The new ENGINE is here and it RUNS on AIR!

Originally posted by Edn
Not until the oil company's die out. This sort of technology could effectively wipe out any need for oil based fuel in the city's not to mention petrol stations could go out of business because you can refuel at home.

Its a shame really, there are so many alternative out there but most are simply suppressed by the people profiting from the oil business.

I must say though they don't have very good designers for there cars

Unless the oil companies began selling AIR for the SAME price! ... Which I honestly wouldn't put it past them.

They will find some how to tax you for air!!

I believe it is also relevant to note that my particular situation is relevant to ANY alternative engine designs...

You see, I live in Alaska, where the mean average temperature in Interior (Fairbanks) reaches -60 below (without windchill) in the latter half of January and earlier half of February. Gas Engines work in this environment, and while the occassional battery might die, you can jump start such an engine in the bitter cold and get it back up and running with some fair amount of ease.

I imagine there are a lot of other environments (Desert environments have sand issues with gears) which present likewise difficult issues that these upstart companies have to overcome if their designs are to be taken seriously.

I fired off a response to DePietro's company, who sorely needs a redesign for their website (Likely run by the man himself, considering the amount of spelling errors). I came up with a variety of questions, many of which had to deal with the above environmental issues and if they had overcome such problems.

The other questions I had were how to mix technologies, such as the other Air Engine in the BEYOND TOMORROW show. I want to know if the DePietro Engine would benefit from those two huge compressed air cylinders in the Compressed Air Engine mentioned.

Compressed air is a horrible idea. It would take insane amounts of pressurized air to get you even 1 mile at 10 miles per hour. You would have to refill very very often. Just to go 10 miles would requier a tank larger, and thicker, and more heavy, meaning the car would not be as fast or powerfull.


The only way I can see this progressing, is if they can find a way to compress air at the rate it is being used. Untill then, this is not a good idea.

THE FUTURE IS WATER. Water has 2 hydrogen atoms and 1 oxygen atom. Find a way to take those 2 hydrogen atoms and burn them, and you have a more powerfull fuel than gasoline.

The technology is out there to get hydrogen from water, but current processes are too slow. The knowledge to extract hydrogen from water instantly is already out there, and already suppressed by the government, because it is a threat to oil, but if someone can obtain that knowledge and spread it to the world, non-profit, then the instant hydrogen engines should start to emerge, and the government will have no ability to supress it.

[edit on 27-1-2007 by 1150111]

Originally posted by 1150111
Compressed air is a horrible idea. It would take insane amounts of pressurized air to get you even 1 mile at 10 miles per hour. You would have to refill very very often. Just to go 10 miles would requier a tank larger, and thicker, and more heavy, meaning the car would not be as fast or powerfull.

Seriously, while I admit your response gains me points ( ), it's so completely under-researched, it's rediculous.

WATCH THE VIDEOS AND READ THE LINKS. 3 minutes of fueling up will get you 200 km at a top speed of 80km/hr! And these things are just prototypes. They keep getting better w/ time.

And you wouldn't need tanks, I wouldn't think....What about solar energy that powerd a compressor directly into the engines, and the tanks were used for emergancy storage purposes.

That seems like a neat idea to me.

[edit on 1/27/2007 by Arcane Demesne]

Oh, I wasn't saying that one would need anything other than the initial design, but there is something to be said for a redundantly efficient system that self supports... provided the claims for these engines are correct, redundancy would only increase the amount of efficiency. Even after taking into account the energy loss for adding the weight.

Another engine that runs on air is the airfoil. It converts kinetic energy from the air into usable mechanical energy required for powered flight.

Seriously people, it takes more energy to compress the air, than it does to fill up a battery to go the exact same distance. A good engineer knows the "KISS" rule, or Keep It Simple Stupid. Why use electricity to compress air and use that to run a car, when you could just use the electricity to run a car. A lot of energy is lost in the compression process.

Where does this electricity come from? Coal fired plants, and you think there is some wasted heat there? Yeah. Not extremely effecient as the discussion would led patrons to believe.

I've read concepts stating compressed nitrogen, ethyl alcohol, hemp oil, solar cells, hydrogen cells and electric motors are far more effecient than the gas/diesel engine. Too bad effecieny does not hold up to power. Steam engines are the worst idea. Most of these ideas, in fact, are older than the internal combustion engine.

Originally posted by Soitenly
Where does this electricity come from? Coal fired plants, and you think there is some wasted heat there? Yeah. Not extremely effecient as the discussion would led patrons to believe.

WTF are you guys on?!

Here, a portable electric air compressor: 2HP and will fill to 100 PSI.
www.epinions.com...

And there are TONS of those cheapr and more expensive out there. That particular model will fill a 4 gallon tank at 100 PSI in 10 seconds it says. The DiPietro motor only needs 1 PSI to over coem friction, and the rest is used for power.

AIR IS CHEAP!

And if you have any doubts about power from an engine the size of a 10"-12" speaker, well...

www.abc.net.au...

The engine has been tested in a moving vehicle where it reached speeds of between 50kph and 60kph uphill. It has a range of 16km on a 100 litre cylinder but takes only a couple of minutes to refuel. As far as cost is concerned, 15 cents of air will get you 3.2km.

that's about what...$1.00 per gallon (depending on how much electricity costs you)? And if you have a free electricity power station (ie. Windmill, Solar, Hydro, whatever), then it basically costs you nothing. Especially since you can FIT a compressor IN YOUR CAR. It'll take up less space than batteries, that's for damn sure!

As far as cost is concerned, one word: overhead.

Those aircompressors can fill an inflatible mattres, but cannot drive the pistons down in a V-8.

Look, for all naysayers... why must you say never ever?

I am more than willing to believe that compressed air is capable of enough energy to move a car.

But then, many past inventions did what people thought was impossible... and this often occurs by eliminating inefficiencies in method.

As Edison once said, "I did not fail to invent the lightbulb 10,000 times, I merely found 10,000 ways NOT to build a lightbulb."

Aside from the naysaying... I haven't seen anything substantive concerning the compressed air engines. The videos are interesting, but I am wondering if it will come to market at all.

It may be it doesn't work. Or it may be that it works too WELL to ever be allowed to happen.

These would be my two guesses, if nothing comes of this.

I work with high pressure air and I can tell you that it is very powerful but it doesn't have any where near the potential energy released by the combustion of gas. It takes alot more than 1 psi to move a car with any kind of decent acceleration. You can't escape the laws of thermodynamics. Right now gasoline is the most economical form of stored potential energy. Hopefully with the lowering of the cost of solar cells and with improved energy density of ultracapacitors and super batteries, we can replace our gas tanks. Compressed air(gases) simply doesn't have anywhere near the same stored energy as gas even if you were to compress it to 300 atmospheres(4500 psi).

Why not try compairing air power to battery power (cost and weight). If compressed air is so hard to make, then why do we have air tools? The air that enters the engine can have extra energy added to it by heating it with any method except electrical as its indirect heating.

Batteries waste some of the input power and are very heavy, costly, toxic and will need to be replaced every so often. Charging a battery has the same charging source as air power, so if your against air power, your against battery power too.

The problem is not, where is the power coming from, its storage that will be energy dense enough and longterm. Untill ultra capacitors have the energy density of lithium ion, air tanks seem to be the best. Ultra capacitors can be cheap and almost non-toxic (mainly carbon nano structures) and can outlast batteries as its not a chemical reaction. Air tanks are alot more simple then drilling for oil or batteries.

Forget the battery question. Here's why compressed air isn't all that great an energy storage medium.

1 kilogram of compressed air at 300 bar(4500 psi) has .3 Megjoules of energy and will never get any better.

1 kilogram of gasoline has 42 megajoules of energy.

That's 140 times the energy density of compressed air.

4500 psi is the current practical limit of compressor technology. As you lose pressure, your energy density decreases exponentially.

Currently lithium battery technology's ED is .72MJ/kg and battery ED will only get better.

High pressure pnuematic systems are prone to leaks even under stationary conditions. Road and traveling vibrations will only aggravate these leaks.

Electric motors are more durable than airmotors. It only takes the finest particle to breach seals and again your efficiency will drop dramatically.
Air driven motors have their place but there simply not practically for typically hostile vehicle conditions.

With current technology, plug in hybrid electrics look like the best bet for the next 10-15 years barring a serious technology breakthrough.

Originally posted by crgintx

1 kilogram of compressed air at 300 bar(4500 psi) has .3 Megjoules of energy and will never get any better.

1 kilogram of gasoline has 42 megajoules of energy.

That's 140 times the energy density of compressed air.

How much of that energy gets lost due to heat, friction, efficiency (weight concerns for torque of the engine itself), etc?

DiPietro claims his enginse loses all friction at 1psi. Compressed air gets colder, so heat isn't a problem. And his engine wieghs under 15 pounds, and he's currently working on one that weighs less than 7 or 8 pounds. Compare that to a normal car engine (anywhere from 200 lbs to 600+ lbs), plus transmission, and fuel injection, and alternator, etc.

How is that more efficient than a motor that wieghs 7 lbs?!

I understand petrol has 'explosive' properties, but that's where the energy is released, and most of it is wasted though heat and the drive train. The DiPietro motors are connected DIRECTLY to each wheel.

And someone also said that air will never efficiently move a V-8 car engine...well duh! That's why there are the different motors!

4500 psi is the current practical limit of compressor technology. As you lose pressure, your energy density decreases exponentially.

Is that what turns air into liquid? They compresses Oxygen until it turns to liquid for rocket fuel. It's only out 4500 psi? (Asking becuas I really don't know )

Air driven motors have their place but there simply not practically for typically hostile vehicle conditions.

Right, no one is claiming that 1 single DiPietro motor will move a freight train. But one motor on each wheel of a small car (miada or similarly small and light-weight car) will move the car at speeds needed for high travel speeds (40-60 mph), and will be able to go very long distances (the French guy claims 200 km), and the fuel is practically free. That's the only issue here. We're not saying it's better than gas, just that air can be more efficient in certain vehices for certain people.

As stated in the 1st page Guy Nègre was the inventor of the air car. He has an interesting page.

Now, why does nobody want an air car. Because it don't weights 3 tons, don't has 4 LCD's in it to view DVD's, etc, etc...

I'ts now 10 years we have 3 litre/100km cars, yet no one buys them, bacause of the same problem, they are not two meters high and to meters large and 5 meters long and stuffed full of gadgets.

Originally posted by Arcane Demesne
You don't need a factory to compress air

Ok, what I am saying is, that you need to put more energy into compressing the air than you get out, and that energy is going to come from the burning of fossil fuels. Instead of your car spewing out co2, or the electric compressor at home, there's STILL a factory burning fossil fuels to create the electrical energy. You've simply moved the location of the pollution from the streets to the electrical factories.

Also, here: www.wapa.gov...
That's how free renewable energy CAN compress air.

You're not going to be able to have enough windmills compressing the air to service the needs of the country. Its not a viable alternative for the reason that wind power's allways not been a viable alternative, there isn't enough energy.

www.engineair.com.au...
There is no other motor as good as ours,[..]100% more efficiency than our competitor

It doesn't matter how efficient their engine is. It can make 100 percent use out of the energy stored in the compressed air, whereas a gas burning engine be half as efficient. Its irrelevant. THe question is, which takes more gas to operate. Because in the end, you are either going to burn gas to drive the car, or burn gas to drive the compressor to compress the air, and then expel the air to drive the car. It doesn't matter if they are more efficient at 'using' their compressed air than regular cars are at burning gas, they are far, far, far less efficient in that 'compressing the air' step, thats the killer.

You get 200km worth of air, for the cost of about $2.00 USD to completely fill up the tanks. And it only takes abotu 3 minutes to fill up. Do you people even read/watch the links before posting!?

You still need to burn the gasoline to compress the air in the first place.

What about solar energy that powerd a compressor directly into the engines

Then why not just run the car off the solar derived electrical energy?
And what happens at night?
And on cloudy days?

Here, a portable electric air compressor:

Perhaps you would car to consider, for a moment, where the electricity for that electric air compressor comes from?

www99.epinions.com...
Power Supply 120V AC

From a plug, in the wall, that connects to the electrical power grid, where the energy is generated by burning fossil fuels.

I understand petrol has 'explosive' properties, but that's where the energy is released, and most of it is wasted though heat and the drive train. The DiPietro motors are connected DIRECTLY to each wheel.

Yes, the engines make more efficient use of their fuel source than gas engines.
No, they are not more efficient for driving cars, because they still require more gas to be burned to compress the air in the first place.
IF there were large pockets of highly compressed air underneath the crust that we could tap, it'd be great. But there aren't, instead, that are large 'pockets' of fossil fuels that we can tap. The fuel is free. Compressed air has to be compressed in the first place, and then it can be consumed. Gas just has to be burned. Burning gas is a lot more efficient than burning gas to compress air and then trying to drive with that.

thecolddragon
Look, for all naysayers... why must you say never ever?

Because it is physically immpossible to get more energy out of something than you put into it. If you burn gas to compress air, and then release that air to do work, you will have burned more gas than if you burned gas to directly do the work.

I am more than willing to believe that compressed air is capable of enough energy to move a car.

Of course it can. That is beyond doubt. It, plainly, could work, heck it plainly does work. Its a neat idea. And the people that have made these devices have done a good job, it can work as well as any gasoline engine. Except that it creates far more pollution than a gasoline engine, and lowering pollution was the only reason to use it in the first place.

crgintx
[compressed air] doesn't have any where near the potential energy released by the combustion of gas.

It can have as much energy as you want it to.
A pound of lead is just as heavy as a pound of feathers. The energy to move a piston/rotary with gas is the same amount of energy to move a piston/rotary with compressed air.
There's nothing wrong with compressed air as a fuel source, except that we have to burn gasoline to get it in the first place. Thats the problem. Fossil fuels are great because they've already been made.

Hopefully with the lowering of the cost of solar cells and with improved energy density of ultracapacitors and super batteries, we can replace our gas tanks.

Its not the expense of solar cells that is holding them back. They simply won't make enough electrical energy consistently enough to be used to power cars.

1 kilogram of compressed air at 300 bar(4500 psi) has .3 Megjoules of energy and will never get any better.
1 kilogram of gasoline has 42 megajoules of energy.

Indeed. BUT, you could, conceivable, compress the air to whatever psi you wanted to make it have an equivalent number of joules.

revelmonk
Obviously if it was not a more technically feasible solution than a gasoline engine, then they would not be making it.

What makes you say that??? People build crap all the time. Notice, no one is buying it. Thats a better indicator that its no good than the mere fact that some one built it.

Either way, you don't need to work up any numbers. IT doesn't matter if you use compressed air or batteries, you've still got to 'fill it' with energy. And its physically immpossible to get more or the same amount of energy out of the compressed air than you put into compressing it.
So that means you need to burn even MORE fossil fuel to have the air compressed, than you'd otherwise burn if the cars just burned fossil fuel on their own.

neforemore
My name is down for one of these when they become commercially available in the UK.

If we replaced every gas car with one of these, we'd have a much worse pollution problem than we have now. Electrical cars, compressed air cars, anything like that, they do nothing to reduce fossil fuel consumption, they simply change it from dilute emissions on the roads, to concentrated emissions at the power plants.

howmuchisthedoggy
Gasoline powered cars which while the engine is running charge the compressed air tank. Then you switch to air power in the built up areas.

That wouldn't work though, just like with hybrid electric cars, you'd have to 'refill' the 'main alternative fuel' storage compartment. Any 'work' that you'd get out of the engine would be more efficiently used to drive the car, rather than to compress air and the use that to drive the car. They said that, while braking, you can get some compression of air, but, just like with electric cars, you can't get all the energy back from a long drive with a little bit of braking.

mazzroth
what if you used a compressor driven by the natural gas

You'd be better off having cars running on natural gas, rather than using a lot of it to compress some gas and get a little bit of driving out of it.

lonegunman
If you did you would realize it is beyond your current scope of understanding.

Then perhaps you'd best explain it for the rest of us.

The article is talking about an engine that basically uses the release of compressed air to work the piston, and thus drive the engine and car.

It is a rotary, and I know how they work and this is the perfect concept for a compressed air engine.

So what? Either way its less efficient to compress the air and then release it to get energy out of it, far better to just burn less fuel in the first place.

DYepes
I think if gasoline were to dissapear tomorrow, millions of people would be out of work worldwide, and this industry does not seem like it would create enough jobs to fill the gap.

If we don't have fossil fuels, then you can't get the electrical energy to compress the air in the first place.

spacedoubt
Each individual "air station" can be powered on-site. By Sunshine, windpower, and other emergency sources, like methane, or Ethanol.

We cannot harness enough sunlight to be able to perform this function. On sunny days. Let alone on cloudy days. Or at night. Same with wind. And if we are burning methane or ethanol to compress the gas, we come back to the same problem, why not just burn the fossil fuel to run the engine directly, instead of wasting so much of it to compress the gas?

Toadmund
I am sure a windmill can be made to compress air if the mechanical advantage was right, a big windmill connected to a tiny piston pumping air into a tank is feasable IMO.

We can not harvest enough wind energy to do this. ITs the very reason why we have coal and oil burning electrical power plants instead of wind plants. We can't harvest enough of it effectively enough, nor steadily enough to make this workable.

some of the braking power can be used to re-pressurize the tank instead. The compressing air can be used as a brake, perhaps it can be used for most of the braking power?

Think about it. IF you are using compressed air to brake, and also compressing air by braking, even given a perfect transmission of energy, you're only getting back what you expend, IOW, you're not getting anythign back. ANd in reality, you are going to have to simply loose most of what you put into braking, and only gain back a tiny amount.
And that only makes the braking aspect unworkably ineffecient, let alone actually driving the car.
Also, i beleive that the article mentions recovering what it can while braking. Electric cars do the same thing.

looofo
Now, why does nobody want an air car

Because they're are worse for the environment than gas burning cars. You will burn more gas to compress the air than you would just using it to drive the car on its own.

Originally posted by TheColdDragon
I am more than willing to believe that compressed air is capable of enough energy to move a car.

Believe all you want, it won't happen. LOL! BELIEVE, lol!

As Edison once said, "I did not fail to invent the lightbulb 10,000 times, I merely found 10,000 ways NOT to build a lightbulb."

Who cares? Edison is dead..

Aside from the naysaying... I haven't seen anything substantive concerning the compressed air engines.

Exactly. There is nothing to corroborate the idea that these compressed air engines are worht a damn.

The videos are interesting

Wow, so is my girlfriend

, but I am wondering if it will come to market at all.

I've been thinking the same thing.lol

Or it may be that it works too WELL to ever be allowed to happen.

Yeah, because people hate effeciency at low costs.

Nygdan, your response beat me to the punch on the issue of the energy needed to compress air.

The one thing I would like to comment on is that of efficiency. I know that we could use the energy that we get out of the ground or receive from the sun much more effeciently than we are now. Within a few years the idea of sitting at stoplight idling will be a quaint thing of the past. We've reached the practical enginneering limit of 12V technology and will likely switch to 36-42 vdc to run all the electric devices and motors that will inhabit automobiles. The piston engine will like lose many of the parts like timing belts,chains, and camshafts. They'll likely be replaced by electronic valve actuators. These devices will control your engine instead of the throttle butterfly. The starter and alterator will likely become one device. The radiator will likely go away as engines blocks will become made of metal matrix materials. These materials will actually become stronger when at operating temperature. You may have a water jacket around the exhaust manifold to provide heat for your microheat pump air conditioning system.

The body panels and window glass will have built in solar cells to keep the engine warm and the batteries/ultracapacitors for the traction motors charged while the car is parked. The only mechanical brake on the vehicle will be the automatically actuated parking brake. Regenerative brakes will be the norm. At freeway speed of 200 kph, your car will have a suspension and body panels to make it more aerodynamic.

You might actually own your car but it's more likely that you'll order your car from a cooperative to get the exact vehicle that meets your needs. You'll actually only pay for the miles you use. It will drive itself to your door and more than likely drive you to work. Traffic fines are unheard of because you can order your vehicle to get your destination in 3 modes: economy, optimum, and max speed.

Our current models of transportation and logistics infrastructure is about to be turned on its head.