What would be the downside of an air powered car?

When I saw it on a science show it made so much sense I am wondering why there isn't huge development in them. The benefits are:(1) The fuel is air.(2) There is no combustion, so no loss efficiency in the from of heat...well some, friction.(3) Very little adjustment by current infrastructure...add a air compressor to existing gas stations.(3) Can be fuled at home.(4) Anyone could sell "fuel", because it's air..just need a compressor. I didn't believe it till I saw the working model, which they said had a 200 mile range.

My one concern since I live in a cold climate is how you would heat the car, since it does not have all that (wasted mostly) heat that a internal combustion engine generates. A small gas powered engine maybe just for when heat is needed or possibly a propane heater? Asked by TimLahr 46 months ago Similar questions: downside air powered car Transportation > Automotive.

Similar questions: downside air powered car.

Very high compression required Well, I'm not an engineer or physicist, but what little I read about the compressed air car (one being commercially tried in India soon, I believe) cites a 4000psi number. This is an alarming number. Consider: 1) leak danger - a leak in a 600psi compressed air tank will saw a wooden broomstick in half.

This necessitates high pressure fittings, etc. , but any breaches to the safety precautions at 4000psi will likely penetrate any safety measures into the passenger cabin or out the exterior of the vehicle. 2) catastrophic accident - unfortunately auto collisions are still a part of modern life. A serious collision that ruptures or breaches the integrity of this kind of pressure would be ugly in the extreme.

3) energy necessary to compress air to this psi - This is where our engineer friends can comment more specifically, but it occurs to this layman that there's no free lunch. It's going to require some outlay of energy to compress the air to this degree (which has to come from somewhere). And won't air compressed to this psi raise the air chamber's temperature to some ungodly level?

Which means metal expansion will need to be accommodated, which means (without the benefit of continual combustion) the temperature will eventually drop as pressure drops, which means metal will contract...get what I mean? This isn't to imply I'm a naysayer - the internal combustion engine we have today is the product of countless iterations and fixes, and I assume this new technology will require the same if it proves to have legs. Hope that helps some, best to you.

It's always vaporware, literallu There's an awful lot of energy wasted in compressing the gas, which gets very hot. It's possible to reclaim some of that heat, say with a Stirling engine, but that requires infrastructure, and probably can't be done at home. There's more energy wasted while driving.

The decompressed gas is very cold, and that cold is hard to use because you're driving. The pressures involved are insanely high, at least 400 atmospheres. The storage tanks must not only hold that, without losing it, but also withstand crashes.

That's not just any compressor we're talking about, to produce that kind of pressure. Air is not the fuel. Air is the working fluid.

You still need to provide fuel, though it's a lot more flexible than using petroleum as both the fuel and working fluid as in an internal combustion engine. I've found that most articles on compressed air cars badly overstate the top speed and range. The power density of compressed air is poor, compared to gasoline, at practical pressures.

I've been seeing these articles for years; they're always from small inventors and they never materialize. People will always claim it's because the technology is being suppressed, but in fact the practice is rarely as rosy as their initial theories. I wouldn't worry about the heat.

There's power in the compressed air, and it can be used to run the heater. Stick a dynamo around the drive train and let it power your battery to run your radio and a heater. There probably is a place for compressed-air cars, especially in cities where you don't have to drive very far or very fast, or haul a lot of stuff.It might even make a commuting vehicle.

Add a regenerative-braking system and you can deal with the stop-and-go traffic of a city far more effectively than a gas engine. This sort of thing comes up every few months, and the nerds over at Slashdot rehash the same arguments about it. The link below will take you to one example, which is essentially the same as all of the others.

Sources: science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/0... .

Power Some of the statements you made I believe are incorrect. (1) The fuel is air. Not quite true.

The energy transfer medium is air. Air by itself won't power anything except maybe a sailboat. The energy expended in the engine comes from compressed air (PV=nRT).

The energy went in when the air was compressed. (2) There is no....... Heat is generated in the motor that compresses the air. When the air is releases the tank cools.

All the air compressor is is an energy storage device like batteries. The main problem with using air is that you can't store as much energy as you can with batteries and other storage devices like flywheels and hydrolic accumulators. Having said all that, for the record I am not against air cars I just think they have their limitations.

You notice that no one has made an air powered 18 wheeled tractor trailor that can haul 50,000 lbs of cargo. You know all of these alternative energy ideas were brought up during the gas crisis in the early '70s. You notice none of them are widely avaliable now..

Not gonna happen Not gonna happen. A little arithmetic shows that a 60-liter tank of air compressed to 6000PSI will only drive a car about a half-mile. Plus compressing air is inefficient-- look at the fans and heat-sinks on the compressors.

Compressing air heats it up, making it want to expand and making it harder to push into a storage tank. Then as the tank cools you lose more energy.

Inefficiency Compressed air can be used to power all kinds of things. I have a small air compressor and a few air-powered tools. The problem comes from the heat that is wasted when you compress the air.

Boyle's laws tell us that when you compress a gas, it heats up. In an air compressor, that heat is bled off through cooling vanes on the cylinder sleeves - take a look at a good-sized air compressor, and you'll see them. All of the energy that goes into heating the air as it's compressed just bleeds away into the atmosphere, and is unrecoverable for power.To recharge an air-powered car at home, you'd need a compressor - a pretty hefty one - that would run off your AC power.

You can do much better by using the same energy to charge a storage battery, and that's really where the future of automotive science lies. Once we solve the problem of storage capacity vs. weight and usable life, we'll have plug-in electric cars that are supplemented by a small, fossil-fuel engine. Just google for the Chevrolet Volt, and you can see what I'm talking about.

...unless -- you are talking about a vehicle that uses the air itself for fuel? I can't think of any chemical process by which this would be possible. Air contains a good deal of oxygen, but you have to combine it with something to make energy.

There is a kind of battery, called a zinc-air battery that's used for hearing aids, but it doesn't extract energy from the air itself. Sources: Memories of physics and chemistry classes..

Is there any downside to archos 605 since all i've heard are positive comments and reviews. " "Try this for a solution to spurring the economy. I'm looking for the downside, so feel free to criticize" "Another oversimplified environmental question...why don't we have a water powered car?" "Automotive repair shop has had my car way too long....Help..." "Do you use nitrogen in your car tires?

Is it really better than using air? " "is there a downside to getting too big of a computer power supply?" "Does using your air-conditioning in the Car use up gasoline? " "GINSENG... is there a downside to drinking lots of beverages that contain ginseng?

" "How often should I change my car air compressor oil?" "How much does a gas-powered remote control car cost?

Is there any downside to archos 605 since all i've heard are positive comments and reviews.

Try this for a solution to spurring the economy. I'm looking for the downside, so feel free to criticize.

Automotive repair shop has had my car way too long....Help...

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.