Air Cars - Very promising technology

[ExAm]

Latest in a series of damn interesting things I've found: Air powered cars
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Seriously, this looks awesome. Thoughts?

[NuggetWarmer]

Old news. Last time it was done, some gas company bought them. :(

[Xetsuei]

Wow, I saw a special on Discovery HD about future cars, and they had air powered cars as one of them. Back then when the show was made (2006?) It said the air cars could only go 15 miles on a single tank, and refiling took a lot longer. It's amazing to see how far they have progressed with that. This as I see it, could possibly be the best way to completely stop using petroleum/use a lot less of it. And the best way the reduce emissions.

Lets just hope some idiotic oil company doesn't buy them.

[Botolf]

Gimme moar plug-in hybrids, ie here now and still better than future Hydrogen fuel cells.

[Dr Nick]

Los Angeles to New York. :O

[Heathen]

This is kind of old. Saw these at the beginning of last year I think.

www.theaircar.com

[n00b1n8R]

Holey crap that show is years old :o

Fare enough it's cheaper and doesn't pollute the city but how much more coal/whatever needs to be used to produce the energy to run the compressors (and how much CO2 does that produce?). If it's less than the amount produced from standard combustion engines, then hell yeah. Otherwise it depends on the difference I suppose.

[Heathen]

A few things.

The compressed air tanks can be refilled at home simply by connecting the car to the electricity network. The small compressor incorporated inside the car will fill the tanks completely in 4 to 6 hours. The cost to refill your tanks completely will be around three euros (5 U.S. dollars), making use of the nocturnal tariffs. When the market evolves and more and more people are using our cars you will also be able to refill your tanks at the gas station in less than three minutes.

4 to 6 hours for a pitstop?

[n00b1n8R]

You'd do it overnight. :downs:

[Rob Oplawar]

I wonder how much energy is lost in the transfer...
I'm sure that in operation storing the energy in batteries or hydrogen is far more efficient, but the process of manufacturing and replacing the batteries or fuel cells might negate that relative efficiency.
And of course compressed air tanks are much safer, cleaner, and cheaper than hydrogen/batteries.

But yeah, this seems like a short range low speed commuter vehicle type thing.

If only there were some form of low speed short range commuter vehicle that could somehow use the driver's natural energy as a means of propulsion, so that the vehicle would never make any emissions and never require refueling... oh wait. (http://weightweenies.starbike.com/images/lightbike/bike.jpg)

[Hotrod]

Well, sure, these aren't bikes, and aren't really designed for high speeds, but they are great for what they are meant to do, which is be simple, everyday cars. The first car can go up to 110 kph, which is 10 kph faster than most highways around here, so, it should do fine. However, I found it a bit noisy.

The second engine, on the other hand, is just amazing. The design is something I would never have thought of, and it seems quite quiet. They didn't say anything about speed, but I'm guessing it shouldn't be that fast, or that slow. However, it can only run for 2 hours before needing a refill, so that part would need to be worked on. Then again, it's tiny, so it makes sense.

[n00b1n8R]

The noise problem could easily be solved with some insulation (since the engine doesn't even get that hot, melting wouldn't be an issue).

The trouble with a bike is that it can't easily move heavy loads (eg stacks of vegetables).

[Terin]

So where's the guy who's going to say "Not possible, would cause blackhole" and ruin an awesome engine idea? :saddowns:

[Hotrod]

These air cars are a bad idea, due to the pure awesomeness of the idea, a blackhole would come out of nowhere, and suck in the engine, and the guy/girl that thought of it.

[Terin]

k

But I mean, is there anything that would cause this to not see the light of day, not be used, not be consumer viable, etc.? The video shows that it seems like it would be, except for those who have to do a large amount of driving on a daily basis. It's cheap, both the car and the fuel, has quite a bit of power with it, and environmentally friendly. What's the catch? D:

[Rob Oplawar]

If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. I'm similarly suspicious of this.
I'm thinking the problem is just the pressurization. You can't put your car up to 4500 psi with a compressor at home, and i don't think it's at all likely to become common at gas stations.

Sure, they have air compressors at most gas stations, but they're meant for putting tires up to around 60 psi, not 4500. I think that other technologies are more likely to gain a hold in the market before recompressing stations can become common enough to make this technology feasible.

Even if plug-in electric cars are much more expensive and much less environmentally friendly (batteries), i think they're much more likely to become commonplace, since you can charge them at home with absolutely no special equipment required.

e: *takes the time to actually watch the video* ah, well, so you can "charge" it at home, and with comparable charging time to an electric car. Having actually seen it in action, I'm slightly less skeptical, although if they really want to sell the idea, they've gotta sacrifice the weight to give it some better engine compartment insulation. That thing's louder than my brother's Explorer.

It's funny, I never really took compressed air seriously as a means of storing energy, but it's actually somewhat plausible.
Heh, forget hi-tech fuel cells and energy packs and fusion cores- just gimme a compressed air canister
lol

[Hotrod]

Well, since a lot of people are against new, and good ideas, there's a good chance that this won't be used to it's full potential.

[Mass]

I wanna put the Australian guy's engine on my bike.

Honestly, I think the future of the world is going to see nuclear power re-emerging as the center of the energy production industry, and countries that have been engaging in steady development of more efficient, safer plants and reactors, like France, are going to be sitting on a good bit of money.

Coal causes constant and invariable damage, where as nuclear energy simply runs the risk of possible destruction released in a vastly shorter time frame, and consequences from any such accident, relative to the damage coal does daily, is tiny.

[n00b1n8R]

The thing is, the Oil/petrol companys are going to fight this technology to the last because of what it will do to petrol sales. Sure they'll still have markets in the flight and long distance travel arenas but we all know how proffit hungry these corperations are.

What really disapoints me is that this show was made in like 05 and I still havn't seen any developments. :/

[jngrow]

Anything that becomes a good, viable way to power our cars will be bought up by oil companies. Sorry. That's why hybrids are shoved down our throats so much. They still use gas.

[ultama121]

Wow, nice technology!


Air powered... does it blow? :pervert:

[Rob Oplawar]

I just had a long discussion about the concept with my father, who is a brilliant engineer by the way. It's an interesting concept, and it seems feasible, but there are a lot of engineering hurdles facing this technology. What sticks out in my mind is the fact that the only way it works right now is by being as light as possible, and that means either the cars lose features such as air conditioning or doors or a passenger row, or they get more and more expensive.
I'm very skeptical of the supposed 3 minute fill-up time for the tanks. Scuba tanks are typically pressurized to about twice the pressure of the tanks in this car- they have to be filled by extremely noisy and dirty air compressors, it takes at least half an hour to fill them up, and they have to be immersed in water while you're doing it because the act of compressing the air makes it very hot. It makes me wonder just how they intend to fill up these tanks in 3 minutes without making more noise than a rocket launch and without making the tanks scalding hot.

[Varmint260]

If cars powered by compressed air become commonplace, production of electricity to run the compressors becomes of paramount importance. Of course, I don't believe in the superiority of nuclear power since spent radioactive materials are still hazardous to the environment and they have to be stored somewhere. But anyhow...

I agree with Rob; 3 minutes to fill a cylinder with compressed air to that kind of pressure is not realistic at all. An ungodly amount of heat would result from so much air getting squished into such a comparably tiny space. Any refrigeration/cooling system that could run at the same time and remove enough heat would require so much energy that the whole project is pointless. 4 to 6 hours? Maybe.

Besides commuter cars, we still need some ways of transporting bulk goods from one place to another. I don't think you'll find a Kenworth with an air-powered engine towing 30 tons of fresh veggies down the interstate ;)

[n00b1n8R]

Spent radioactive material may not be much of an issue in the future. Supposedly the french are developing a technology to seriously reduce the danger posed by used fuel rods, + I was watching a doco the other night where they were developing bacteria to actually break the fuel rods down (:o).

That's not to say nuclear power should be our be all and end all power source. It's simply a cost effective one while we make the transition from coal to renewable sources.

And I thought they said it was more than 3 minutes >__>

For most people's daily use, this car would be fine (and be cheaper in the long run compared to a normal car). For long distance stuff, you could probably mix it up with electric/hydrogen power.

[Warsaw]

Besides commuter cars, we still need some ways of transporting bulk goods from one place to another. I don't think you'll find a Kenworth with an air-powered engine towing 30 tons of fresh veggies down the interstate ;)


Electric trains would replace the diesel trains that currently do most of the heavy hauling. Powered by nuclear fission (and later fusion, when we perfect it), it should be quite efficient. As for the smaller transportation, I'd say an all electric truck would suffice. Since they are so large as it is anyways, that gives more room for extra batteries. At first, some trailer space may have to be sacrificed, or the sleeping chamber for the truck crew on top may need to be used, but as the technology progresses, we'll eventually get those things back.

[Rob Oplawar]

it's not the size of the batteries, but the expense and pollution. It takes a lot of nasty chemicals to produce a rechargeable battery, you know. That's the whole reason for using compressed air instead- it's a cleaner and cheaper method of storing energy.

I think, tho, that if we can find a safe and efficient way of transporting and/or producing it that compressed hydrogen is our best bet. Clean (burn hydrogen in oxygen, it doesn't take a chemistry major to figure out what it produces) and quite efficient compared to compressed air. It doesn't take a lot to convert an internal combustion engine to use hydrogen gas as fuel, and that would be much cheaper and cleaner than fuel cells. The real problem is filling a tank with hydrogen.
So yeah, once we get that, gimmeh my hydrogen hybrid.

e: also, I need to stop abbreviating it as "tho". It's spelled "though", dammit. it's one thing to text message "tho", it's another to type it. >=(

[Terin]

I remember hearing about hydrogen in some magazine. It would be great for space travel, if we get to that point, as well as the reasons listen above. Asteriods with ice contained in them could be broken down. It would give you water, air, and fuel, one hell of a combo.

For now, though, we're still without a foreseeable good source of energy, as most people are reluctant to switch from a gas car to something else...

[Botolf]

it's not the size of the batteries, but the expense and pollution. It takes a lot of nasty chemicals to produce a rechargeable battery, you know. That's the whole reason for using compressed air instead- it's a cleaner and cheaper method of storing energy.

I think, tho, that if we can find a safe and efficient way of transporting and/or producing it that compressed hydrogen is our best bet. Clean (burn hydrogen in oxygen, it doesn't take a chemistry major to figure out what it produces) and quite efficient compared to compressed air. It doesn't take a lot to convert an internal combustion engine to use hydrogen gas as fuel, and that would be much cheaper and cleaner than fuel cells. The real problem is filling a tank with hydrogen.
So yeah, once we get that, gimmeh my hydrogen hybrid.

e: also, I need to stop abbreviating it as "tho". It's spelled "though", dammit. it's one thing to text message "tho", it's another to type it. >=(
Electric > Hydrogen as far as MPG goes IIRC.

[ExAm]

not to mention that hydrogen is an incredibly inefficient fuel once you consider the amount of energy it takes to produce the hydrogen in the first place.

[n00b1n8R]

I'd be interested to know the amount of energy required to compress the gas canisters (and the amount of energy that can be utilised by the gas engine) compared to the amount of energy require to make the hydrogen (and the amount of energy that hydrogen produces).

[ExAm]

probably much, much less to compress an air tank than to electrolyze enough hydrogen to compress a gas tank, which would in turn require energy to compress said gas tank...

[Rob Oplawar]

Electric > Hydrogen as far as MPG goes IIRC.
Yes, but the reason for considering hydrogen is because it's cleaner and cheaper. Like I said, expensive and harmful chemicals in batteries.


not to mention that hydrogen is an incredibly inefficient fuel once you consider the amount of energy it takes to produce the hydrogen in the first place.
I'd be interested to know the amount of energy required to compress the gas canisters (and the amount of energy that can be utilised by the gas engine) compared to the amount of energy require to make the hydrogen (and the amount of energy that hydrogen produces).
probably much, much less to compress an air tank than to electrolyze enough hydrogen to compress a gas tank, which would in turn require energy to compress said gas tank...
Right, that's the other big drawback in addition to the storage and transportation problem. Electrolysis is not the only method of producing Hydrogen, but the only other common methods of Hydrogen production involve nasty chemicals and usually petroleum, and are horrendously inefficient.

I think the most promising potential technology is direct photohydrolysis. Scientists have successfully genetically modified algae to produce hydrogen, and I think it's not too much of a stretch to imagine that it would be possible to separate the mechanism by which the hydrogen is produced from the bacteria, so that you could produce a solar cell that uses sunlight to directly split the oxygen from the hydrogen.

Of course, that sort of solar cell sounds like it would require expensive and harmful chemicals, so we're back to where we started.

[Warsaw]

If you can contain the chemicals, you can break them down into less harmful products. Just because chemicals are produced doesn't mean they have to be dumped into the nearest body of water.

[Botolf]

If you can contain the chemicals, you can break them down into less harmful products. Just because chemicals are produced doesn't mean they have to be dumped into the nearest body of water.
.

Not to mention there's always the option of building better batteries as the technology becomes mainstream.

[Rob Oplawar]

My point is that no matter how you look at it, harmful chemicals are called harmful chemicals because they are, like, harmful.
Ahem. Lol. Lemme try again.
The chemicals in batteries have to come from somewhere. I would venture a guess that they are mined. The mining process is itself harmful to the environment; the fact that harmful chemicals are being mined makes it more so. But the same can be said for the metals required to manufacture, say, a hydrogen combustion engine.
But the chemicals need to be processed, and purified, and broken down and recombined and manufactured into batteries. These batteries don't last forever, especially if they're used as the primary power source for a commuter vehicle- they'll have to be replaced. The process of recycling the materials in batteries is itself so inefficient as to render recycling counterproductive.

It's a given that whatever energy storage device you use will waste some amount of energy and will take some amount of energy to produce and maintain. Economically it is a given that the storage device will require material to manufacture and will produce waste that is effectively unrecoverable due to the cost of recovering it.
My point is that when balancing the cost of producing and maintaining vs efficiency, historically we always see that efficiency is sacrificed for cheapness. I think that hydrogen tanks are themselves cheaper and cleaner than batteries, and that hydrogen combustion engines are cheaper and cleaner than fuel cells and electric motors.

e: and to tie this back in to compressed air driven cars, you get much greater energy density in the same amount of hydrogen as you do in "air", when stored in "air" at 1 atm. The question is not abundance, as hydrogen is far more common than "air", but availability, as the molecule H2 is much less common than, collectively, the molecules that make up "air". So again, the key is finding a cheap and clean method of separating H2 from the ever abundant H2O. That's obvious, but I state the obvious as the only reason I can see why batteries (and compressed air) are currently more favorable than compressed hydrogen as a means of storing energy.

[ExAm]

.

Not to mention there's always the option of building better batteries as the technology becomes mainstream.Or better capacitors. Capacitors, if they had the ability to release their energy as slowly as batteries do, would be leaps and bounds better than batteries, due to their very quick charge time and the fact that their basic mechanism is only two metal plates and, if I remember correctly, zero toxic chemicals.

[Rob Oplawar]

Oh yeah, I forgot about capacitors. Capacitors are to batteries as compressed air is to compressed hydrogen. If they could be charged up high enough and be made to release their energy gradually enough, they could work, cleanly and efficiently.
One tends to associate capacitors with quick bursts of energy, though. I wonder if they would really work for extended periods of driving.

[Bodzilla]

Spent radioactive material may not be much of an issue in the future. Supposedly the french are developing a technology to seriously reduce the danger posed by used fuel rods, + I was watching a doco the other night where they were developing bacteria to actually break the fuel rods down (:o).

That's not to say nuclear power should be our be all and end all power source. It's simply a cost effective one while we make the transition from coal to renewable sources.

And I thought they said it was more than 3 minutes >__>

For most people's daily use, this car would be fine (and be cheaper in the long run compared to a normal car). For long distance stuff, you could probably mix it up with electric/hydrogen power.
Nuclear aint cheap :/

Shit breaks down and it's incredibly expensive to fix.

[Warsaw]

A capacitor can be thought of as a temporary battery with a high discharge rate. The only reason you would need a capacitor is for drag racing electric cars, very rapid acceleration, etc. Otherwise, direct battery-to-engine is just fine.

Also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_battery
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_Ion

You encounter a lot of those chemicals, besides Lithium, on an almost daily basis. Chlorine? Carbon? Lead? Copper? Phosphate? There are a few exotic ones lie Bismuth and Vanadium, but still.

Besides, Strip mining is what is really bad, but that is only done for things like copper (and we've been doing it for a long time now, so might as well capitalize on it before it gets shut down, if it gets shut down).

Also, Bod, while fixing things in a nuclear plant is expensive, the overall cost of energy production is cheap. Your electric bill would go down if nuclear became the primary power source.

[Rob Oplawar]

Sure, you encounter the chemicals in rechargeable batteries frequently, and sure, the more exotic ones are in very small concentrations, but you simply cannot replace every car in the world or even a fraction of the cars in the world with battery powered cars without some serious environmental ramifications on par with the problems of fossil fuels. It may solve one problem, but it replaces it with another just as big.
The reason capacitors might be better than batteries is, once again, because they're cheaper and cleaner.

As for Nuclear fission- it's non-renewable. If the entire world were powered by nuclear power plants, we would run out of viable fuels alarmingly quickly- on the order of decades. And it would be a massive environmental issue to dispose of all that waste.
Nuclear fusion, if it were sustainable and effective, would not have as much of a waste disposal problem and while still non-renewable, it would likely take us much longer to run out of fuel.

[DrunkenSamus]

Nuclear aint cheap :/

Shit breaks down and it's incredibly expensive to fix.

It would not be fun to have a nuclear power plant near your home.:eyesroll: You wouldn't want another Ukraine accident to happen again.

[Mass]

We already have batteries in every car in the world, granted, the scale could be anywhere between two and ten times larger, but I hardly see the permanent and invariable damage of cars with, say, multiple regular batteries.

Not to mention the fact that electricity can be produced by any engine, that it has a pre-existing manufacturing delivery system, and its practically effortless marketing as a solution, and marketing, unfortunately, is the essential element of any proposal. Take note of ethanol, as much a joke as a corporate scheme, transparently illogical to anyone possessing scarce facts and three seconds of spare time. However, its early establishment in flex-fuel vehicles made it an easy sell, and now you can see people filling up their tanks with the over-subsidized fruits of monopolism, distilled from a plant less effective for fuel production than wild prairie grasses, and hundreds of times more agriculturally damaging.

"Americans don't want a sportscar, they want a car that looks like a sportscar."

Electricity is mostly viable, and the ease of both transition and selling it to the people mean that it is far and away the most practical solution.
Unfortunately.

[Warsaw]

As for Nuclear fission- it's non-renewable. If the entire world were powered by nuclear power plants, we would run out of viable fuels alarmingly quickly- on the order of decades. And it would be a massive environmental issue to dispose of all that waste.
Nuclear fusion, if it were sustainable and effective, would not have as much of a waste disposal problem and while still non-renewable, it would likely take us much longer to run out of fuel.

Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe...:eyesroll:
Now, Helium-3, on the other hand, is much harder to obtain.

[Heathen]

Cold Fusion

[n00b1n8R]

Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe...:eyesroll:
Now, Helium-3, on the other hand, is much harder to obtain.
Not too hard though. We could easily begin mining it within the next 5 years if people pull their finger's out of their ass's.

[Warsaw]

Cold Fusion

Physically impossible.

Also, Helium-3 is abundant in Jupiter's atmosphere and on the moon.

[Rob Oplawar]

Cold Fusion


Physically impossible.

Also, Helium-3 is abundant in Jupiter's atmosphere and on the moon.
Yeah, the trick is actually making it cost effective to mine the moon and/or Jupiter. With current tech and costs, if you were to mine pure platinum on the moon it would still cost more than it was worth to ship it back. I guess it depends on how highly you value Helium-3.

As for cold fusion, sure it's possible, unless the impossibility you're referring to is actually getting more energy out of it than you put in. :P

[Warsaw]

Yeah, the trick is actually making it cost effective to mine the moon and/or Jupiter. With current tech and costs politics, if you were to mine pure platinum on the moon it would still cost more than it was worth to ship it back. I guess it depends on how highly you value Helium-3.

It'll cost a lot at first, but because the technology will be developing at an accelerated rate because we need the fuel, the costs will come down.

[Bodzilla]

Also, Bod, while fixing things in a nuclear plant is expensive, the overall cost of energy production is cheap. Your electric bill would go down if nuclear became the primary power source.
Listen to Dave Suzuki.
this guy is a genius (http://www.davidsuzuki.org/Climate_Change/Energy/Nuclear.asp)

[n00b1n8R]

Sure, lets listen to one side of the argument then base our opinion on that. That sounds like a good way to go about it. :downs: