Does anyone know if they will begin selling the compressed air car in the US?

Question

It doesn't use gas, costs $10,000 for the car, $16,000 for the minivan, has a 70 pound aluminum compressed air engine, goes 68 mph, has a 129 mile range, and cost less than $2.00 to charge the carbon fiber air tanks up to 4300(?) psi. You can get a pv panel to charge it up in the parking lot if it is sunny.

Answer 1

should be out this century

Answer 2

The energy density of gasoline is about 400 times as much as air compressed to 4000 psi. If a tank of gas takes you 400 miles, a tank of compressed air will take you one. A gasoline engine is not very efficient. If they can triple the efficiency, triple the size of the air tank and increase the pressure by a factor of 40, they might have something.
It is going to be a while.

Answer 3

It's sold in India as a bus...the body design is made up of glued panels to lower costs...would not meet safety standards in the US. Generally considered a short range commuter vehicle for urban settings. If the company could find a production partner in the US to meet safety isuues, it could be sold here. It still has drawbacks to being truly "green" in that it transfers power requirement to a coal fired power plant....PV charging would negate that factor.
http://green.yahoo.com/blog/ecogeek/66/air-car-ready-for-mass-production.html

Answer 4

Air engine

An air engine or air motor is a device for converting potential energy from compressed air into kinetic energy to drive other machines. As in a steam engine, expansion of externally supplied pressurized gas performs work against one or more pistons or rotors to move wheels or other tools.

The most recent development uses pressurized air as fuel in an engine invented by Guy Nègre, a French engineer. A similar concept is currently being developed by Uruguayan engineer Armando Regusci, Australian Angelo Di Pietro, South Korea Chul-Seung Cho, and more recently, Kernelys' K'Airmobiles Compressed air vehicles. Despite interest in the technology, no company has yet put a vehicle using this technology into mass production. A successful vehicle would offer many of the advantages of a battery electric vehicle without the need for heavy and potentially toxic batteries, which take hours to recharge instead of the few minutes required to refill the tanks for an air engine.
Contents
[hide]

* 1 History
* 2 Engine design
* 3 Advantages
* 4 Disadvantages
* 5 Uses of air engine
* 6 Compressed air as an energy carrier
o 6.1 Energy density and efficiency
o 6.2 Safety
o 6.3 Technical boundaries
* 7 See also
* 8 External links

[edit] History

The air engine and its idea of using air as an energy carrier is not new. Air has been used since the 19th century to power mine locomotives, and has been the basis of naval torpedo propulsion since 1866. Compressed air is still currently used in racecars to provide the initial energy needed to start the car's main power plant, the internal combustion engine (ICE).

In 1991 the inventor Guy Nègre started MDI, and invented a dual-energy engine, capable of running on both compressed air and regular fuel. From this moment on he managed to create a compressed air only-engine, and improved his design to make it more powerful. In the 15 years he's been working on this engine, considerable progress has been made: the engine is now claimed to be competitive with modern ICEs. It is probably still not as powerful as an ICE (although depending on which model of air engine vs model ICE). Proponents claim that this is of little importance since the car can simply be made lighter, or the tanks be put on a higher pressure, pushing the engine to above a comparable ICE-engine.

Other people that have been working on the idea of compressed air vehicles, among them Armando Regusci, Angelo Di Pietro, Tony Salvino, and Chul-Seung Cho. They too have companies, Regusci's RegusciAir, Di Pietro's EngineAir[1] and Chul-Seung Cho's Energine, selling their engines. Tony Salvino, however is a high school student who is pursuing a more efficient engine.

In 2008 Tata Motors plan on producing CityCAT that is powered by an air engine.[2][3]

Also since 2007, K'Airmobiles looks at commercialing some urban and leisure VPP vehicles (Vehicles with Pneumatic Propulsion) and tries to gain partnerships and sponsors. Their goals appears to be individual transport and taxi-bikes as the projects proposed on the site are mainly made of a motor-bike and trikes (with 1 to 3 seats).

[edit] Engine design

It uses the expansion of compressed air to drive the pistons in a modified piston engine. Efficiency of operation is gained through the use of environmental heat at normal temperature to warm the otherwise cold expanded air from the storage tank. This non-adiabatic expansion has the potential to greatly increase the efficiency of the machine. The only exhaust gas is cold air (−15 °C), which may also be used for air conditioning in a car. The source for air is a pressurized carbon-fiber tank holding air at around 20 MPa (3,000 psi, 200 bar). Air is delivered to the engine via a rather conventional injection system. Unique crank design within the engine increases the time during which the air charge is warmed from ambient sources and a two stage process allows improved heat transfer rates.

Armando Regusci's version of the air engine has several advantages over the original Nègre design. In the original Nègre air engine, one piston compresses air from the atmosphere, holding it on a small container that feeds the high pressure air tanks with a small amount of air. Then that portion of the air is sent to the second piston where it works. During compression for heating it up, there is a loss of energy due to the fact that it cannot receive energy from the atmosphere as the atmosphere is less warm than it. Also, it has to expand as it has the crank. Nègre's engine works with constant torque, and the only way to change the torque to the wheels is to use a pulley transmission of constant variation, losing some efficiency. In Regusci's version, the transmission system is direct to the wheel, and has variable torque from zero to the maximum, enhancing efficiency. When vehicle is stopped, Guy Nègre's engine has to be on and working, losing energy, while the Regusci's version need not.

In July 2004, Guy Nègre abandoned his original design, and showed later a new design that he stated to have invented in year 2001, but his new design is identical to the Armando Regusci's air engine which was patented back in 1989 (Uruguay) with the patent number 22976, and back in 1990 (Argentina). In those same patents, it is mentioned the use of electrical motors to compress air in the tanks.

Besides the compressed air engine designs by Regusci, Nègre, and EngineAir, the Quasiturbine is also capable of running on compressed air, and is thus also a compressed air engine.

[edit] Advantages

The principle advantages for an air powered vehicle are:

* Fast recharge time
* Very low self-discharge (most batteries will deplete their charge without external load at a rate determined by the chemistry, design, and size, while compressed gas storage will have an extremely low leakage rate)
* Long storage lifetime device (electric vehicle batteries have a limited useful number of cycles, and sometimes a limited calendar lifetime, irrespective of use). This means that batteries are in operation much more expensive than compressed air engines, and are more pollutant because of the fact that a lot more pollutant material needs to be used (typical car batteries are made from sulphuric acids and lead).
* Potentially lower initial cost than battery electric vehicles when mass produced.
* Expansion of the compressed air reduces its temperature and heat from the passenger compartment may be cooled using a heat exchanger, providing both hot weather air conditioning and increased efficiency.
* Zero pollutant emissions from the vehicle itself.

[edit] Disadvantages

Having solved most of the high pressure storage and handling problems, the main remaining disadvantages are related to the thermodynamics of air compression and expansion, the consequent temperature changes, and the resultant heat transfers.

* At the supply station, compressing the air heats it, and if then directly transferred in a heated state to the vehicle storage tanks will then cool and reduce the pressure. If cooled before transfer, the energy in this heat will be lost unless sophisticated low grade heat utilization is employed (see cogeneration).
* Within the vehicle, expansion and consequent pressure reduction in the throttle or engine chills the air, reducing its effective pressure. Addition of ambient heat will increase this pressure and this addition leads to a more complex propulsion system. While an attempt was made in the Nègre system to warm the air in a long portion of the stroke at top dead center, it appears that this scheme has been abandoned due to inherent imbalances causing unacceptable levels of vibration.
* Passenger compartment heating is more difficult since the propulsion system does not provide a source of waste heat. Some form of heat pump device would probably be required.

[edit] Uses of air engine

Further information: Air car and Eolo Car

The Nègre engine is used to power an urban car with room for five passengers and a projected range of about 160 to 320 km (100 to 200 miles) [citation needed], depending on traffic conditions. The main advantages are: no roadside emissions, low cost technology, engine uses food oil for lubrication (just about 1 liter, changes only every 50,000 km (30,000 miles) ) and integrated air conditioning. Range could be quickly tripled[citation needed], since there are already carbon fiber tanks which have passed safety standards holding gas at 70 MPa (10,000 lbf/in²) .

The tanks may be refilled in about three minutes at a service station[citation needed], or in a few hours at home plugging the car into the electric grid via an on-board compressor. The cost of driving such car is projected around €0.75 per 100 km, with a complete refill at the "tank-station" at about US$3.

Small single cylinder engines are also incorporated into small toy flying airplane models.

[edit] Compressed air as an energy carrier

[edit] Energy density and efficiency

Ideal air compression and expansion is described by the isothermal process. Compressing air however heats it up and expanding it cools it down. Therefore practical air engines require heat exchangers in order to avoid excessively high or low temperatures and even so don't reach ideal constant temperature conditions. Nevertheless it is useful to describe the maximum energy storable using the isothermal case, which works out to about 110 ln{\frac{P_A}{P_B}} kJ/Nm3 at 24°Celsius. A Nm3 is a cubic meter of gas volume at normal, i.e. atmospheric pressure conditions. Thus if 1.0 m3 of ambient air is very slowly compressed into a 5-liter bottle at 200 bar, the potential energy stored is 583 kJ (or 0.16 kWh). A highly efficient air motor could transfer this into kinetic energy if it runs very slowly and manages to expand the air from its initial 200 bar pressure completely down to 1 bar (bottle completely "empty" at ambient pressure). This is practically impossible and if the bottle is emptied down to 10 bar, the energy extractable is about 330 kJ. The efficiency of isothermal compressed gas storage is theoretically 100% but in practice the process is not isothermal and the two engines (compressor and motor) have various losses.

A standard 200 bar 5 liter steel bottle has a mass of 7.5 kg, a superior one 5 kg. Bottles reinforced with or built from high-tensile fibers can be below 2 kg in this size, always regarding legal safety codes. Thus we get energy densities from roughly 75 up to 300 kJ/kg. Ordinary steel bottles thus have about the same energy density as lead-acid batteries and advanced fiber-reinforced bottles that of superior electrochemical storage batteries. However, modern batteries provide almost their full energy at a nearly constant voltage, whereas the pressure of compressed air storage varies greatly. It is technologically difficult for air engines to maintain high efficiency and sufficient power values over such pressure swings.

The advantage of compressed air over electric storage is the longer lifetime of pressure vessels compared to batteries and the lower toxicity of the materials used. However for this to count, air engines must become as light, efficient and cheap as available electric motors. Compressed air tanks can also be charged more safely than those with inflammable fuels. For example, grocery store parking spaces could be fitted with pressure hoses, thus not requiring large central stations.

As with electric technology, it must be stressed that compressed air is only an energy vector therefore can only be as clean as its source. However, even as an energy carrier it will still provide adequate power even by compare to petroleum based fuels like gasoline.

[edit] Safety

As with most technologies, compressed air has safety concerns, mainly the catastrophic rupture of the tank. Rigid safety codes make this a rare occurrence at the cost of weight: codes may require the working pressure to less than 40% of the rupture pressure for steel bottles and less than 20% for fiber-wound bottles. High pressure bottles are fairly strong so that they stay unruptured in crashes, but if a failure does occur, a violent explosion could result. Therefore it is important how the bottles fracture and how well the fragments can be contained.

[edit] Technical boundaries

For practical application to transportation, several technical problems must be first addressed:

* As the pressurised air expands, it is cooled, which limits the efficiency (see combined gas law). This cooling reduces the amount of energy that can be recovered by expansion, so practical engines apply ambient heat to increase the expansion available.
* Conversely, the compression of the air by pumps (to pressurize the tanks) will heat the air. If this heat is not recovered it represents a further loss of energy and so reduces efficiency.
* Storage of air at high pressure requires strong containers, which if not made of exotic materials will be heavy, reducing vehicle efficiency, while exotic materials (such as carbon fiber composites) tend to be expensive.
* Energy recovery in a vehicle during braking by compressing air also generates heat, which must be conserved for efficiency.
* It should be noted that the air engine is not necessarily emission-free, since the power to compress the air initially may produce emissions at the point of generation. However such emissions from the power to compress the air initially would be far less than the emissions from gasoline powered cars and trucks already on the streets.

[edit] See also

* Compressed air torpedo
* Air car
* Eolo Car
* City car
* Compressed air vehicles
* Battery electric vehicle
* Liquid nitrogen economy
* Pneumatics
* Quasiturbine
* Zero-emissions vehicle
* Alternative fuel

[edit] External links

* English K'Airmobiles site
* French K'Airmobiles site
* Main MDI site
* English MDI site
* ZevCAT, a company selling MDI-cars
* Energine, a South Korean company developing Pneumatic Hybrid Electric Car
* Movie of Discovery Channel's Science Channel on the air car
* Times Of India Article- "Air-fulled car catches Tata's gust of wind"
* RegusciAir Club Company site
* Pneumatic Options (general resource with history, photos, comprehensive external links)
* How Stuff Works Air Car article
* How to convert hook up your air engine to the chassis (originally for electric engines)
* Korean Air Car/Electric vehicle
* Air engines used to power mine locomotives, and might today be used again to power locomotives
* Angelo Di Pietro rotary air-engine design
* The rotary piston array machine

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Type 41 engine
Compressed Air Engines



More than ten years of research and development in the field of Compressed Air Technology (CAT) has yielded CATs Type-41 engines of two categories. The Mono-Energy engines, which can drive a vehicle “completely clean” with “zero pollution”, operating in urban areas using compressed air only. Whereas, the Dual-Energy engines, using supplementary energy source of minimum quantity of either fossil fuels (petrol, diesel or LPG) or biofuels (vegetable oil, alcohol, biodiesel or even gas), producing ultra-low level of pollution, in non-urban or rural areas, require :

- Less than 2 litres per 100 kilometres (over 140 miles per gallon) in non-urban areas.
- Zero Nitrogen Oxides.
- Three to 4000 times less un-burnt hydrocarbon than a conventional car engine.
- Three times less Carbon Dioxide emission than a conventional car engine of same power.

Based on this new Technology, MDI is now in the process of developing a “thermodynamic concept” that will enhance these results even further, over the next ten years, thus initiating a genuine energy revolution.

The MDI Engines are protected by many patents registered worldwide. They consist of an active chamber and are made up of modules of two opposing cylinders. These modules can be coupled to make groups of 4 or 6 cylinders for a wide range of uses from 4 to 75 hp in the following applications :

MDI CityCATs and MiniCATs Clean Cars
The MDI MultiCATs Urban Transport System
Electricity Power Generators and Emergency Generators
Tow Tractors, Pallet Trucks and Hoists
Agricultural Tractors
Outboard Motors
Light Aircraft Engines and APU units

MDI also intends to continue developing high-power engines (200 hp and above) for buses and trucks.



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