World's 1st Air-Powered Car?

[Gord_in_Toronto]

Any thoughts here about the reality of this?

It has been confirmed, sort of, that Zero Pollution Motors (ZPM) is expected to produce the world's first air-powered car for the U.S. by late 2009 or early 2010. The Air Car is estimated to get between 800 and 1,000 miles on one tank of air and 8 gallons of either conventional, ethanol or biofuel. ZPM, the U.S. licensee for MDI, based in Luxembourg and the developer of the Air Car, says it holds the rights to build the first of several modular plants that will begin to produce Air Cars around the country at a rate of about 10,000 per year.

I checked http://zeropollutionmotors.us/ for more information but the site is not very informative.

I assume that you plug it in and the built in compressor pumps a tank full of air. The air pressure them runs a motor that propells a very small, very light car for some unspecified distance. Where the "8 gallons of either conventional, ethanol or biofuel" comes in is not explained.

I only note that you can "invest" in the product at the site and that, otherwise, the production claims seem awfully grandiose. :confused:

[kallsop]

It's real technology:

Compressed air energy storage (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressed_air_energy_storage)

"Bottles reinforced with, or built from, high-tensile fibers can be below 2 kg in this size, consistent with legal safety codes. The 1 cu meter of air contained inside the filled tank has a mass of 1.2250 kg. Thus, theoretical energy densities are from roughly 70 to 180 kJ/kg. This makes the advanced fiber-reinforced bottle example comparable to the lead-acid battery in terms of energy density stored within the vessel..."

[balrog666]

There's already a car that gets over 100 mpg and it's 45 years old:

http://www.mentalfloss.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/09/peel_p50.jpg

[WildCat]

Except it doesn't run on air, it runs on the 8 gallons of fuel... take the fuel away and it doesn't go anywhere.

[ponderingturtle]

Except it doesn't run on air, it runs on the 8 gallons of fuel... take the fuel away and it doesn't go anywhere.

It is hard to say. It might have a air compressor run by a small internal combustion engine(talk about an effeciency loss).

the site says

Initially, Guy Negre developed a revolutionary 12 cylinder engine with a revolving valve system. His interest in the environment led him to first develop a bi-energy engine that ran on gasoline and compressed Air in order to reduce consumption.

link (http://zeropollutionmotors.us/?page_id=45)

I still fail to see how this would make up for the effeciency losses that all compressed air energy sources have.

[Iamme]

I guess all of us laymen have to assume it is cheaper to have a facility use their energy and compress the air, as opposed to having an engine, that runs on gas, make the wheels turn, eh?

If say the 'facility' runs on coal, I guess that be cheaper, right?

[Gord_in_Toronto]

It's real technology:

Compressed air energy storage (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressed_air_energy_storage)

"Bottles reinforced with, or built from, high-tensile fibers can be below 2 kg in this size, consistent with legal safety codes. The 1 cu meter of air contained inside the filled tank has a mass of 1.2250 kg. Thus, theoretical energy densities are from roughly 70 to 180 kJ/kg. This makes the advanced fiber-reinforced bottle example comparable to the lead-acid battery in terms of energy density stored within the vessel..."

However, unless you can get around the problems with adiabatic heat losses on compression, it is intrinsically not loss free. Maybe someone with more time on their hands than I have could compare this to flywheel energy storage. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flywheel_energy_storage


:D

[Skeptic Ginger]

Not to be ready until 2010. Think I'll wait to see the working model before getting too excited.

[soylent]

Efficiency is a rough indicator of usefulness. The drastically lower cost of nuclear of coal power may make it worthwhile to produce expensive portable energy and either is a lot more abundant than oil.

[marting]

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). Achieving high efficiency is a technical challenge, due to nonlinear energy storage, and thermodynamic considerations. If the bottle is emptied down to 10 bar, the energy extractable is about 330 kJ.

This is seriously in error. By over one order of magnitude and kinda makes me wonder about the overall positive tone. Somebody fix the wiki entry please.