New Type Of Compress Air Engine Project.

[TommeyLReed]

Hi All,

First of all I like to add why I think compress air is better then any battery.

Compress air is a capacitor when it is stored in a seal tank.
Compress air can increase when heat is added, also decrease when cooled down.
Compress air can do mechanical work.
Compress air will outlast any battery or Capacitor.

Now this is what I'm working on is a low PSI@ high CFM's piston engine using a 12" piston design.

Why so big?

Compressing air at higher pressure take lots of energy, but far less energy when you are at low pressure and greater CFM's.

Having a piston at 12" diameter creates more power at lower pressure but greater cfm's.

lets' say we need 5 psi of pressure going into a 12" diameter piston.

5psi*(pi*r^2)=556.5 in/lb of downward force.
With a 12" downward movement you just created 556.5 foot pounds of work using about (556.5*12)/1728)= 3.86 cubic feet of air.

HP= 33,000lb per minute:
33,000/556.5 = 59.3:
59.3*3.86 = 228.9 cubic feet per minute.

How to create more CFM's with less energy?

As we all know compressor are not efficient when creating high psi@low cfm,s, but lower psi and creater CFM's do take less energy due to less heat loss.

By adding cool water around the piston pump housing and intake will increase efficiency even at higher pressure when needed.

My theory is to use low temperature water from a cold spring average of 55deg to cool down the air enough where the compress air expands while it heat up due to outside air temperatures.

Lets not forget using windmills to generate this compress air instead of turning a generator to produce electrical energy, you would be using a compressor to store air energy.

Just some of the ideas I'm working on.

Tom

[MarkE]

The issue with compressed air is the pumping losses.  Heating during compression if not reclaimed and used somehow costs a big proportion of the stored energy.  Coming back out gas pressure collapses due to cooling.  That's where it would be really nice to have the heat evolved during compression.  There are machines like torpedos that use heat reclamation to mitigate the losses.  there is an energy storage start-up called Isentropic that claim to have really good reclamation.

If wishes were free, we would have batteries that have round trip efficiencies of Lithium batteries but much more energy dense and much cheaper.  That's the dream Elon Musk is constantly selling.

[TommeyLReed]

Hi Mark,

Maybe I need to explain this engine in another way.

Let take the exhaust of a small gasoline engine the can reach 30+ psi back pressure, diesel is much higher.

By taking the exhaust and running it into the air engine, this will now increase the output of a IC and efficiency with less then 5psi back pressure.

I did many experiments using this theory, and it works even with my ratchet engine design.

It's no different then having a muffler on any engine, it will hold a light back pressure, so why not use the exhaust waste to run a air engine ?

Tom

[centraflow]

Hi Mark,

Maybe I need to explain this engine in another way.

Let take the exhaust of a small gasoline engine the can reach 30+ psi back pressure, diesel is much higher.

By taking the exhaust and running it into the air engine, this will now increase the output of a IC and efficiency with less then 5psi back pressure.

I did many experiments using this theory, and it works even with my ratchet engine design.

It's no different then having a muffler on any engine, it will hold a light back pressure, so why not use the exhaust waste to run a air engine ?

Tom

Not quite so simple Tom, an engine needs flowthrough pressure, choke that pressure and your engine will stall.


What can and is done is use "reduce" that wasted pressure by reducing it's heat value without restricting flow. This is done by using a heat pump type system which extracts the "heat" which is then used to drive a turbine which inturn produces energy, you might say it is using the output without the input seeing it.


This is already done in industry on a small level for power generation in places like  south Africa and some big manufacturing companies who have excess waste heat.


It is very efficient, more than what they say in specifications because of keeping a low profile so as not to upset the energy cartels and to keep prices up for the plant (a real bummer) catch 22.


regards


Mike