HOLD ON, NELLIE! We're about to make light-speed!
Posted on 02/22/2005 3:21:25 PM PST by goldstategop
These are no ordinary cars. Power comes from fresh air stored in reinforced carbon-fiber tanks beneath the chassis. Air is compressed to 4,500 pounds per square inch — about 150 times the pressure of the typical car tire. The air is fed into four cylinders where it expands, driving specially designed pistons. About 25 horsepower is generated.
Though technical problems are being worked out, company officials say the car is capable of 70 mph and a 120-mile range under normal city conditions, performance that is comparable to electric cars.
Critics say the car has had trouble living up to its range projections. But company officials say they are trying to overcome that by warming the stored air.
Recharging the onboard tanks takes about four hours using the car's small compressor, which can be plugged into any wall outlet. Gas stations equipped with special air pumps can replenish the tanks in about three minutes. Company officials say the oil only needs to be changed every 31,000 miles.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Where does the energy come to compress the air? Oh, I forgot ... it comes out of the wall, where there's a limitless supply.
(Denny Crane: "There are two places to find the truth. First God and then Fox News.")
1) Since when can 25 horse power generate 70 mph over a minute period, dead stop to 70 mph....hell, I'll give them 2 minutes.
2) No energy used.....but you must plug the compressor into a wall socket........Lie...energy used, for 4 hours by the way.
3) What kind of load can it carry? This is kind of important, especially if you have some one like me that knows things like trigonometry, physics, and chemistry. I'm not your average reader Mr. "reporter".
Moral of the story, don't believe a thing a "reporter" writes about science, he has an agenda, not an analytic mind.
I'll tell you one thing, if I'm behind one of these little fart wagons at a stop light in my Silverado, they'd better move or I'll be picking them out of my tires at the next car wash.
Well, it can work there is not question about that.
I think the range issue will be impossible to overcome though. Unless you want to drive a Yugo sized vehicle with a tank the size of a semi truck behind you.
They will have to compress the air in a normal sized tank so much, it will simply be looked upon as too dangerous to operate on any road.
What's the pressure in a .38spl cartridge?
HOLD ON, NELLIE! We're about to make light-speed!
Yup, and you seen what happened to Jaws.
I've always wanted to ride a balloon I've blown up.
Only the French could come up with something that is literally more filled with hot air than they air.
Not suspected my friend...it is a fact. USS Thresher went down PRECISELY for that reason. I have read the then classified, now de-classified report. No backup systems on the early nukes.....
"No need for A/C, as that compressed air coming out is going to be cold"
Actually compressed air is hot !
How do you think a diesel engine gets fuel ignition inside its cylinders? Super heated air achieved through very high compression.
Wow!
And you could attach a compressor turbine to the wheels and compress the air as you drive! Amazing!
(Second law...I don't need no stinking second law)
I guess they feed it beans........
Why dont they fill the thing with pure oxygen and then get into a fender bender and see what happens?
All this thing is, is a steam engine running on high pressure air. Why dont they simply make it a steam car? The steam cars ran on about as much pressure as what is in a tire and ran better than any internal combustion engine car made.
Ain't no free lunch. I could figure out the volume of tank required to do this and the amount of power required to pump it up, etc. etc. Common sense says why waste the time. If 25 HP and limited range is acceptable, just use a tiny gasoline engine/battery hybrid such as already available. At that power level, 100 MPG should be no problem, plus it can run on ethanol made from crabgrass mush, or biodiesel recovered from the MacDonald's grease tank.
A 4500 PSI air tank will in fact impersonate a rocket engine if the cap gets knocked off. Probably no worse than a gasoline explosion in total damage, just that it will kill somebody in the next county instead of at the wreck site.
Reminds me of something that was seriously suggested in a Popular Mechanics magazine about 30 years ago. Guy wanted to run a pipe to the bottom of the ocean where the pressure is very high, put a turbine in the middle of it, and generate power from the water that would rush up the pipe to the relatively low pressure at the surface.
Everybody should be required to study Mechanical Engineering for a minimum of 2 years before being allowed to even talk about alternate technologies.
Isn't 4500 PSI about what we see in SCUBA tanks?
I would think it would take a hell of a valve to be trustworthy enough to hold back 4500 PSI from blowing your lungs to smithereens. I am no authority on SCUBA but that would be a hell of a lot of pressure.
Actually, it's a bit more. SCUBA tanks typically hold about 3000 PSI, although there are a few that can go up to 4000. Carbon fiber tanks are too bouyant for diving. They are mostly used by firefighters and paintballers.
The act of compressing air will increase its temperature. The air would not stay at elevated temperatures for terribly long, though. Most likely the compressor use some means to cool it before putting it in the tank (since the heat energy the air contains is at that point worse than useless).
The act of uncompressing air will cool it quite significantly. Actually, the one useful application I could see for a compressed air tank would be as an air conditioner for an electric car. I wonder how much air would be required.
Is the shotgun rider a bit of French engineering, too? Yowzser!
I know oxy tanks for torches are around 3000psi
.38 special operates around 25000psi, 40 s&w at around 35000psi
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