Car that runs on air. Is this for real???

[John Sayers]

P.S. Just to clarify one last time on the "air car" topic: no one is saying you can't make a car that runs on compressed air cylinders. I (and others) are asking, "What's the use of it (given the energy to compress the air is made elsewhere along with any pollution), how far can it be made to go on a full charge, and what sort of performance is it going to have given that less pressure/force is available every minute the cylinders discharge?" You know, curmudgeonly practical stuff.

 

you are confusing two issues here. If the oil runs out we can either go to electric cars or air cars. Both require an energy storage system and in both the energy must come from external sources, alt power etc.

 

The beauty of the air system is the battery and with the proper research input I have no doubt workarounds will be found.

 

One cup of gasoline has the same energy in it as a stick of dynamite, and is sufficient to knock a building down if properly aerosolized and ignited. That's going to be very hard to match with compressed air.

 

 

yes - but that cup of gasoline is going to get more and more expensive so air could ultimately win on cost.

[Zygs Malone]

" The author has done a thorough job of covering all aspects of wind power and associated costs. If you believe his spin to be biased by the sponsor, feel free to read any of the papers listed in the Reference section at the end of the article. Nor is wind power pollution free. If suddenly all government subsidies for wind power were to cease, and all hidden costs of wind generation were required of the wind farm owners, every single wind farm in the US would close down in very short order. To see the evidence of that, review the California experience with wind farms (includes Enron) as summarized in the article. Everywhere in the world when subsidies are reduced, building of new wind farms slows to a crawl. It's just not profitable yet, and it will never be profitable or scalable until fossil fuels are several times what they currently cost. And then it will simply be unreliable, as wind farms cannot store energy nor increase capacity during peak loads. That function is left to conventional plants, and in fact additional conventional capacity and transmission facilities must be built to accommodate this need wherever wind power is used - yet another hidden cost. Please, read the article and a few of the references. I had only a vague idea of how bad this was before I did. Terry D.

 

No I'm sorry. What you have there is an article written 3 or 4 years ago with most of the information, it looks like 3 or 4 years older than that. That's ancient, in terms of info about renewable energy. A lot of things have changed drastically during that time. So no, that's not valid information. I always look for the date on any kind of info on renewable energy because the technology and the industry are changing so rapidly. It really has to be newer than that to be valid.

 

I do know for a fact the wind power industry is growing phenomenally, and growing more every year, so somebody is doing something right there. I think if you add up all the direct and indirect subsidies, tax breaks etc., conventional power providers get, they get a lot more than the wind industry does.

[ShakaCthulu]

 

Ever see the "Mythbusters" episode where they knock the top off an oxygen cylinder and it turns into a rocket, going through a concrete wall???

 

 

That was my first thought, but apparently they use a container made out of some sort of carbon fiber, so if it ruptures say in an accident, it shreds instead of becoming a projectile.

[ShakaCthulu]

Terry D, what do you think about nuclear power? Not as in vehicles with their own reactors, just in general?

[MrKnobs]

 

Terry D, what do you think about nuclear power? Not as in vehicles with their own reactors, just in general?

 

 

I'm very pro nuclear power, as is most of the rest of the world outside the US. I believe, for instance, that France produces the majority of its electrical power from nuclear plants - I'd have to look up the exact number.

 

Certainly the world is building fission reactors at a rapid rate. Look at the current price of uranium to see how far demand (and speculation) have driven it in just the last few years.

 

Everyone points to Chernobyl and Three Mile Island and says the risks are too high. However, Chernobyl was a graphite moderated reactor and the disaster occurred during an unauthorized experiment. That particular error, though the consequences are severe and still persistent, cannot occur in the type of reactors we build in the US. TMI was a somewhat close call (actually hydrogen bubble in the containment, IIRC), but it was controlled promptly and also could never happen again.

 

No method of power generation is without risk. Nuclear plants are carbon neutral, though they do produce heat and in some areas have a negative effect on ecosystems as they heat the cooling lake to unnatural levels. In Georgia, IIRC, there is a drought that threatens to shut one or more plants down simply because there IS no water to cool them.

 

I would build more nuclear plants, and I would do it in a less environmentally sensitive area, even if it means obtaining water is more costly. For instance west Texas and most of Nevada are very lightly populated, an accident in those places wouldn't be the end of the world provided there wasn't a huge atmospheric discharge. It certainly would be no worse than back in the days when we tested nuclear bombs above ground.

 

I'm also very pro radioisotope generators. These are sealed, solid state systems that generate electricity directly from nuclear decay. Maintenance free, unable to sustain a runaway reaction, nearly indestructable. Several of these are in the Mars rovers (which mostly get their power from the sun) and one fairly large on is in the current Galileo probe since it operates too far from the sun to rely on photovoltaics.

 

Terry D.

[John S. Shinal]

For the home :

 

http://www.nextenergynews.com/news1/next-energy-news-toshiba-micro-nuclear-12.17b.html

 

Just what I need to power my Nefarious Activities and Sports Compound.

[Will Chen]

Very interesting thread. I didn't follow all the links, but I believe the company behind all this is MDI (http://www.mdi.lu/eng/affiche_eng.php?page=accueil). I'm not 100% sure that the specs are real world numbers, but I saw a show where he described much of the concept behind his motor and how his design recovers energy from inertia/braking to combat some of the inefficiencies discussed earlier. He also wants to implement a solar powered air compressor which refuels to tank when the vehicle isn't operating. A lot of very interesting ideas. It may see some success in very densely populated urban areas, but wouldn't fly in most of America. However, in the end in only matters that he provide the proof of concept. Someone else will most likely refine the idea and combine it with other technologies to create a truly efficient and powerful engine.

[slight-return]

Hey guys

 

the US patent on the motor appears to be US 6,868,822 if anyone is interested

 

Any idea what the capacity of the pressure vessel is and if 2000ish psi is the full-tank operating pressure or its safety limit? (sounds like maybe operating pressure, chaven't been able to track down anything on the CF matting or what kind of thermoplastic they are using for inner-shell -- sound like it's made out of my MTB )

 

haven't found anything on the design of the combustion chamber in the Aussie prototypes - it looks like they are playing some of the design info close to the vest given they are still in biz dev phase

[Zygs Malone]

Well, that's Lee's argument, but it doesn't wash IMO. I still say that if you eliminate all subsidies the conventional plants still come out ahead. In other words, wind power can't yet compete on a level playing field for all the reasons mentioned in the article I linked. The whole power grid is set up to support conventional power producers, that's one big reason why power from it is cheaper, but that's changing, and wind power doesn't even have to compete on a level playing field to be a good investment. It just has to work, and produce electricity cheaply which it does, and it's a huge, and getting larger every year industry. You keep talking like it's some Mom and Pop industry and it's not anymore, it's huge. If people would get behind it, it would get even bigger, and grow even faster. People's attitudes are what determine the growth of an industry, as much as economics. Wind Energy is of course a good idea because it's non-polluting, and also because the fuel never runs out, and always remains free. Since you say the article is obsolete, what has changed to invalidate its arguments, other than a small increase in wind turbine efficiency? Do you think the break even point with fossil fuels has now been reached due to conventional fuel price increases? It may have I don't know, but it doesn't even have to be for wind energy to be a viable source of electricity, which it is, it just has to be close, which it is at least that. I'm not gonna spend hours validating or invalidating all that. Current data is of paramount importance with a subject like this There's one HUGE difference with wind power (besides the current high life cycle cost): it's not demand responsive. In most areas, the highest consistent wind speed is at night, the exact time when the least electric demand occurs. So, without exception, where there are wind plants providing a lot of the electrical power there must also be additional conventional plants built or boilers added which CAN be fired up during peak demand periods. The law requires that conventional plants pay for electricity produced by alternate sources even though the energy is not needed at those times. That's yet another subsidy on top of the tax abatements, land use grants, etc. I'm personally invested in a company that makes a possible solution for this problem. It's very speculative, so I don't advise any of you to put money into it that you can't afford to lose. The company which trades under the tag BCON makes giant flywheels which store energy during peak production periods and releases it during peak demand periods. Right now this capability doesn't exist, and, until it does, this is going to severely limit the usefulness of wind power.

 

Lots of other companies working on this problem, with a solution forthcoming, yet another reason for people to get behind wind energy

[Philter]

 

As the price of oil continues to climb, alternative energy will make gains and more oil will be pumped from areas and sources that weren't economically viable at $30/bbl but are now at $100/bbl.

 

 

 

I couldn't figure out who this quote came from but I wanted to reply to it. This quote was in in the context of a discussion of EROEI, but it doesn't get the point.

 

"Economically viable" is a bad way of looking at energy issues. The fundamental issue when examining any energy resource is the EROEI. Digging a well a mile into the ocean floor from a rig floating a mile above it is an extremely energy intensive process, so much so that a good portion of every barrel pulled out of that well is effectively wasted on the actual process of securing it, so you have to pump more to gain the same net energy as say, a sipping straw well from a Middle Eastern field.

 

It is very possible that resource gathering activities with a net loss of energy will be subsidized for some time, but the end result of markets supporting failing energy production schemes is failure of the markets themselves. EROEI MUST trump economics over the long run 100% of the time- EROEI is based on fundamental thermodynamics and economics is just a shell game built on top.

 

It's not hard to imagine a scenario where energy is actually lost while extracting petroleum needed to feed our transport system... but that energy will need to come from somewhere, be it wind, solar, coal, nuclear, etc. Point in case:

 

 

OTTAWA - The first in a series of nuclear power plants planned for the oil-rich tar sands of Western Canada should be operating by 2016, the head of the project said Thursday. The Energy Alberta Corporation says it wants to place a C$5.5 billion (US$4.3 billion) Canadian-built Candu twin reactor plant in northern Alberta to provide the massive amounts of power needed to extract oil from the sticky sands. http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/40669/story.htm

 

 

At some point all the energy gained will be from other sources, and petroleum will be a net energy loser.

[MrKnobs]

 

I don't see anything wrong with that; in fact, I'm currently invested in that company.

 

We're not going to have uranium powered cars anytime soon, so why not use nuclear power to heat oil sands and produce petroleum? Gasoline still wins hands down as a portable energy source, battery technology being what it is.

 

Now, when uranium becomes in short supply....

 

Terry D.

[Philter]

 

We're not going to have uranium powered cars anytime soon, so why not use nuclear power to heat oil sands and produce petroleum?

 

 

It's inefficient, it postpones changes to our unsustainable way of life, it pumps more CO2 into the air from the burning of the petroleum, it savagely rapes the landscape for hundreds of square miles, it uses up prodigious amounts of water to the point of leaving the area dependent on that watershed uninhabitable, and there is always the problem of nuclear waste for a cherry on top. So there are some good why nots to balance against Dick Cheney's non-negotiable American way of life.

 

Is there some price at which we will start to look at how we live?

[MrKnobs]

 

It's inefficient, it postpones changes to our unsustainable way of life,

 

 

That's a good thing, because it's buying time for renewable tech to catch up.

 

And I wouldn't count the ocean out just yet on absorbing the CO2 - though I admit the ocean surface globally looks pretty saturated. We need a big bloom of something to fix the CO2 into carbonates. And, we could stop cutting down the rainforest.

 

 

Is there some price at which we will start to look at how we live?

 

 

Evolution, not revolution. It takes time for people to change old habits. In some areas, they never will and it requires a new generation.

 

Terry D.

[Philter]

 

That's a good thing, because it's buying time for renewable tech to catch up.

 

 

That sounds like the kind of language I use to procrastinate... the end result is that the work has yet to be done.

[Beck]

Ever been near a semi-truck tire when it blows? Don't be...

 

I was behind one once... a large piece of tread broke my grill and then landed on my hood. It'll wake you up.

 

Anyway, to the OP, I

[SKEETERtunes]

This is frightening. We will end up at war with the entire planet. I mean, EVERY continent has air as a natural resource.