I'm surprised no-one has picked up on this one. The Sunday Times car supplement today has an article on a car powered by compressed air. The driver plugs it into a source of air, waits a few minutes while the carbon fibre tanks are filled, and then drives up to 100 miles at up to 60 mph beofre it needs recharging. Alternatively the driver plugs it into an electric socket, and waits four hours while an onboard compressor charges the tanks. It's a two seat job like the Smart Car and will cost a bit less. Strikes me as the perfect second car for driving around town and shopping. If compressed air sources were available it could even do long range journeys. Servicing costs are also said to be much lower than a 'real' car. Over a five years you could save many thousands of pounds in fuel and servicing costs.
Pie in the sky? A joke? Impractical?
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The Health and Safety regulations surrounding anything charged to 300 bar are rigorous. I wonder how tanks being transported in a tiny(hence flimsy) car would be viewed.
I can imagine the campaign to ban them on safety grounds. Led by the oil industry?
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Surely LPG has the same problems and worse, given the fire hazard? The article did suggest that the tanks are very strong.
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Very energy inefficient though, especially very high pressure compressors.
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A junior version of the fireless locomotive? There could be a heating element in the receiver for home charging.
gold.mylargescale.com/MichaelAnderson/fireless/hei...l
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Leif,
I take your point about fire hazard. However I think that the max pressure in an LPG tank(for cars) is(only)about 16 bar. At 300 bar you are sitting next to a bomb.
I am not defending The Health and Safety executive and many of their regulations are overkill. Yet, for instance, they allow untrained operators to pump gallons of a petrol into cars with hot exhausts - not to mention spillage onto forecourt.
C
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The MDI compressed air car has been around for a couple of years. I have been waiting for it to finally appear. I don't know how energy efficient it is with using electricity to fill compressed air tanks. I think there are multiple versions including a pick up truck and a taxi as well as a very ugly looking town car.
teabelly
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It might not be efficient but they reckon that fuel costs are ~1/10 of petrol which is I suspect what matter to thee and me.
I think the real advantage beside cost is the ability to use electricity generated by any means i.e. nuclear, wind, solar, biofuel etc. and reduce city centre pollution.
They reckoned the tanks were comparable to scuba divers ones. Maybe exploding scuba divers is a common occurrence?
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