The Car that runs on air

[SammyChevelleTypeS3]

The Car that runs on air.

Read a lot about this one a good while back. Very intersting idea to say the least.
https://www.popsci.com/article/cars/car-runs-air/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressed_air_car
One such option is the compressed air vehicle (CAV), or air car, powered by a pneumatic motor and onboard high-pressure gas tank. Although proponents claim that CAVs offer environmental and economic benefits over conventional vehicles, the technology has until recently not been subject to a rigorous analysis.

 

[MRC01]

GIven that the ideal air/fuel ratio is about 15:1, one could say that the conventional ICE already does run on air - mostly.

 

[kschachn]

Yeah compressed air cars have been around for many years. It’s not that they don’t work but there are significant issues not all of which will ever be improved. For one thing compressing air is inefficient and the subsequent utilization is not efficient either. Plus you’re giving up the energy density of a chemical reaction, heck there isn’t even a phase change. No way you’ll ever compete with that.

 

[Vercingetorix]

With one of these you’ll never run out of fuel.

 

[Passport1]

Until just now I thought that the only things on earth powered by hot air were balloons and bloviating politicians.

 

[ragtoplvr]

We had one of those nuts in Joplin. Got some notoriety. I was talking with him and asked him why he did not urn the very cold compressed air thru an AC conensor to heat it up and gain range, Got the you stupid college kids do not know anything, that could not work.

At that point I knew he was just bilking inventors and knew nothing.


Rod

 

[4wd]

With one of these you’ll never run out of fuel.View attachment 83569

Oh no - much more advanced concepts are out there

 

[K.Aoi]

This guy's videos on the topic are a good demonstration of why this is a terrible idea.

 

[atikovi]

I have a portable air tank to fill tires away from home. It takes the whole tank to fill one tire from flat. I doubt it could run a 3,000 pound car more than a few dozen feet.

 

[ecotourist]

It'll work perfectly, just not very far.

 

[SammyChevelleTypeS3]

I have a portable air tank to fill tires away from home. It takes the whole tank to fill one tire from flat. I doubt it could run a 3,000 pound car more than a few dozen feet.

My thinking is that there are so many inovative new transportation ideas and inventions I am certain some of our great engineers and minds could turn into a reality other than just E-cars that have so many expensive hurdles to get over. It just seems like the E-cars with all the required charging station infrastructure and battery life / maintenance / disposal is just going to be another trip down a similar path that the ICE-cars took the world on. I hope the world can put some brains and money into some sort of transportation that would not require placing all kinds of power or supply stations and infrastructure from one end of the earth to the other like what we have with the ICE-cars.

I wonder how many folks know that there is an entire subway system underneath LA California? Its was very well recieved and used when built. Big Oil & The Big Three auto maker companies got together with backing of some powerful American politicians and bought out the company. After they bought it they promptly shut it all down and closed it up, burried some of it and like happens it became fogotten. All done to increase sales of motor cars , motor oils and gasoline , automobiles. Outcome = the greatests amounts of smog and air pollution in the 1970s plus the greatest traffic jam daily work commutes for thousands of people in California. Just think how nice and less crowded street and highway use could be in California if that subway was open today and operated similar to New York or other big cities with them in place? Unfortunatelly now like in the past , most innovation I dream of is actually not invented for the good of mankind. It is usually created for the good of people's bank accounts.

India and Israel are two countries who are fast at work to develop something similar in concept to an air powered or some type of vehicles that do not require fossil fuels or anything that would have environmental impact thru having to use a fuel and routinely expose of some waste products. Its is a tall test for sure.

 

[atikovi]

This was tried 14 years ago

 

[PandaBear]

Compress air, battery, flywheel, are all storage unit and must be powered by something else. If you think battery is low energy density then compress air will be way worse. Also unless they insulate the air tank and lines and keep it HOT over a long time, you will lose a lot of energy between "charging" and "discharging".

 

[K.Aoi]

The whole point of combustion in the first place is that it allows you to release the energy inside of atomic bonds. This means you get far more usable work out of a smaller amount of propellant. A pneumatic card would be essentially a steam engine that doesn't have the benefit of being able to carry a far more dense form of energy to convert to steam (such as coal or oil). It might make sense in some very, very specific situations, specifically when dealing with areas that could be full of extremely flammable gas and you cannot have ANY potential source of ignition, including electric motors. Its sometimes easy to forget that "burning" things means using oxidation reactions to break apart molecules to get the energy released from the bonds when they are broken/formed.

 

[atikovi]

A pneumatic card would be essentially a steam engine that doesn't have the benefit of being able to carry a far more dense form of energy to convert to steam (such as coal or oil).

4,000 psi is pretty dense as they mentioned in my link. Over 100 mile range too.

 

[K.Aoi]

4,000 psi is pretty dense as they mentioned in my link. Over 100 mile range too.

And extremely dangerous. Have you ever seen pictures of a locomotive boiler explosion? It's not pretty, and those were at relatively pedestrian pressures of ~250PSI. An accident with a vehicle containing a 4000PSI air container would essentially be carrying around a bomb. Gasoline powered cars don't really explode like they do in movies, they just burn. In the event of a failure, this would kill anyone inside the vehicle and in the nearby vicinity. Not to mention how heavy the tank would have to be to withstand that kind of pressure and be large enough to be of any practical use. Again, other than the very specific edge-cases there is zero reason to go with this over BEVs, FCEV, or even plain old ICE.

 

[SammyChevelleTypeS3]

I am totally fine at my age with the ICE-cars and think they are not the demon they are made out to be. I also do not really believe the people behind development of E-cars are totally honest about their motivations. I have no doubt scientist today could massively clean up and reduce the ICE-cars emissions if they had the incentive. There seems to be way too much money pushed from Government into these so called green companies who often are allowed to promise the world to then simply declare bankruptcy after all the cash has flown away / someplace.... and they are never even held accountable to explain Duh, what happen to the xxx millions of dollars we gave you!?

 

[atikovi]

And extremely dangerous. Have you ever seen pictures of a locomotive boiler explosion? It's not pretty, and those were at relatively pedestrian pressures of ~250PSI. An accident with a vehicle containing a 4000PSI air container would essentially be carrying around a bomb. Gasoline powered cars don't really explode like they do in movies, they just burn. In the event of a failure, this would kill anyone inside the vehicle and in the nearby vicinity. Not to mention how heavy the tank would have to be to withstand that kind of pressure and be large enough to be of any practical use.

CNG cars and trucks currently use 3600 psi tanks and they hold highly combustible fuel. 4000PSI air containers would be no more dangerous.

 

[K.Aoi]

CNG cars and trucks currently use 3600 psi tanks and they hold highly combustible fuel. 4000PSI air containers would be no more dangerous.

Yeah, but the efficiency/range would be completely useless, again because you're just compressing air and using the energy that was used to compress it. Burning CNG or Propane release the energy in the molecules within in an oxidation reaction. So yeah, you *could*, but there is literally no reason to. Not to mention, if you haven't noticed CNG powered vehicles are extremely few and far between. I see one once in a blue moon and they are usually busses used say on a large campus, or on mass transit busses, which are both larger and safer and thus less likely to be damaged. There are some CNG pickups and Civics out there but they are incredibly rare.

 

[atikovi]

Yeah, but the efficiency/range would be completely useless, again because you're just compressing air and using the energy that was used to compress it. Burning CNG or Propane release the energy in the molecules within in an oxidation reaction. So yeah, you *could*, but there is literally no reason to.

100+ miles range is pretty impressive, and that's from 14 years ago. More than the first EVs.