Talk:Air engine
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I think there is real promise in this field and that it is going to take off. The Australian engine is showing a really advanced design link here:Australian Air Car Video
This currently reads a bit like an ad for the air engine: can we have comparisons with petrol engines and other proposed replacement technologies such as fuel cell cars, batteries, flywheel storage? (Weight, cost, range, etc.)
I agree, from the artical it sounds like there is only one player in the game rather than giving a balanced view. Back ache 19:12, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
What about the explosion risk? What happens to the compressed air tank in a crash? Is it safer or riskier than a petrol tank? The Anome
Safety is always a concern, in the french design in an impact the carbon fibre tank rips in a controlled manor, the tank is an off the shelf item made by anopther company for storing LPG in vehciles so comes be used by other companys as well Back ache 19:10, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
There is this [1] which seems to be significantly diferent from regular engines in several aspects
TiagoTiago 18:31, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
If purists allowed a minor compromise...Air Car Hybrid. By adding a small, light weight, two-cylinder, fine tuned for constant speed, ultra low polluting engine, to drive a small, light weight, air compressor, the air could be recharged, slowly, any time, as needed. For initial concept-tests, only, a very small motorcycle engine could be used. It may not increase the range much but, while at the store or at work, or overnight, it could recharge itself and really improve the range. The design range goal should be a modest one, around 400 miles, including 1-2 hours without driving, while at lunch or client visits. At home, a cheap, small electric air compressor could be used overnight. --[Mike]
Isn't the air car just a hoax? /boivie
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- Not far off it, in my opinion the aircar is primarily a device for fleecing investors. The predicted range on the aircar website is something like 200 km, extrapolated up from an actual test run of 7 km (from memory). This entire article seems to take the inventor's word for its performance, it should be much more critical. Greglocock 02:48, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
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- May be the engine cools down after 7 km and looses its efficiency. Extrapolation is not reliable. --Fault-finder 09:55, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
I doubt it I'm a mechanical engineering student and my current group project, that's been given to all the students in my year, is to design and build a basic piston type air motor. BobBobtheBob
Fixed some typos in the applications section, but I have to say this is somewhat futuristic, not very informative for an encyclopedia article. - Yosef
[edit] Broke hippies?
Is that paragraph really supposed to be in there? If so, I think it could probably be re-written to be a little more neutral or academic in tone. Madmaxmarchhare 07:01, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Questionable Overall Energy Efficiency
Looks like this discussion has bypassed the primary problem with the air car, which would be "system energy efficiency". It is stated in the end of the article that "low cost airlines could use the air engine to bypass high fuel costs". This is rubbish, as pressurized air cannot be mined from the ground, it has to be created using a primary energy source. A primary energy source would be fossil fuels, water power, solar power etc. The pressurized air only acts as an energy carrier.Currently something like 70% of the worlds electricity is produced from burning oil/gas, the rest from nuclear, coal and water power. The electricity used to run the air compressor will consequently have been made from the burning of fossil fuels, and burning the fossil fuel directly in the aircraft engine is likely to be both cheap and energy efficient. If you should be in possesion of a solar power plant you'll reduce the overall consumption of oil by using the electricity directly and thus reducing the need to burn oil to make electricity, and use the oil to power your car. Then the big question becomes how the air engine will compare with other energy carriers such as batteries or for instance hydrogen (you can use electric power to make hydrogen, then burn the hydrogen in a combustion engine or a fuel cell)
From a quick view of the technology it seems compressed air compares infavourably with the alternatives. When air is compressed large quantities of heat is created. This heat will normally have to be dissipated, meaning significant quantities of heat will be lost unless the heat can be employed usefully. It sounds very likely that a battery system will be more efficient in storing the energy than compressed air, even though there are also significant losses when charging and decharging a battery.
Furthermore, a piston engine sounds considerably more expensive to build and use (maintenance) compared to an electrical motor. (this is definitely the case for a combustion engine with transmissions).
- I've added some figures on energy density and efficency (from my own calculations, still needs some reference) and also removed the section "... for other vehicles" because it simply isn't possible to fly airplanes with compressed air for any useful amount of time, and the model aircraft availble use CO2 rather than air. --Theosch 13:36, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
[edit] NPOV
The paragraph about engine design does not look very neutral to me. It seems to take a sided view on a dispute between two inventors. [unsigned]
I think the whole article is a bit rough, both in language and in facts, but it seems neutral enough to me. I suggest removing the neutrality tag and perhaps replacing with a cleanup tag. --Theosch 17:56, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
