As I was foraging for new engine news I came across this the other day and marked it for another look. Now that I've looked, I still have no idea how exactly this air car works. There is compressed air involved driving pistons, I think, and lots of talk on the site about energy recovery and whether the engines are adiabatic or isothermic, loads of jargon and slow loading graphs and pictures but I can't figure out what any of it adds up to. Actually, the key sentence in the whole site is: "For various reasons, one of which is industrial secrecy, we haven´t published all technical details on this site." Right. Translated: it doesn't really work like we say or at best, doesn't really accomplish anything. If you can't explain how it works in that many pages, chances are, there's nothing to explain.
Eric says
September 8, 2005 at 12:07 pmThe way I read this is they have come up with an “Air motor” that is above average in efficiency compared to other pneumatic motors. . They then hook their air motor to an automobile with compressed air tanks and have an “Air Car” Is this “Air Motor” more efficient than a electric motor, fuel cell, internal combustion engine? Don’t know.
Mark says
September 21, 2005 at 10:48 pmWhy not build a motorcycle that uses compressed air? Belt drive to an on-board air compressor that refils the air tank as the bike rolls. I’ll get to work on this right away!
Mike says
November 11, 2005 at 1:28 amI saw an air motor powered go-kart artical featured in “Popular Mechanics” several years ago. This stuff is not difficult to build in elementary form. Just a couple of scuba tanks, a pressure regulator, throttle valve and a Gast air motor. Claimed he could play with the kart for a week before refilling the two cylinders. I think I still have a copy of the artical somewhere in a file – just not sure where at the moment.
Problem was that the guy was using high pressure scuba tanks (2500 psi when full). When I showed the artical to the guy at a local dive shop he went white as a sheet. Then he told me about a safety film he had seen where a high pressure scuba tank had the regulator valve broken off in a demo to show how dangerous things can get in a shop accident. The fully charged tank launched itself through 7 consecutive cinder block walls before running out of pressure. Scarey.
If you’re going to play with this stuff be extremely careful. Also I have read that air motors are only about 65% efficient in dealing with the supplied pressure. But the air coming out the exhaust is only as dirty as the air that went into the perssure tank.
John_J says
February 19, 2007 at 12:24 amWhat is the cost / energy required to compress the air?
I wonder if solar panels could be used to run a compressor during daylight to fill reserve tanks? There may be something here – but if the energy expended to compress air is the same as the energy which would be used to propel a gas powered or electric powered car – then there is no net benefit.
Also – isn’t most electrical energy commonly generated by coal plants?, or at least by power plants using fossil fuels?
Patik says
April 4, 2009 at 3:27 pmIf this should work …
Energy enough to move a car … lets say 100 miles before refill is probbably enough to make the car go far enough up in the air to kill you when you come down again. All you need to do is release all the energy downwords in a short amount of time.
How can you do that? Well how about getting a crack in the tank by some accident.
Only reason a normal car is safe is that is almost impossible to release all the energy in the petrol all at once. There are not enogh oxygen present to burn (explode) at once. Only when the tank is – in the nearest – emty – is the mixture petrol/air the right to make the tank explode when heat is intruduced. And that is a big bang made of just a little tiny bit of the energy stored in the tank. Just imagine if you could get a full tank explode.
Sky high …