Compressed Air for Car

[pese]

How efficient are different air motors? What is efficient of air compressing?
When piston air motor then its similar to steam engine - what will be efficient of  old steam locomotive when instead of giant boiler installed large enough pressured air reservoir?
Is the making of pressured air more efficent than steam producing 
And so on ... and so on ...
none interested about
regards,
khabe

if the compression can be done in any air compressor.
if gasolin motors als are piston motors it will work.

i have seen als disk turbine mors , that work with very ig speed prm
and must work with step down gears, so te RPM and Power will come fine.
i think to "google-out" this again, i seen this 3 years ago last tim and cant remember exactly.
GP

[Shanti]

Well, this has already been discussed here some time ago. And to my surprise, not even here people were interested. So why should then the "normal society" be interested in it?

Guy is at it already since a long long time...(http://www.mdi.lu)

About the efficiency: Pure theoretically an aircar can have an efficiency of 100% (pure isothermic compression and expansion). For practical purposes this value will certainly not be reached.
But compared to the theoretical efficiency of a conventional combustion motor (which will also be unreachable), you can also see, that the efficiency you can get for practical purposes is definitely quite higher than a conventional engine.

The problem is certainly, that the compressed air is not as energy efficient as gasoline. This means, even with quite a large tank you will not be able to drive far.
This is why the projected cars all have an approximate range of about 100km.
So IMHO it's the perfect city car! But not usable for the highways...

What makes this idea interesting is, that you can carry some additional gasoline with you. Then you can expand the air with the help of heating it. This makes some kind of stirling motor out of the aircar, with only a burner added.
Like that you can increase the range extremely. So that even with such a car you can drive far distances, sure then on gasoline.

From the energy efficiency, electric cars are certainly better, but they are very expensive, as the batteries and the electric motor are very costly. The aircar however is very easily and cheaply to produce. Also the batteries have to be changed every few years in an electric car, which produces additional costs...
This is why IMHO the electric car never had and never will have a chance on the market, it's just too costly...

So IMHO they are far more economic than electric cars. And more efficient than conventional cars. And if the current for the compression comes from renewable energy sources, then it would be a perfect device for the current time, when there are not yet any better technologies economically available.

I for myself will buy one, as soon as they are available. I hope this will be soon. As Guy already said years ago, that it will be soon available...

I remember seeing something on tv about an Australian inventor who had designed a very efficient motor using compressed air to run his little vehicles.  Does anyone know if they are using his motor?

Nope, they have their own, "conventional" piston air-motor.

I have been looking for someone to apply this to energy storage.. for things such as windmills and solar panels.  I doubt it would be as efficient, but it would require less expense and space than batteries do.

They surely would not need less space than a battery solution, but the solution would be cheaper. But on the other hand, as the efficiency is not that high as for batteries, you would have to decide what's better...
But you can read on Wikipedia, that such systems are really used today to store power plant energy during the night. They have an efficiency of about 75%.

[PhiScience]

  Here is a good collection of research done on air-powered cars.

http://www.aircaraccess.com/

[Goat]

I remember seeing something on tv about an Australian inventor who had designed a very efficient motor using compressed air to run his little vehicles.  Does anyone know if they are using his motor? 

I have been looking for someone to apply this to energy storage.. for things such as windmills and solar panels.  I doubt it would be as efficient, but it would require less expense and space than batteries do. 

The range is hard to believe, but the vehicles are extremely light.  They would never come close to passing the collision requirements here in the US. 

@ Danner & All

There is a good write up about the motor you are talking about Engineair’s Ultra-Efficient Rotary Compressed-Air Motor at http://pesn.com/2006/05/11/9500269_Engineair_Compressed-Air_Motor/

This motor is incredible to say the least, it only takes 1 PSI of pressure is needed to overcome the friction!

Here is the site http://www.engineair.com.au/

Regards,
Paul

[b0rg13]

i wonder if this air engine could run a gen/alt.....then a inverter to run an air compressor(to refill the air) ,then would there be any usable energy left over to use to run a house?.