Air powered cars?

[CN Spots]

www.theaircar.com

Saw this thing on an episode of Beyond Tomorrow. A car powered by three (or more) compressed air canisters. Gets about 200 kilometers per charge, can be recharged at home in about 4 hours (3-4 minutes at a station) for about 2 bucks worth of electricity and emits breathable oxygen. Like a life-sized version of those "AirHogs" toy planes.

Dunno if it'll make it over here, it'd throw a big wrench in the fuel tax plus the feds would have to bolt on a ton of "safety fatures" which would kill it's performance... but it sounds like a good idea.

-now if they can just make an air powered outboard...8)

spots

 

[rottenray6402]

Re: Air powered cars?

And you could get your mother-in-law to sit in the back and refill the tanks as you drive. Could probably travel cross country and never run out of hot air. :devil:

 

[tommays]

Re: Air powered cars?

The 4200 PSI air tank is a bit scary :^


IT is interesting as air motors have had very low efficiency in the past



Tommays

 

[QC]

Re: Air powered cars?

My first reaction to this is that you can't get more energy out than you put in. One of those pesky physics things.

The efficiency of the air motor, as tommays suggests, is a huge part, but so is the efficiency of the compressor. Ultimately the cost to compress the air in energy should actually be higher than if you applied that same energy directly to the vehicles wheels. i.e. the natural gas used at the power station creates x amount of electrical power, that electricity is used to compress air and there is some loss there and then the air motor cannot be 100% efficient, so there are two sources of efficiency loss between the power station and the vehicle.

If you took that same energy and put it into batteries, you basically have the same thing, a less efficient use of the fuel that generated the electricity . . . Also, the weight of tanks and the air squeezed into them at 4200 PSI is probably more than the weight in batteries. If you note that this air car thing also runs on "fossil" fuels it starts to sound an awful lot like a Hybrid and my guess less efficient, and probably higher emissions . . .

 

[CN Spots]

Re: Air powered cars?

My MIL would void the warranty.

As far as the safety issue, the tanks were made of a plastic wrapped in carbon fiber to prevent it from blowing to pieces in a wreck. They "claim" it will just split.

I don't think it was designed as a perpetual energy device, just an alternative to a fossil fuel powered vehicle. The articulated connecting rod was a pretty neat idea too. I don't know how to calculate fuel vs. electricity usage but I can't believe that it would cost more in electrical power to fill the tanks with air than in gas (at $3 a gallon) to travel the same distance. The fuel bill for my truck last month was three times my utility bill. I'm sure this thing is not the end all cure but at least somebody's looking for one. More power to 'em.


spots

 

[QC]

Re: Air powered cars?

Spots,

Just a clarification, what you pay for energy and that energy itself are defintiely two different things. I agree, if something is less costly it will go, but you still need to evaluate it from an energy use perspective to understand the true efficiency of any technology. Usually self generated power (fossil fuel, internal combustion engine) is pretty close to what you pay from the grid, so power you make for your car should be pretty close to the same cost as it would be if you got that power from electricity. Remember 100% of the horsepower generated by that air engine comes from the energy initially made by the compressor. The cost to fill those tanks is indeed going to be quite high. There is nothing you own today that draws as much power as that compressor will . . .

The safety thing doesn't bug me much, but I sell CNG tanks that run at 3600 psi now. The same carbon fiber wrapped stuff you describe; they are very stout. Expensive too . . .

 

[ZmOz]

Re: Air powered cars?

Usually self generated power (fossil fuel, internal combustion engine) is pretty close to what you pay from the grid, so power you make for your car should be pretty close to the same cost as it would be if you got that power from electricity.

No, it isn't. Fossil fuels are wayyyyyy more expensive than electricity. A diesel generator, for example, can make roughly 10 kilowatt hours from a gallon of diesel. That's about 30 cents per kilowatt. Most people only pay around 10 cents from the grid. Of course gasoline engines are even less efficient than that.

All power plants are way more efficient than any car engine no matter what type of fuel they burn...so any car that takes grid power and stores it somehow is going to be more efficient than any hybrid or other type of internal combustion propulsion. Even if your local power plant ran on gasoline generators it would be more efficient to use an electric car than a gas powered one. (probably true for air power too)

 

[tommays]

Re: Air powered cars?

I have read it a LOT more and the onboard compressor takes around 3 hours to refill the tanks when its connected to the GRID

It takes a LOT of amps to compress to 4200 PSI no matter how slow you do it


I could be reading it wrong BUT the sight seems to set up to attract investors more than it is ready to market a working car


Tommays

 

[QC]

Re: Air powered cars?

Yeah, Z is correct. I don't know where I was getting that except that there are defininitely diesel generators out there that beat peak rates. Natural gas engines too. At wide open throttle modern spark ignited engines are almost a push with diesel. It is part load conditions where they stink . . . So the operating costs could be reasonably low if the efficiency losses from electricity to air don't exceed the initial energy cost savings.

 

[tommays]

Re: Air powered cars?

This strays a bit BUT haveing owned homes with electric heat ,oil heat and gas heat

We all know the electric heat from the grid cost much more to heat the home than the not particaly efficient in house heating system

Tommays

 

[bjcsc]

Re: Air powered cars?

It takes a LOT of amps to compress to 4200 PSI no matter how slow you do it

Yeah and I also can't imagine how much heat it produces! or where it goes?...

 

[ZmOz]

Re: Air powered cars?

This strays a bit BUT haveing owned homes with electric heat ,oil heat and gas heat

We all know the electric heat from the grid cost much more to heat the home than the not particaly efficient in house heating system

Tommays

That's because in terms of BTU per dollar, fossil fuels are still cheaper. In making heat, furnaces are 90% + efficient, but in making electricity or motion gas engines are less than 30% efficient. Electric cars are close to 100% efficient.

 

[BoatBuoy]

Re: Air powered cars?

You need to be discussing efficiency of burning coal for electricity, not gas or oil. That's where the most of the electricity comes from. Usually gas/oil/hydro turbines are only used to meed peak demands. Base load is met by coal.

Now if you recharged your "air car" at 5 -7 PM every day, then you would be using expensive kwh to get the job done, but the cost to you would be the same as 3 AM.(unless you're on time-of-day rates or demand metering)

 

[studlymandingo]

Re: Air powered cars?

I don't think this adaptation of technology is the "answer" to all of our energy woes, but thankfully there are people out there looking for the answer. There is energy all around us, figuring out how to harness is effectively is the trick. We are going to eventually have to wean ourselves off of the teat of the oil industry. Fuel cell technology isn't the "answer" either, maybe a future version of something that is in the works now will take us where we need to be. $3.00 a gallon SUCKS!!!

 

[stan_deezy]

Re: Air powered cars?

If I declared an interest in nuclear powered cars would I be targetted by the UN? dd

Interesting concept that air-powered car, very interesting. Still reckon it may end up being hybridised though just to make it appeal to the market.

Just one thought though: I thought the whole point of carbon fibre was that it didn't split as such, it splintered when "attacked"? Or is it more to do with the way the carbon fibre is woven in production that gives it the required tensile properties and influences the way it reacts when damaged? I'm thinking about the way race-cars react when they impact at high-speed here: the carbon fibre shatters dissipating the energy from the crash. Seems the problem after a crash in racing is from the shards of carbon fibre on the track lacerating the tyres? Maybe QC could give me a bit more info on that one because I'm no way an expert in that field, honest d

 

[Haut Medoc]

Re: Air powered cars?

Has anyone considererd more beans?
Or Tex-Mex food?
I swear I could have kept a troll motor alive today...
You will know that the net is really good when I can truly share that! +o(.....JK

 

[QC]

Re: Air powered cars?

Stan,

I only know some details of one catastrophic carbon wrapped tank failure. It was a bus here in L.A. and there was definitely a defect in the tank. The story goes that a tech was checking the oil of the rear engined machine when the tank blew. It fractured and I thought completely exploded (pressure not fire type). The bus jumped about three feet off the ground and all of the windows in the two adjacent busses were blown out. He suffered significant hearing loss, but I don't believe any actual impact injuries. It went more to the sides as the tank was mounted in-line and underneath the vehicle. I'll see if I can dig anything up on that one.

Now watch, this correspondence will be 100% responsible for banning CNG busses in the UK . . .

Edit: I found sumpin' Stan: Tank failures

Look for page 21.

 

[stan_deezy]

Re: Air powered cars?

Cheers for that QC, I suspect that the weave of the carbon fibre probably has something to do with the fail characteristics of the tanks. Watching the Turkish F1 Grand Prix this afternoon I saw that they again had problems with carbon fibre shards after a first corner incident and immediately thought about this thread...........................gee's I'm getting to be a sad old anorak d

My biggest concern in the new job (apart from nut-job drivers!) is the number of cars that are now dual fuel: petrol and LPG. We had an incident recently when a Land Rover Discovery which was dual fuelled went on fire. The Water Fairies (slang for firefighters!) were spraying water from 40 feet away behind a dwarf wall and still got a fright when the LPG went up.........the dwarf wall had several bits of the tank embedded in the facing side......................... :^