Electric Car? How about a Compressed Air Car?

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

The recent discussion of the merits of various electric cars. I'd
summarize the current state of the art as one of interesting
technologial developments, but an unsolved basic problem: How to store
an adequate amount of the source of motive power in a manageable
package. Batteries aren't there yet - and may never be. NEVs are a
joke, and the 3-wheel "motorcycle" types are marginal at best.

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

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.'




--
Waddling Eagle
World Famous Flight Instructor

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.

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

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. 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... :-)

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.

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

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

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

No one seems to be designing anything to run on steam anymore -
despite it's being a proven technology that will operate on any source
of heat. Is high maintenence the reason? Or is it high initial cost?

David Johnson

Dave wrote:
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

No one seems to be designing anything to run on steam anymore -
despite it's being a proven technology that will operate on any source
of heat. Is high maintenence the reason? Or is it high initial cost?

Well, other than the energy efficiency is pretty poor, they take
relatively forever to start up, and boilers are heavy and dangerous,
they would work just fine to run a car as long as you have a coal
tender.

The Army doesn't use crossbows or the trebuchet any more either and
they're also proven technology.

--
Jim Pennino

Remove .spam.sux to reply.

wrote in :

Dave wrote:
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

No one seems to be designing anything to run on steam anymore -
despite it's being a proven technology that will operate on any source
of heat. Is high maintenence the reason? Or is it high initial cost?

Well, other than the energy efficiency is pretty poor, they take
relatively forever to start up, and boilers are heavy and dangerous,
they would work just fine to run a car as long as you have a coal
tender.


Cars almost always used liquid fuel, except for the few that ran gas fuels.
A few very early cas used solid fuel, and I've only ever seen one running,
and that was an 1884 De Dion Bouton. all th eproduction steamers from
around th eturn of the century used flash tube boilers and liquid fuels.

The Army doesn't use crossbows or the trebuchet any more either and
they're also proven technology.


But the navy stil uses steam.



Bertie