new-world-order 0 Report post Posted April 16, 2006 I was watching the tele and the news came on so i just sort of watched the headlines and it was the usual stuff but still they are going on about oil and how its running out and i said to my mum "will they never shut up about this..." and then she replyed in the [its important though way]" its not as if our cars run on air is it"...and thats when it hit me surly you could power a car with air and i started to think about it and i thought of alot of different things and they where all your basic stuff nothing too complicated and then i realised if im going to come up with something big that might acualy come on i need to be more realistic so i thought about how the current engines work with the fuel being pushed into the pistons which made a small explosion which moved the pistons which in turn moved the crank shaft... when it hit me why not replace the fuel with bursts of air (just like a steam engine) and they would come out of a tank of compressed air.... i then realised how would the air be recompressed and had to sit down and think that on through and i cam up with a rather engeanious but simple idea, all you would have to do is put a pistion aside which powers another little motor and the motor would be used to recomress the air agian... of corse it would have to be stoped eventualy to recharge the starter motor but still i think i could get this to work i might even see if i could make a little go cart or sumthing like that lol ill post some pics if i can Please Talk excessivly on improvements i could make to my project Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
mozzer 0 Report post Posted April 17, 2006 There are a three problematic flaws in your plan.Firstly, you require a car to turn piston to have compressed air forced into an engine forcing down the pistion to achieve lower pressure. Firstly in a normal motor the air is brought in at normal pressure and the exploding fuel increases the pressure. What you want to do is increase the pressure and then decrease it. To do this you need to force the high pressure air in without a motor.Then you have the added problem of using some of the created energy (if you achieve any, see first point) to recompress the air. You say to solve the problem of the inachievable perpetual motion you "recharge" the engine. Again possible but would result in very little air/energy actually becoming useful. As in motion of the car. These cars would be slower and less efficient than normal cars.Finally, where does the energy come from to compress the air? My bet is that you say either electricity or something similar. These products also have problems in creating as currently the majority of electricity comes from huge plants buring oil or coal.To solve these problems you would need to create a differently designed engine to the current combustion engine and desgin on which could work on the principle of compressed air Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Blacklaser 0 Report post Posted April 17, 2006 I agree with mozzer, your system won't work. The main problem is that compressed air isn't just floating around. To compress it we need to put energy into it, and then we use that energy to drive the car. What is providing the energy to compress the air? As mozzer pointed out... in the end you'll be back to oil.Also if you use 4 pistions to drive the car and one to power the compressor, the compressor only has enough energy to recompress enough air to fill one piston. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Albus Dumbledore 0 Report post Posted April 17, 2006 what mozzer and blackster are talking about is all gibberish to me but anyways, from what they say, it wont work, but it would be cool if it were to work, no more gas to buy probably making everyone who supplies our oil over on the far side of the worl go poor...lol seems like a good ideal in some ways but bad in others. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
new-world-order 0 Report post Posted April 17, 2006 The Compresser would be charged by a giro system running off the crank shaft it would be geared to take in anogth energy to power the compresser as needed due to the fact it wouldnt have fuel and even if ti did have fuel what a difference it woulf make think of how much fuel wouldbe saved all you would need is a small generater which can take about 8 hours to run dry from about 3 litres of petrol dont crititise other peoples ideas unless you ahve a better solution you self and albus thanks it is a rather cool idea besides there is an engine that runs on air as i have found out after googling for acouple hours ill post the blue prints for it and a pic of the engine dont automaticly asume everything will fail put a bit off faith into things:DPeace aaron Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Brian Gillingham 0 Report post Posted April 18, 2006 I think that nearly anything should be considered. Possible sources of energy to drive these air compressers may be windmill, water turbines (dam), water mill (like wind mill, under water), solar, geo-thermal, kinetic, microwave.... (ok, getting carried away - Microwave?!).It is just great to see that there is much thought going into this. The sad fact is that this is only now being seen as a more urgent need. Most of the rest of the world has higher fuel standards for cars than America. It is just terrible to know that a large portion of people (making no assumptions about who posted here before me) are only now interested in these things because fuel is costing more by the day.If a country could pull together the resourcs to put a man on the moon in less than 10 years time, they could certainly solve some of our energy problems.I have heard about this car that runs on compressed air... can't remember any other details. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
mozzer 0 Report post Posted April 18, 2006 I still cannot believe that a car can power itself on air that it has compressed itself.Show blueprints and then prove it. Make the car and I'll be less skeptical.From what I've read on the subject it requires pre-compressed air to inject. There is you key flaw Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
anwiii 17 Report post Posted April 18, 2006 The Compresser would be charged by a giro system running off the crank shaft it would be geared to take in anogth energy to power the compresser as needed due to the fact it wouldnt have fuel and even if ti did have fuel what a difference it woulf make think of how much fuel wouldbe saved all you would need is a small generater which can take about 8 hours to run dry from about 3 litres of petrol dont crititise other peoples ideas unless you ahve a better solution you self and albus thanks it is a rather cool idea besides there is an engine that runs on air as i have found out after googling for acouple hours ill post the blue prints for it and a pic of the engine dont automaticly asume everything will fail put a bit off faith into things:DPeace aaron well, not sure how all that would work bud but my advice to you is to keep your ideas somewhat to yourself if in fact you wish to pusue something like this. you don't want your ideas stolen and am sure would want the credit if you ever came up with something or even just an idea that would possibly work.nice name btw. you ever have a girl in your class named "erin" where you had to go by your middle name because you diddn't want to be associated with a girl during roll call? heheh i did Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
brainless 0 Report post Posted April 18, 2006 actually, some guy from around Spain had this idea 15 years before you and has his car almost ready for the market http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
anwiii 17 Report post Posted April 18, 2006 actually, some guy from around Spain had this idea 15 years before you and has his car almost ready for the market http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ interesting. i went to the site. wonder if they could make something that doesn't look like a bus.it's good to know though that the gas station attendants wont be out of business selling air for 2 dollars but then i believe they will need to sell more chips and slim jimssoooooooooooo this go cart idea wasn't as far fetched as people thought i see.... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
new-world-order 0 Report post Posted April 18, 2006 Finally at last some one has had the time to do prober reseach for us thanks mate it looks intresting and check out all the links as well there is acualy alot of thingsgoing on pitty they havent been publised anought i might contact some of them and see if they need a more professional website cos there is some of the links the webys are atrosious lol keep up the good work ps i found a jet engine kart lol check this out http://www.lockandsafe.co.uk------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------yeah it does look like a bus doesnt it i wonder if they could make a jeep like this and in stead of haveing the tank vertical behind the seats have it undernear the car but gaurded by a steel plate thanks very much if you find more info please tell us Notice from electriic ink: Merged double posts Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
brainless 0 Report post Posted May 20, 2006 (edited) I uppose it's not necessary to worry too much about the looks of the car during the development phase - once the core system works, it shouldn't be too hard to design another shell around it (look at conventional cars - they all work on very much the same kind of engine and there have been loads and loads of different shapes...)new world order: I give a huge bonus for the idea of using a jet engine to power a kart but the problems of conventional cars remain: 1) Where to get oil? 2) Pollution... Edited May 20, 2006 by brainless (see edit history) Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
kawasu 0 Report post Posted May 22, 2006 dont they have cars pwoered by water? isnt that good enough? i think that a water powered car is dam amazing. electric cars are coming in aswell, in about 15 years i wouldn't be surpirsed if alot of people switched. oil prices are getting ridiculously high and ever increasing. people are going to think twice about what cars to buy now. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
brainless 0 Report post Posted May 22, 2006 kawasu: yes, those are also somewhat near mass production ... and yes, they are amazing but diversity should do the trick (what about combining the air-powered engine with a water-powered engine instead of a regular gasoline-powered one? that might be a good idea for the next step once people have switched away from gasoline...)15 years might be a doable time to replace a large part of the cars used nowadays with non-/way less polluting cars but that's not fast enough, if you ask me. I'm not worrying about gas prices (the higher the better, that's what I think), I'm seriously worried about this planet's state. So many people produce so much waste in such a short time... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Cerebral Stasis 0 Report post Posted May 24, 2006 Kawasu, electric cars were around far before cars with fuel cells. The problem with cars "running on water" is that the conversion process uses a lot of energy, so the final output isn't efficient enough to rival a gasoline engine.Now, an engine that runs on pressurized air is certainly possible, but the problem is that the compressed air in and of itself wouldn't be enough to run a car. The link that was mentioned is for a car that uses a hybrid of compressed air and fuel, but a purely compressed air model would be difficult to create, not to mention would be inefficient.It's all about the efficiency, and the facts are that most ideas just don't have it. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites