Posted on 08/20/2012 3:29:40 AM PDT by Renfield
With gas prices rising and the massive drought making ethanol a tough sell as a gas alternative, India's Tata Motors has hit on the perfect time to debut the Airpod, a small urban vehicle that, as its name suggests, runs on air. If you don't know much about how regular cars use fuel, natural gas or, alternatively, hydrogen is compressed in a pressurized tank, hence the 'pssf' sound when you unscrew the gas cap. Now think about air rifles. If you had the bad luck to grow up with an older brother obsessed with using you as a target (or perhaps you were that older sibling yourself), you know that the air we breathe seems harmless enough, but when compressed it packs a punch. A gun is one thing, but is it enough of a punch to power a car?
Tata thinks so. They enlisted the help of MDI, an engineering company that's been developing zero pollution engines since the early 90s. The Airpod has a 175 liter storage tank of compressed air that you refill with an external pump or with an electric motor that can 'refuel' the car while its in motion. This first model reaches a top speed of 43 mph (70 km/h), making it best suited for transporting people or small goods around city streets. One tank lasts over 125 miles (200 km) and takes only two minutes to fill up again at an average price of just one euro per fill.
The Airpod has three seats for adults plus a smaller fourth seat for a child. There's even room for luggage. It only has three wheels, two doors and no steering wheel. Instead, you drive it with a joystick. MDI has the public and service sector in mind, naming runners, messengers and artisans as its target market. The Airpod, which is currently in its second phase of testing, is just one of five models MDI is developing. They're also working on a truck, sedan, convertible and bus version. Tata and MDI expects to release the Airpod commercially in the near future for $10,000.
Well-designed co-generation could mitigate some of the energy inefficiency.
For instance, the waste heat from compressing the air at a central fleet facility could be used to heat water for washing the vehicles.
It may look like a common use air hose to you.
May I say, looks can be deceiving.
http://www.hoseandfittingsetc.com/product/hydraulic-hose/
Here in Texas one could not stay in this thing five minutes in the summer.
“One tank lasts over 125 miles (200 km) and takes only two minutes to fill up again at an average price of just one euro per fill. “
There’s the money line.
1 Euro = $1.23. That’s a penny a mile.
You’d have to get 370 miles per gallon of gasoline to equal that.
Zero emission (local big city).
Cool machine.
May I also suggest comparing the diameter of the connector to the lug nuts or other items.
The outer diameter of the connection point is approximately the same size from outer edge of the two eyes of these people. When was the last time you saw a pneumatic connector that big around.
As many have pointed out, compression of air CAN be very inefficient due to the heat generated by compression but ONLY if you throw that heat away.
DUH! In any process, if you throw away any product or byproduct, that increases the waste and lowers efficiency, so why do it!
If however, you were to retain the heat via good insulation, then a couple of things come into play. First a downside, you will reduce the effective volume of storage with the higher temperature air BUT when that air is released through the motor it will simply return to very close to the original ambient temperature before compression thus greatly increasing efficiency because the heat was not thrown away instead allowed to work for you.
Right now in most systems heat is deliberately thrown away and when the air is released through the air motor it now exits at a much, much lower temperature and in some cases can cause icing.
There are some huge energy storage systems developed and some underdevelopment which store vast amounts of compressed air for load balancing in electric generation systems. Some have even used abandoned mines. In these systems engineers are playing with the advantages of retaining the heat thus greatly increasing the efficiency with the resulting loss of storage volume (not an efficiency issue but certainly not to be ignored).
Load balancing storage for electrical generation systems is proven technology albeit in different forms. For example, Niagara Falls is near to where I live and during the night or times of low demand, water is diverted into a very large man made reservoir. When demand increases, that stored water is run down through the turbines to increase the power generated without taking more water out of the Niagara River than is allowed by agreement with the USA and Canada. As long as that large leak in Lake Erie has water we have power.
The systems I mentioned using compressed air in large volumes accomplishes the same thing but without the water.
Per the article linked to in #34, the - pure air - exhaust is at -40 to -96 °F. If they run it into the cabin you may be right - you could freeze to death in there.
Your post about the inefficiency is 100% correct.
From the article, “One tank lasts over 125 miles (200 km) and takes only two minutes to fill up again at an average price of just one euro per fill.”
I call Bull sh—, on their claim of 125 miles!
“I call Bull sh—, on their claim of 125 miles!”
So do I. Let’s see some hard math to prove that claim.
No, but make sure you get the 6-handle option package -
for the pallbearers
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