Compressed Air Vehicles

[OhMyGas]

here is an interesting link. Wonder whether it would be an alternative....

http://www.theaircar.com/acf/air-car...r-history.html

more here:
http://www.autoblog.com/2007/06/01/w...ar-introduced/

[Steve]

Re: Compressed Air Vehicles

I saw a video once that featured a car using compressed air but not as its sole means of locomotion but rather as a way to propel and slow the vehicle down similar to how the hybrids use their batteries and generators.

[CraziFuzzy]

Re: Compressed Air Vehicles

here is an interesting link. Wonder whether it would be an alternative....

http://www.theaircar.com/acf/air-car...r-history.html

more here:
http://www.autoblog.com/2007/06/01/w...ar-introduced/

You think CNG tanks take up a lot of space?

[cowboy]

Re: Compressed Air Vehicles

ok get feared I have been thinking again. why not put one of these motors next to a cng motor and than run cng through the air motor before burning it in the cng motor and use the waste heat from the cng motor to heat the cng as it gos through the stages of the air motor as it will get cold from expanding a air motor works much better with the heat to raise the pressure at each stage would this be a good marrage? could the air motor be used as a high pressure regulater how much range could be gotting doing this one car claims 125 miles on just air just another of my will it work thoughts so go ahead and shoot it down or go home and build it

[larrycng]

Re: Compressed Air Vehicles

It has some possibilities. The heating of the gas is a good application of cogeneration as long as the exhaust system is tight. I can see bigger injectors to get the volume of gas needed to run the CNG part. Of course maybe we could use the expanding CNG through the Air conditioning evap to help cool the passenger compartment (We thoght about doing that with LP). Of course, in an accident we could use it for a barbque

Larrycng

[Gerben]

Re: Compressed Air Vehicles

ok get feared I have been thinking again. why not put one of these motors next to a cng motor and than run cng through the air motor before burning it in the cng motor and use the waste heat from the cng motor to heat the cng as it gos through the stages of the air motor as it will get cold from expanding a air motor works much better with the heat to raise the pressure at each stage would this be a good marrage? could the air motor be used as a high pressure regulater how much range could be gotting doing this one car claims 125 miles on just air just another of my will it work thoughts so go ahead and shoot it down or go home and build it

Yes, it can work, but: adding an air motor to use the pressure and a heat exchanger to use waste heat adds weight and volume to the car. The amount of CNG that you can expand and use for your air motor is limited by your fuel consumption. The energy stored in the pressure of CNG is only a few % of the energy you can obtain from combusting the CNG. So you have to add all kinds of stuff for just a tiny amount of energy. That's not going to be very cost-effective.