Compressed Air Poweered Car

[steve_bank]

https://www.greenoptimistic.com/tata-mini-cat-launch-date-20120321/

Just watched a technology segment on this car soon to be in production. Around 180 miles for a few dollars. Around 8000 dollars. It is a piston engine. 70mph. A hybrid is coming. Maybe the future of urban travel and commuting.

There are special carbon fiver tanks to prevent catastrophic failure and shrapnel.

You can run a compressor off of solar panels. True renewable transportation and no emissions. Gas stations in India are adding large capacity high pressure tanks for refilling. Only takes a few minutes to refill your tank.

I imagine the next step is an air powered electrical generator.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Hell, no!

Carbon fiber tanks can go a long way towards reducing shrapnel but they won't prevent nearby objects from becoming shrapnel.

The basic problem here is that there's an easy way to release all the stored energy at once. Imagine what happens if you have a traffic jam of such cars and a collision detonates one of them. I don't know how much energy is in the air tanks, a typical gasoline car has energy similar to that of a 2000# military bomb (note that much of that bomb is casing, it's not actually 2000# of explosives.)

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I imagine the next step is an air powered electrical generator.

BTW, air powered electrical generators exist and compressed air has been used as an energy storage medium. Unfortunately, the turnaround efficiency is low unless you can make use of the thermal energy somehow. (Compressing releases heat, releasing the air creates cold.) I suspect this car suffers from the same problem--it's just moving the problem to elsewhere.

 

[steve_bank]

I imagine the next step is an air powered electrical generator.

BTW, air powered electrical generators exist and compressed air has been used as an energy storage medium. Unfortunately, the turnaround efficiency is low unless you can make use of the thermal energy somehow. (Compressing releases heat, releasing the air creates cold.) I suspect this car suffers from the same problem--it's just moving the problem to elsewhere.

Considering all the energy expended to punp oil, crack it into gasoline, tand trasnsport it what is the efficeny comparing the work done in min joules moving a car 1 mile against all the enrgy used to make the gas.

The total efficiency of gasoline is abysmal.

What is the effigy of car not in miles per gallon but emery in joules of tie gas in and the energy lost as heat in the car?

What makes gasoline useful is that it is relatively safe to transport and store, and it has a high energy density.

If you are filling tanks at hoe during the day from solar panels you do not care about efficiency.

All power conversion processes create heat that can not be used to do work. Linear electronic power supplies are in the 25-35% range. Swathing supplies 80-95%. Charge your electric car and the battery and charger will generate heat.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I imagine the next step is an air powered electrical generator.

BTW, air powered electrical generators exist and compressed air has been used as an energy storage medium. Unfortunately, the turnaround efficiency is low unless you can make use of the thermal energy somehow. (Compressing releases heat, releasing the air creates cold.) I suspect this car suffers from the same problem--it's just moving the problem to elsewhere.

Considering all the energy expended to punp oil, crack it into gasoline, tand trasnsport it what is the efficeny comparing the work done in min joules moving a car 1 mile against all the enrgy used to make the gas.

The total efficiency of gasoline is abysmal.

What is the effigy of car not in miles per gallon but emery in joules of tie gas in and the energy lost as heat in the car?

What makes gasoline useful is that it is relatively safe to transport and store, and it has a high energy density.

If you are filling tanks at hoe during the day from solar panels you do not care about efficiency.

All power conversion processes create heat that can not be used to do work. Linear electronic power supplies are in the 25-35% range. Swathing supplies 80-95%. Charge your electric car and the battery and charger will generate heat.

If you want high pressure storage (to keep the tanks small, such as for this air-powered car) the round-trip efficiency is in the single digits. There's also a big problem with efficiency loss when the pressure in the tank isn't an ideal match for what it's powering.

As for powering it from solar panels--you have to add a lot of extra expensive panels to make up for the losses.

 

[Derec]

This article is from 2012.

 

[steve_bank]

The science show segment appeared current, Clips showed the car going through crash tests.

In any case look at the other thread I started. From the net hits compressed air is active research.

 

[Derec]

The science show segment appeared current, Clips showed the car going through crash tests.

In any case look at the other thread I started. From the net hits compressed air is active research.

Have not read through the whole thread, but there is big difference in fixed energy storage and mobile storage in cars. If you use an underground cavern to store energy, the volume is enormous and you do not need to run high pressures (nor could you, since you don't want leakage). That improves efficiency.

 

[steve_bank]

The science show segment appeared current, Clips showed the car going through crash tests.

In any case look at the other thread I started. From the net hits compressed air is active research.

Have not read through the whole thread, but there is big difference in fixed energy storage and mobile storage in cars. If you use an underground cavern to store energy, the volume is enormous and you do not need to run high pressures (nor could you, since you don't want leakage). That improves efficiency.

A difference of scale, not of physics. After the show I watched I looked at the net and it seemed real. If it isn't it isn't. As shown on the show the car is light with no electronics'. No air conditioning. Covered in one of the links is feasibility of substituting iCAES for batteries.

Batteries have an environmental issue along with relatively scarce materials. Replacing cars with EVs has problems