Compressed-Air Car Nears Trial 173
DeviceGuru writes "Air France and KLM have announced plans to conduct a six-month trial of a new zero-emission, compressed-air powered vehicle. The AirPod seats three, can do 28 mph, and goes about 135 miles on a tank of compressed air. Motor Development International, the vehicle's developer, expects the AirPod to reach production by mid-2009, and to sell for around 6,000 Euro. Initially, it will be manufactured in India by Tata Motors, and distributed in France and India."
Brrr. (Score:2, Insightful)
Parts of this thing will get fucking cold. Just imagine all the heat lost when the compressed air is let to cool down.
Oh well, not like I care about the environment or anything.
Re:Brrr. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parts of this thing will get fucking cold.
In India thats a feature.
Re:AirPod (Score:5, Insightful)
How much energy is required to run the compressor to fill the high pressure air cylinders?
Obviously more than you get out of the drive line at the other end of the system. Compressed air does lose lot of energy to heat.
In fact calculating energy loss would almost be a textbook example in thermodynamics.
Re:28 MPH is not fast enough for realistic street. (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know about the US, but most European cities have speed limits of 50 km/h (around 31 mph), so it's not that far of.
Actually, I would not mind this type of car getting popular, since it would lower the air and noise pollution in crammed cities quite considerably.
Re:AirPod (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:28 MPH is not fast enough for realistic street. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:AirPod (Score:5, Insightful)
Which can be dealt with more effectively than it can on each car.
Re:28 MPH is not fast enough for realistic street. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:It's a what now? (Score:4, Insightful)
Uh, no. It's not a heat engine, because heat is not causing expansion. In fact, as you point out, as it expands, it cools. This actually robs power from the engine! If the engine were to be heated somehow, it would probably be substantially more efficient. It is no more accurate to describe MDI's air engine as a "heat engine" than to describe a single pneumatic cylinder being driven by a compressor and used to do work as a "heat engine" - or by extension, a hydraulic cylinder. (Saying that liquids "don't compress" is a simplification of real-world physics, after all.) The heat is A) a byproduct of the gas compression problem, B) is not used to do work, and C) does not increase overall anyway. You don't actually increase heat energy when you compress a gas, aside from the wasted energy converted to heat by the compressor. You increase temperature, but only because you've put more mass into the same space. The heat per unit of mass does not change and that is why this is not a heat engine.
Re:28 MPH is not fast enough for realistic street. (Score:3, Insightful)
Still, it's a cool idea, especially if you build something like an exercise-bike powered air compressor. If filling the whole tank this way is too much work, you could use it to put a few psi in the tank.
Re:28 MPH is not fast enough for realistic street. (Score:3, Insightful)
You have concisely outlined here why oil is such a fantastic energy source. The stored potential energy in a tank of fuel is enormous, the ease by which it is transported is unprecedented in all our technology.
Fancy alternatives all fail at these incredibly important factors which add up to why we use oil. Personally I believe the best solution to our dirty energy problems is to make carbon neutral oil and use that. Its energy intensive to do but oil is so damn useful, and to hell with the current fads.