The Air Car.....

[JPace]

http://www.theaircar.com/howitworks.html

I just learned about a car that runs on air from Dr. Mercola's Blog. What do you think of this
and could it be the future in the U.S.? Sure would be nice to stop poisoning the planet.
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"Will You Buy a Car That Runs on Air?
One day, in the near future, we'll have the opportunity to make driving safer for our health and environment with options like the pollution-free Air Car, being readied for market by Spain-based Moteur Developpement Int.

Based on proven technology used on the Space Shuttle, the Air Car runs on Compressed Air Technology, a pollution-free engine that burns compressed air stored in tanks made of carbon fiber. The only emission: Cold air that's used to run the car's onboard air conditioner.

The vehicle is built for city driving, as it gets about 100 miles per tankful. Why oil and gas companies are probably very worried about this latest innovation: The average cost of a fill-up is about $3.

The Science Channel March 10, 2006 Free Video Link
http://science.discovery.com/fansites/discoveriesthisweek/videogallery/videogallery.html

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http://www.theaircar.com/howitworks.html

[FiveGoodMen]

1. Where does the energy come from to compress the air?

[Rick Myers]

3. Probably compressed whan it's loaded into the tanks?

[silverweb]

4. Here:

http://www.theaircar.com/station.html

The energy to do the refilling can be as clean as you can get it.

[Rick Myers]

7. Thanks. That's a really interesting site and concept!

[silverweb]

13. Indeed!

:thumbsup:

On edit: The inventor, Guy Negre, is no dummy neophyte, either. He's a mechanical engineer who worked in aeronautics and with Formula 1 race cars. I'm inclined to give much more weight his experience and ingenuity than the opinion of naysayers who look at the website and say it isn't good enough.

[FiveGoodMen]

11. Conservation of Energy is what I'm talking about.

It's a law of physics that you can't get more energy out of a system than you put into it. If everyone plugs their car in at home, the energy comes from the wall socket. But then LOTS more electricity has to be produced. LOTS.

True, the generating plant can be a ways from the city (so smog doesn't all build up in one place) but this is not likely to be any more efficient than burning oil (what will all the new electric plants run on? are there a bunch of new rivers that need damming?).

[silverweb]

12. So we shoot for conservation AND clean energy.

Not all electricity is produced by burning oil. Not by a long shot. And every single vehicle that runs on something other than oil-based fuel is a plus.

More and more electricity is being produced by clean, renewable means and it's up to us to push for much more of that. Energy conservation and clean production are not mutually exclusive.

My personal dream is to have one of these on my roof to power my personal energy usage and an Air Car. I've already switched over 80% of my household lightbulbs to these and conserve as much as I can in other ways.

So... tell me again, please:

(1) How is the Air Car, which is recharged with electricity generated in a variety of ways and actually cleans the air it puts back into the atmosphere -- not a good thing?

(2) And how is bashing the Air Car because it needs some form of electricity to charge it going to help move us towards a cleaner, renewable energy future?

[neuvocat]

5. Looks like I found something here...

The dual energy system

The Series 34 CAT´s engines can be equipped with and run on dual energies - fossil fuels and compressed air - and incorporate a reheating mechanism (a continuous combustion system, easily controlled to minimize pollution) between the storage tank and the engine.

This mechanism allows the engine to run exclusively on fossil fuel which permits compatible autonomy on the road.

While the car is running on fossil fuel, the compressor refills the compressed air tanks. The control system maintains a zero-pollution emission in the city at speeds up to 60 km/h.

[silverweb]

2. I've wanted one for a while now.

Come the day I have to get another car of my own, I want it to be an Air Car. Definitely. I've been enamored of this idea for quite some time, ever since I first heard about it a year or so ago.

[LunaSea]

6. How much PSI are they talking about?

I have a vision of it flying around like an untied balloon in a moderate collision.


As for power sources for compression...
Former oil execs on hamster wheels works for me.

[NNadir]

8. Compressed air isn't really a bad energy storage medium.

The caveat is that under certain circumstances it can be dangerous. People have been killed by rocketing nitrogen tanks and things like that.

In theory, one could do wonderful things with the process, including putting a catalyst in the line to address certain types of pollutants.

I'm not sure it would work, and I've heard the idea before, but I'm not sure it's completely out to lunch either.

[Redstone]

9. Not efficient at all. Why would you use electricity to

compress air (with attendant friction losses), then use the air to power a reciprocating engine (more friction losses) when you could just use the electricity directly to power an electric motor?

The more times you transform energy, the more energy you lose in the process.

Redstone

[Warpy]

10. Although it requires energy to compress the air, that energy

can come at least partially from renewable resources. There isn't the battery disposal problems we'll see with hybrids and electric vehicles, and there isn't the hydrogen generation and storage problem we'd see with fuel cell vehicles.

The air car is such an elegantly simple idea that it very well may be what we end up with eventually. Whoever does conversion kits will become obscenely rich.