[alpha1]

... so this will reduce pollution .. eh?
Who is gonna compress air?

Ox and donkeys?

Because unless thats the case, you would be burning fuel SOMEWHERE to compress air. Compressing air is a very lossy energy cycle. (as lossy as the Internal combustion engine).

So whats the point? You either burn fuel to power your vehicle, or you burn fuel, run a compressor, and use compressed air to run your vehicle.

And if some wise one is going to say - ELECTRICITY. Then please be forewarned that in India, 85% of electricity is generated from Coal and Gas. And any shortfall in electricity is met by Diesel.

And if it electricity you want, its better to use a direct motor drive, which has the ideal torque-rpm curve for traction.

[srishiva]

Originally Posted by alpha1

... so this will reduce pollution .. eh?
Who is gonna compress air?

Ox and donkeys?

Because unless thats the case, you would be burning fuel SOMEWHERE to compress air. Compressing air is a very lossy energy cycle. (as lossy as the Internal combustion engine).

So whats the point? You either burn fuel to power your vehicle, or you burn fuel, run a compressor, and use compressed air to run your vehicle.

And if some wise one is going to say - ELECTRICITY. Then please be forewarned that in India, 85% of electricity is generated from Coal and Gas. And any shortfall in electricity is met by Diesel.

And if it electricity you want, its better to use a direct motor drive, which has the ideal torque-rpm curve for traction.

Ofcourse using electricity to power a motor is the easiest way.

But, since cars are mobile, you need to store this energy on the car. Batteries are not yet there. They are costly, do no last long enough and are themselves polluting.

Hence, people are looking at ways to store the energy in different ways and compressed air is one form of non-polluting, long lasting solution.

Other way to do this is Hydrogen and use fuel cells. But they are again way too costly.

So, the problem is not just about generating energy its more about what the energy carrier is going to be.

[carboy]

Originally Posted by alpha1

... so this will reduce pollution .. eh?
Who is gonna compress air?

Ox and donkeys?

Because unless thats the case, you would be burning fuel SOMEWHERE to compress air. Compressing air is a very lossy energy cycle. (as lossy as the Internal combustion engine).

So whats the point? You either burn fuel to power your vehicle, or you burn fuel, run a compressor, and use compressed air to run your vehicle.

And if some wise one is going to say - ELECTRICITY. Then please be forewarned that in India, 85% of electricity is generated from Coal and Gas. And any shortfall in electricity is met by Diesel.

And if it electricity you want, its better to use a direct motor drive, which has the ideal torque-rpm curve for traction.

In general for any electric vehicle, there has to be energy generated somewhere.
However, inspite of this, electric vehicles etc may make sense because
- A power plant is far more efficient at generating energy from fuel than a car is.
- At a central location like a power plant, pollution & emission can be controlled better than in a car.
- Also the power plant can be located far away from residential areas.

So you don't need to have an ox or a donkey to produce the original electricity in order for an electric vehicle to be more efficient & also producing lesser overall pollution than a regular car.

Also, electricity can also be produced by hydroelectric plants, nuclear plants etc in order to reduce costs & pollution further.

That's the reason there are so many companies involved in developing electric cars.

However, I have no idea if all these factors still hold true for compressed air technology. MDI(Tata's partner in the AirCar thing) has been working on Air Cars for 20 years without an actual model on road yet.
Motor Development International - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[wildon]

Got this as e-mail

Help leave healthy environment for future generations.

Tata Motors to introduce Air Car - Is it the next big thing?

Tata Motors is taking giant strides and making history for itself.. First the Landrover-Jaguar deal, then the world's cheapest car and now it is also set to introduce the car that runs on air, compressed air.

With spiralling fuel prices it is about time we heard some breakthrough!
India's largest automaker Tata Motors is set to start producing the world's first 'commercial' air-powered vehicle.

The Air Car, developed by ex-Formula One engineer Guy Nègre for Luxembourg-based MDI, uses compressed air, as opposed to the gas-and-oxygen explosions of internal-combustion models, to push its engine's pistons. Some 6000 zero-emissions Air Cars are scheduled to hit Indian streets by August 2010.

The Air Car, called the MiniCAT could cost around Rs. 3,50,000 ($ 8177) in India and would have a range of around 300 km between refuels.
The cost of a refill would be about Rs. 85 ($ 2).
The MiniCAT which is a simple, light urban car, with a tubular chassis that is glued not welded and a body of fiberglass powered by compressed air. Microcontrollers are used in every device in the car, so one tiny radio transmitter sends instructions to the lights, indicators etc.
There are no keys - just an access card which can be read by the car from your pocket. According to the designers, it costs less than 50 rupees per 100Km (about a tenth that of a petrol car). Its mileage is about double that of the most advanced electric car (200 to 300 km or 10 hours of driving), a factor which makes a perfect choice in cities where the 80% of motorists drive at less than 60Km. The car has a top speed of 105 kmph. Refilling the car will, once the market develops, take place at adapted petrol stations to administer compressed air. In two or three minutes, and at a cost of approximately 100 rupees, the car will be ready to go another 200-300 kilometers.
As a viable alternative, the car carries a small compressor which can be connected to the mains (220V or 380V) and refill the tank in 3-4 hours. Due to the absence of combustion and, consequently, of residues, changing the oil (1 litre of vegetable oil) is necessary only every 50,000Km).
The temperature of the clean air expelled by the exhaust pipe is between 0-15 degrees below zero, which makes it suitable for use by the internal air conditioning system with no need for gases or loss of power..

[k_nitin_r]

Originally Posted by Sam Kapasi

WOW, a car that runs on vegetable oil and air??

I can see it now, GTO advising people to change from Postman to Saffola to make the car healthier and last longer.

Theoretically, it is possible to run an old diesel engine on vegetable oil. There are kits that enable one to convert a vehicle to use vegetable oil in a diesel engine. Regular old diesel vehicles can take diesel-vegetable oil blends. Vegetable oil itself, however, is more expensive than diesel in some parts of the world (including India) so people who convert their diesel cars to run on vegetable oil use waste vegetable oil and use a process consisting of filtering and heating (to remove moisture) to make the waste vegetable oil suitable for use as a fuel.

[Parthasarathig]

Just now Tata Aria Facebook page quoted this article regarding testing of new Engine technology based on compressed air.
If all goes well, soon ordinary fuels are going to be obsolete.
Few statements made on the site include
1. For as low as 2$ one can travel upto 300kms
2. Since this car has no combustion engine, oil change will be required only after 50000kms

Both of these points make this vehicle highly economical to own and maintain.


Attachment 925024

The prototype vehicle is called "MiniCat" and as reported Tatamotors seem to have conducted succesful tests on two such vehicles.

The site also says Tata seems to have signed a JV agreement with Motor Development International, the company that has developed these engines, "to produce and sell compressed air cars in India".

Here is the link as posted on the Tata Aria Facebook fanpage.

Tata Motors Successfully tested two Air-Powered Vehicles

Thats as much I could gather as of now.

[GTO]

Thread moved from the Assembly Line to the Indian Car Scene. Thanks for sharing!

[ganesc]

Interesting! This if am not wrong was in news during nano project in 2008 IIRC but nothing much after that. But good to see that the idea is still alive. Lets wait and watch.
Seems to be the most economical choice if it reaches market especially when petrol prices are growing vertically.

[condor]

Gasoline contains energy in it, which is extracted during the combustion process. Since the energy is already inside the gasoline, no external energy needs to be added to the gasoline. The cost of drilling petroleum + extraction process, and transportation costs together is going to be much lesser than the value of the energy released from gasoline.

So, in summary, cost of inputs is less than value of energy generated. This makes burning gasoline to gain kinetic energy, worth the effort & cost.

In case of compressed air, energy has to be spent to compress the air. Note that the energy that will be used in this Air-car, will have to be collected/bottled in by compressing normal air.

To be successful, the engine that runs on compressed air must be able to generate more value of energy than what was used to compress the air. If it does not, then this will be a very lossy process, and we may as well use the original energy to drive the car itself. (energy that was used to compress the car).

But, if the process does succeed, and we have a set-up where the compressed air can generate more value of energy than what was used to compress the air, then we would created either:
1. a perpetual system that will run by itself (compressor setup + car)
2. We have created energy itself.

Since energy can be neither created nor destroyed, neither of these two possibilities will work.

So the idea of using compressed air alone will not be viable.

Your thoughts ?



p.s:
I am serious about the scenarios mentioned.

[ottocycle]

I think they would be running compressor by use of electricity to compress the air. This process might be similar to charging the electric vehicle's battery at home and generally kinetic energy using the battery power. So in a way, we can say it's electrical energy vs gasoline energy.

[Rahulkool]

I think i had read about this deal and the seen the car above in one of the automobiles magazines some 7-8 years back. IIRC there was even a thread on Tbhp.

Here is the thread - http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/indian...-home-mdi.html

[man_and_machine]

Originally Posted by condor

But, if the process does succeed, and we have a set-up where the compressed air can generate more value of energy than what was used to compress the air, then we would created either:
1. a perpetual system that will run by itself (compressor setup + car)
2. We have created energy itself.

Since energy can be neither created nor destroyed, neither of these two possibilities will work.

So the idea of using compressed air alone will not be viable.

Your thoughts ?

A lot of assumptions are left out in this premise. Input energy is always > output energy (atleast in the expanding entropy system). compressed energy input can be from a non-cost based system like solar energy, or say wind, assume the following scenario I have a wind turbine that I use to connect to a compressor and from there I feed it into a car (there are a lot of abstractions I have used but you get the point). Effectively you are able to capture the solar (wind is a derived solar energy) energy into the CG. So that way economically you can achieve a higher output than input.

Oil is also solar energy captured million of years ago! We might not have the tech to now compresses gas into a value generating fuel (value means what you have said above).

Hence, other view .

[tsk1979]

Originally Posted by condor

So the idea of using compressed air alone will not be viable.

Your thoughts ?



p.s:
I am serious about the scenarios mentioned.

by your logic, all electric cars are not viable since energy stored in battery from wall outlet will be less than actual energy used to charge the car.
I wonder why people are buying electric scooters and like?

This compressed air system is no different. Instead of chemical energy storage(electric car), you are storing energy as compressed air.

[condor]

@TSK, electricity that is generated is also extracting stored energy. Hydro, coal, nuclear - anything that you want. If we were to store the energy into these material, and then calculate the over cost, then the system/process will show by itself that it is very lossy.

[srishiva]

+1. As I had mentioned a while ago in this thread the problem is about storing the energy in a moving vehicle. This is better than using batteries and the associated cost/pollution/loss of efficiency etc.

If we hate these conversions, then we need to run coal/gas/nuclear power plants in the vehicles itself like locomotives/submarines

For me, existing engines which always cant operate at the optimum efficiency (due to stop and go) are not the answer. Bring on hydrogen fuel cells.