Air Cars

Air Cars, compressed air cars - alternative fuel cars

Compressed air cars are the alternative fuel car that use a motor powered by compressed air. The cars can be powered solely by air, or combined (as in a hybrid electric vehicle) with gasoline/diesel/ethanol or electric plant and regenerative braking.
A compressed-air vehicle is powered by an air engine, using compressed air, which is stored in a tank. Instead of mixing fuel with air and burning it in the engine to drive pistons with hot expanding gases, air car use the expansion of compressed air to drive their pistons.

The compressed air car has been mentioned in Easy Mechanicz as being the true car of tomorrow, with a range comparable to an electric vehicle or fuel-cell car. The hybrid version with gasoline/diesel/ethanol would not offer zero emissions at the tailpipe, while the compressed air/electric version would.

Air Cars Advantages

Compressed-air cars are comparable in many ways to electric vehicles, but use compressed air to store the energy instead of batteries. Their potential advantages over other vehicles include:

• Much like electrical vehicles, air powered vehicles would ultimately be powered through the electrical grid. Which makes it easier to focus on reducing pollution from one source, as opposed to the millions of vehicles on the road.
• Transportation of the fuel would not be required due to drawing power off the electrical grid. This presents significant cost benefits. Pollution created during fuel transportation would be eliminated.
• Compressed air technology reduces the cost of vehicle production by about 20%, because there is no need to build a cooling system, fuel tank, spark plugs or silencers.
• Air, on its own, is non-flammable.
• High torque for minimum volume.
• The mechanical design of the engine is simple and robust.
• Low manufacture and maintenance costs as well as easy maintenance.
• Compressed-air tanks can be disposed of or recycled with less pollution than batteries.
• Compressed-air vehicles are unconstrained by the degradation problems associated with current battery systems.
• The tank may be able to be refilled more often and in less time than batteries can be recharged, with re-fueling rates comparable to liquid fuels.
• Lighter vehicles would mean less abuse on roads. Resulting in longer lasting roads.
• The price of fueling air powered vehicles will be significantly cheaper than current fuels.

Air Cars Disadvantages

Like the modern car and most household appliances, the principal disadvantage is the indirect use of energy. Energy is used to compress air, which - in turn - provides the energy to run the motor. Any conversion of energy between forms results in loss. For conventional combustion motor cars, the energy is lost when oil is converted to usable fuel - including drilling, refinement, labor, storage, eventually transportation to the end-user. For compressed-air cars, energy is lost when electrical energy is converted to compressed air.

• When air expands, as it would in the engine, it cools dramatically (Charles law) and must be heated to ambient temperature using a heat exchanger similar to the Intercooler used for internal combustion engines. The cooling is necessary in order to obtain a significant fraction of the theoretical energy output. The heat exchanger can be problematic. While it performs a similar task to the Intercooler, the temperature difference between the incoming air and the working gas is smaller. In heating the stored air, the device gets very cold and may ice up in colder climates.
• Refueling the compressed air container using a home or low-end conventional air compressor may take as long as 4 hours though the specialized equipment at service stations may fill the tanks in only 3 minutes.
• Tanks get very hot when filled rapidly. SCUBA tanks are sometimes immersed in water to cool them down when they are being filled. That would not be possible with tanks in a car and thus it would either take a long time to fill the tanks, or they would have to take less than a full charge, since heat drives up the pressure.

However, the developement of air cars has just begun, and we believe that in the near future we will see profound improvements in their design and capabilities.

Compressed-air powered cars are currently being produced by India's largest automaker, Tata Motors, who is licensing the technology from European-based company MDI.

Where to buy an air car

Mdi Enterprises

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