, and finally ride to freedom on the endless power of unlimited free speech formerly trapped within the city. I wonder if I can hook a air car directly to C-SPAN.
--
make install -not war
Several stations local to me don't even offer air anymore. At the ones that do the charge is $.25. Sad isn't it? At least I'll be able to tell my grandkids "when I was your age air was free".
I wouldn't say I'm a bad gambler but the last time I went to Vegas I even lost a buck on the soda machine.
Engrish! Engrish! Engrish everywhere!
Hahaha, that site is a good laugh.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
The brilliant scientists goofed up the conversion again ......
Well, considering the fact that it's largely methane, which is combustible, I've often wondered how hard it would be to implement such a thing. The only problem would be that the other occupants of the vehicle would notice every time you "released," because the engine would surge a little.
Think about it. Put a funnel-type thingie under the driver seat (cloth seat, or perforated vinyl/leather), and run some kind of tubing from the funnel to the air intake of the vehicle. It would help keep the interior from smelling as bad, and use "gas" to save gas.
The problem with all these alternative-power vehicles is that none of them so far have proven that they can work effectively for our nation's trucking system.
The real crisis we will hit when the oil really gets scarce out won't be an inability to run the kids to soccer practice in the SUV, or even an inability to drive to work. It will be an inability to ship food and other goods from the places they are produced to the places they are consumed. The danger with the oil shortage is that billions of people will starve to death and be unable to get their hands on medicine, clothes, or other basic goods.
Yes, I know that we have trains, and I'm fully aware of prototype hydrogen commuter buses. The problem with trains is that a very small percentage of shipped consumer goods are actually shipped by train. We couldn't turn our entire shipping industry over to the existing rail network and expect it to handle the load. And the problem with hydrogen-powered vehicles is that it takes more energy and money to prepare and distribute the hydrogen than you actually get out of the hydrogen in the end... so while prototypes are nice proof-of-concept, they do not present a viable sustainable solution to the energy problem.
Sorry, but I'm tired of seeing stories like this one posted to Slashdot with ridiculously optimistic comments about some new technology taking over the world. Cool technology alone is not enough -- it has to be a net positive in terms of economy and society for it to be a real solution.
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
The french/Italian "Air car" is vaporware. They have a demo unit, and plans to build a factory "real soon now" - as they have for many years. While their addressable electronics idea is interesting, it pales in importance compared to the facts that (a) you can't buy one, (b) they aren't building any, and (c) the efficiencies are horrible - which is why (a) and (b).
Other than that, it's a great idea. Damn inconvenient laws of physics. But yes, their electrical system is innovative.
read my post above his.
tasty electronic music vittles
EV's make up for it in increased efficiency. About 80% of the current fed to charging the batteries actually makes it back to the wheels, and you can use regen braking to help that. For most gasoline vehicles, it's in the neighborhood of 12-15%, with NO regen braking. Consequently, if you have something like the EV-1, which got as high as 6 miles / kWh, a 20 kWh battery pack would get about 120 miles of range. A gallon of gasoline has more energy than that, but the gasoline and the gasoline engine weigh considerably less (so a given amount of horsepower will have higher performance) and won't go nearly as far.
Not to mention the fact that many people who have EV's also buy solar power equipment, so they can make their own "fuel." Last I checked, making your own gasoline is rather difficult.
The air hybrid system in this car intends to deal with the low power density problem. Batteries have a difficult time supplying large surges of power out (for accelerating and hill climbing) or absorbing large surges of power in (regen braking, either slowing down to a stop or descending a hill). Some designs are using supercapacitors to handle this, but this adds more weight and complexity to the vehicle. Using an air compressor/motor to handle this part of it all allows the vehicle to have decent performance off the line and up hills, but lets the batteries do what they do best: supply steady, long-term cruise power. In the meantime, compressed air is a relatively well-understood technology; there are plenty of off-the-shelf parts which can be applied.
And before you guys start whining about the low speeds at which the air system works, the Toyota Prius does something similar. It runs on electricity alone at low speed (primarily for stop-and-go traffic) and uses the gasoline engine for highway cruise (and when you need more power than the batteries can supply). If your gasoline engine gets to run at fairly steady speeds (instead of needing to pull you off the line), you can raise its efficiency. The higher-efficiency gasoline engine and the regen braking are what give the Prius its impressive efficiency figures. Ford was playing with an air hybrid transmission for a gasoline-powered vehicle a while back; you can find links to it through Google, but the majority of them seem to be devoid of real content.
... by the Dew of Mountains the thoughts acquire speed, the hands acquire shakes, the shakes become a warning
And here I was just happy that he hadn't stepped on my pet peeve and misspelled "braking". As often as I hear on /. about people breaking their cars, I'm surprised there are any vehicles left to brake at stop signs.
The type of gas was irrelevant as any high pressure tank would have taken the same trip.
That's the difference though. Compressed gas like propane is stored at relatively low pressure. Not so bad. Compressed air like your scuba tank is held at like 3000 to 5000 PSI. That's a crap-load of pressure wanting to get out.
This is what I don't understand. The working cycle in a fuel-powered engine is:
1. compress
2. heat up
3. release pressure and temp, take energy
This is not very efficient. The efficiency depends on compression ratio, basically, and tops out at some 40%.
A compressed air engine's cycle is:
1. compress
2. cool down in tank
3. release pressure while heating the working body with ambient heat as much as possible, take energy
This is way less efficient than even a heat engine, as much energy is going into the cooling of the exhaust. A car based on this won't need an air conditioner, though:-).
That's not quite true. Electric motors, (theoretically) can provide high torque almost instantaneously and continuously over a variety of loads.
You said: " I know that we have trains". WHat do trains run on? Around here it's diesel, and diesel comes from....oil.
I love it how the solution is not something simple. All we need is something that burns in a gasoline engine like gasoline.
Not to say "OK fellers, junk your cars, your trucks, your motorcycles, scooters, lawn mowers and of course the entire infrastructure of gas stations so we can have you use these battery powered papier mache sewing machines with a top speed of 50mph that cost $30,000."
Of course, the administration is even more brain-dead. "Junk that antique car you've put tens of thousands into restoring - we're going with hydrogen fuel cell technology - of course, that means you need to buy a new car, new bike, new this, new that... but the hydrogen comes from OIL anyway HAR HAR HAR we still profit off you!"
Can someone please tell me why we can't just loose a bunch of really bright people on solving the RIGHT problem, which is a different gasoline, not something nobody wants to drive?
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
It isn't COOL.
Wheels should be COOL.
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
Charge your airtanks with verry cold air and heat the tank before you need to discharge it. Air expands when hot; air molecules are more active. You get more energy from hot air, and you can store more cold air in a tank then if you tried to store the air when it is hot. Of'course, it also takes more energy to heat the air before discharge, yet that doesn't mean you put the air tanks on your house or car roof in the sun when you charge the tank.
What is interesting about compressed air though, the energy you get out of it is NOT what you have put into it. The energy comes from the ambient temperature of the air. This means that if a compression technique could be found that is efficient enough then you could have a potential self filling energy tank.
Have you heard about the Second Law of Thermodynamics?
>A hole in a compressed air tank equals instant explosion.
Explosive decompression perhaps. It's compressed air, not compressed propellant gases.
>life isn't like hollywood, not every car crash ends in a massive petrol explosion (or four... how many tanks do they keep in those cars?),
One for each angle.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Wow... this is the first time I've ever seen the word "loose" used correctly on Slashdot.
Here's a hint to those of you who don't know what I'm talking about: you can lose (to rid oneself of) your car keys, but you can loose (to release) a bunch of people on a problem.
I'm a product of the Canadian/British educational systems and the American way of life.
In other words, I can read, write, spell and think critically. But I can also think for myself without being prey to a bunch of socialist dogma.
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
I can see it: "Buy your compressed air and get free gas".
Engineering is the art of compromise.
but I like to play with my wrong stick!
A small car powered by compressed air?! Um ... don't look now, but I did that in 7th grade shop class!
Even the much-maligned Ford Pinto wasn't *that* bad for the fuel tank bursting, not really any worse than any other car of the era. A double-skinned tank would be very expensive, and would not really make the car much safer.
My bad, I am a victim of the three R's (Reading, Riting and Rithmatic). It is plain to see that spelling was not at the top of the Australian educational adgenda in the 1960's.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
a note on possible relief of pressure on a hot day. how about an automatic pressure relieving valve.
When I was a PC tech, we'd always have fights with cans of compressed air by holding them upside down and spraying them at eachother. Imagine having a whole car running off of this that you could turn upside down and spray people with!