Electric Car? How about a Compressed Air Car?

In article . com,
Jay Honeck wrote:

The problem of temperature range must be considered again because
the performance of Lithium-air varies by a factor of 5 over the
-20 0C to +40 0C range. It is important to note that the battery
must be tuned to the application because Lithium-air batteries are
not going to start Minnesota autos in January.

That's the kiss of death, I'm afraid. Perhaps a mix of lithium-air
with lithium-ion batteries would work, but the climate in the US is
too widely variable to rely on a power supply that is so temperature-
sensitive.


not really a problem. a very small heater can keep it from freezing
without much energy loss..




--
Eduardo K. | Some say it's forgive and forget.
http://www.carfun.cl | I say forget about forgiving just accept.
http://ev.nn.cl | And get the hell out of town.
| Minnie Driver, Grosse Point Blank

wrote:


The best way is to shoot each and every person who compains about your
carbon footprint, and bury them 6 feet under. That way, you are
reducing their carbon footprint by 100%, and you can claim that you
are indeed actually doing something to help the environment... :-)

There's an enviromental policy I could support.

"Allen" wrote in message
t...


...
Maybe supply the pressure from a chemical reaction (alka-seltzer and
water; vinegar and soda, mentos and coke, etc.) You won't need the high
pressure if you can renew the pressure while you are driving.


Vernors works better than Coke with Mentos - more carbonation.

Diet is better than "regular" - not as sticky.

The best (most practical) way to supply the pressure from a chemical
reaction is to mix air with gasoline or diesel fuel...

--
Geoff
The Sea Hawk at Wow Way d0t Com
remove spaces and make the obvious substitutions to reply by mail
When immigration is outlawed, only outlaws will immigrate.

"Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe" The Sea Hawk at wow way d0t com wrote in message
news:Nc2dnbZF9cgkFKbanZ2dnUVZ_jSdnZ2d@wideopenwest .com...
"Allen" wrote in message
t...


...
Maybe supply the pressure from a chemical reaction (alka-seltzer and
water; vinegar and soda, mentos and coke, etc.) You won't need the high
pressure if you can renew the pressure while you are driving.


Vernors works better than Coke with Mentos - more carbonation.

Diet is better than "regular" - not as sticky.

The best (most practical) way to supply the pressure from a chemical
reaction is to mix air with gasoline or diesel fuel...

--
Geoff
The Sea Hawk at Wow Way d0t Com
remove spaces and make the obvious substitutions to reply by mail
When immigration is outlawed, only outlaws will immigrate.

Yes, but that is so un-"green". And it smells bad too.

--

*H. Allen Smith*
WACO - We are all here, because we are not all there.

On 2007-11-14 15:50:26 -0800, "Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe" The Sea Hawk at
wow way d0t com said:

"Allen" wrote in message
t...


...
Maybe supply the pressure from a chemical reaction (alka-seltzer and
water; vinegar and soda, mentos and coke, etc.) You won't need the high
pressure if you can renew the pressure while you are driving.


Vernors works better than Coke with Mentos - more carbonation.

Diet is better than "regular" - not as sticky.


Besides, Mentos and Coke is not a chemical reaction. It is a physical
one. It so happens that Mentos have a large surface area that is
exactly the right texture to allow CO2 bubbles to form on it. You could
make a ceramic Mento that would have exactly the same effect as long as
the surface was the same texture as the real Mento. A ceramic Mento
could be used over and over.
--
Waddling Eagle
World Famous Flight Instructor

On 2007-11-13 19:07:50 -0800, Dave said:


Now it appears that someone has come up with the idea of running a
vehicle on compressed air.

Compressed air engines are really just variants on steam engines.
Anybody remember the Freon based solar powered steam car? The idea was
that Freon would be stored in a tank in the car and cycled up to the
roof where it would be heated into steam for powering the car. The
steam would go to the engine and from there the now cooled liquid Freon
would go back to the tank.

There were some guys who took this a step further. They would heat the
Freon with a small burner when the sun was not enough. One guy built an
MG to run this way. He also was working on a 1966 Cadillac which
weighed 5000 lbs. He was going to use an 80 hp diesel to compress Freon
and run the car. He chose Freon over compressed air because it is a
lubricant, which would save wear and tear on moving parts, and the
contracting/expanding cycle of Freon kept you from losing so much heat
energy.

William Lear had a bus and a Monte Carlo powered by a closed circuit
steam turbine engine back in the '70s. However, he never put it into
production because (he claimed) adding expected features like air
conditioning and power windows was extremely complex and more than he
wanted to deal with at the time. The real reason it was never put into
production, of course, was that it used a turbine. The fluid was
something called "Learium," which was really just Freon. It ended in
bankruptcy, but it is claimed that someone bought the hardware and
built a water steam race car with it, proving that although the concept
worked well enough to set some land speed records for steam cars,
Learium was a total fraud and turbine engines were too inefficient for
use in automobiles. Sure, the turbine works great for land speed
records, but the engine only has to run for 10 minutes, so it is easy
to carry enough water to get that much time out of it. Most people want
a car that runs longer than that.

There is supposed to be an article on a Lear designed steam piston
engine in Car & Driver in 1969. It was said to have six cylinders,
twelve pistons, and generate 500 hp at 1000 psi. Trouble is, it was
Lear who made these claims and he never allowed anyone to take a close
look at the engine.

Back in the 1940s people were experimenting with hydrogen peroxide over
a catalyst bed, sometimes injecting kerosene and water to generate even
more steam. Might be a tad dangerous for use in the family car, though,
and I would bet that the pollutants would be a serious problem.

Despite all these problems, though, I would think it would be much
easier to get a steam engine to work with actual steam than with
compressed air.
--
Waddling Eagle
World Famous Flight Instructor

On 2007-11-14 13:02:21 -0800, said:

On Nov 14, 1:29 pm, C J Campbell
wrote:
On 2007-11-14 11:16:45 -0800, "Gig 601XL Builder"
wrDOTgiaconaATsuddenlink.net said:

C J Campbell wrote:

Eh. Why not wind-up springs or rubber bands? Or, better yet, some
large animal could be trained to pull a vehicle the size of a car. If
the animal was a plant-eater, it would be a continually renewable
source of energy. We could give the animal a name, such as 'horse,'
for 'horsepower.'

Nope, there are plenty of folks out there bitching about the carbon
footprint of livestock.

Which, I guess, is the point. No matter what you do, those guys will
complain. So why bother to do anything at all to address their
complaints?
--
Waddling Eagle
World Famous Flight Instructor

The best way is to shoot each and every person who compains about your
carbon footprint, and bury them 6 feet under.

Except for the lawyers. Them you bury 24 feet under, because deep down
they are really nice people.
--
Waddling Eagle
World Famous Flight Instructor

"Orval Fairbairn" wrote in message
news
You can't store enough compressed air to make it practical -- perhaps
they use a very long air hose?

No... it has an optional gas-powered kicker motor that also recompresses
the carbon-fiber air tanks. Just caught something about it on television
the other day. Plus, it's loud as hell; sounds like somebody's driving an
air compressor.

-c

More drain on the world's supply of both balonium and unobtainium.

You can't store enough compressed air to make it practical -- perhaps
they use a very long air hose?

The claimed range was (IIRC) something on the order of 40 miles - and
they said it would do 70 Mph. To me that makes for a practical urban
vehicle, whereas most of the electrics are not.
As others have said, what is needed is a thorough test by the
automotive Press. We'll see.

David Johnson

Don't be too quick to judge batteries that way. New advances in
lithium-air batteries have come a long way since their inception. The
Tesla electric car is using Lithium-ion batteries which has far less
efficiency, but still making waves. It is not unfeasible in the near
future to have a lithium-oxygen battery to power a light GA aircraft
with the same endurance as gasoline with comparable fuel+engine
weights.


I'm all for electric vehicles - but feel that there needs to be an
order-of-magnitude improvement in battery performance to make them
practical. There have been claims of "revolutionary battery
technologies" for years - but they never seem to pan out. It seems
that there is always a catch. Still. I have faith in technology, and
expect that one day a breakthrough will occur.

David Johnson