OT; aircar, alternative to status quo

joshua said:

http://www.theaircar.com/

Off topic I know but, I thought that some people here might enjoy
checking this out. It's seems to me to be a very good idea and it's a
hybrid. I don't think that the expense of compressing air would be too
cost prohibitive. Of couse the H2 version is probably a few years off.

It sounds like fun, but there's no free ride. An air compressor
that's big enough to provide enough storage for a four-passenger car
(even one THAT small) to go any real distance would be ENORMOUS, and
heavy and REALLY noisy - not to mention that it would end up using
more energy than the gas car it takes off the road (you have to figure
the loss in the electrical generation system, etc.).

It's really all just a question of whether the energy density is
higher with compressed air or a battery. My guess is that the battery
would win hands down - especially the latest ones.

The other "interesting" issue would be the explosive potential of a
large, high-pressure air tank in a collision. I'm guessing the thing
has to carry VERY highly compressed air to have any range at all - I
saw a recent edition of 'Myth Busters' where they detonated a SCUBA
tank inside a 40 foot sea freight container. Ugly, ugly, ugly. Had
that been inside a car, everyone within 50 feet would be in a HUGE
amount of trouble (probably a lot further, if you include shrapnel).

Mark Hickey
Habanero Cycles
http://www.habcycles.com
Home of the $795 ti frame

quoting http://www.theaircar.com/thecar.html

" The recharging of the car will be done at gas stations, once the
market is developed. To fill the tanks it will take about to 2 to 3
minutes at a price of 1.5 euros. After refilling the car will be ready
to driver 200 kilometres.

The car also has a small compressor that can be connected to an
electrical network (220V or 380V) and will recharged the tanks
completely in 3 or 4 minutes. "

sounds good to me.

Mark Hickey said:

joshua said:

http://www.theaircar.com/

Off topic I know but, I thought that some people here might enjoy
checking this out. It's seems to me to be a very good idea and it's a
hybrid. I don't think that the expense of compressing air would be too
cost prohibitive. Of couse the H2 version is probably a few years off.

It sounds like fun, but there's no free ride. An air compressor
that's big enough to provide enough storage for a four-passenger car
(even one THAT small) to go any real distance would be ENORMOUS, and
heavy and REALLY noisy - not to mention that it would end up using
more energy than the gas car it takes off the road (you have to figure
the loss in the electrical generation system, etc.).

It's really all just a question of whether the energy density is
higher with compressed air or a battery. My guess is that the battery
would win hands down - especially the latest ones.

The other "interesting" issue would be the explosive potential of a
large, high-pressure air tank in a collision. I'm guessing the thing
has to carry VERY highly compressed air to have any range at all - I
saw a recent edition of 'Myth Busters' where they detonated a SCUBA
tank inside a 40 foot sea freight container. Ugly, ugly, ugly. Had
that been inside a car, everyone within 50 feet would be in a HUGE
amount of trouble (probably a lot further, if you include shrapnel).

and yet there is so much hype about "hydrogen, the clean energy source".
i know i sure wouldn't care to be around a 12kpsi hydrogen cylinder in
a hydrogen powered vehicle collision.

Quoted message said:

Mark Hickey
Habanero Cycles
http://www.habcycles.com
Home of the $795 ti frame

sounds good to me.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I have several bridges for sale on e-bay. Sound good to you? I also have
$50,000,000 I am trying to share with someone who will help me get it into
the country. Will you help me?

Mark Hickey said:

Quoted message said:

http://www.theaircar.com/

Off topic I know but, I thought that some people here might enjoy
checking this out. It's seems to me to be a very good idea and it's a
hybrid. I don't think that the expense of compressing air would be too
cost prohibitive. Of couse the H2 version is probably a few years off.

It sounds like fun, but there's no free ride. An air compressor
that's big enough to provide enough storage for a four-passenger car
(even one THAT small) to go any real distance would be ENORMOUS, and
heavy and REALLY noisy - not to mention that it would end up using
more energy than the gas car it takes off the road (you have to figure
the loss in the electrical generation system, etc.).

Most "zero pollution" cars use this same fallacy. See, this electric car
is totally pollution-free. You just plug it in overnight to charge it up.
There should be a required picture of a coal-fired power plant, belching
out black smoke, in the background on all these ads. It's the same for
hydrogen, since something has to provide the energy to separate out the
hydrogen from the oxygen if they use water. If they use petroleum it's
even worse.

Quoted message said:

It's really all just a question of whether the energy density is higher
with compressed air or a battery. My guess is that the battery would
win hands down - especially the latest ones.

The other "interesting" issue would be the explosive potential of a
large, high-pressure air tank in a collision.

Hydrogen would be even better.

All this talk about alternative fueled cars is absurd. We would save more
oil than we import if our cars were not so over-powered.

--

David L. Johnson

__o | A mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems.
_`\(,_ | -- Paul Erdos
(_)/ (_) |

Entropy is a [censored].

jim beam said:

and yet there is so much hype about "hydrogen, the clean energy source".
i know i sure wouldn't care to be around a 12kpsi hydrogen cylinder in
a hydrogen powered vehicle collision.

Hydrogen cylinders are fairly benign by comparison with air-motor 'fuel',
for a given amount of power storage. It's not gonna explode, after all,
just burst.

Jasper

On Tue, 30 Aug 2005 19:10:30 -0700, Mark Hickey <[email hidden]>

Quoted message said:

joshua said:

http://www.theaircar.com/

Off topic I know but, I thought that some people here might enjoy
checking this out. It's seems to me to be a very good idea and it's a
hybrid. I don't think that the expense of compressing air would be too
cost prohibitive. Of couse the H2 version is probably a few years off.

It sounds like fun, but there's no free ride. An air compressor
that's big enough to provide enough storage for a four-passenger car
(even one THAT small) to go any real distance would be ENORMOUS, and
heavy and REALLY noisy - not to mention that it would end up using
more energy than the gas car it takes off the road (you have to figure
the loss in the electrical generation system, etc.).

It's really all just a question of whether the energy density is
higher with compressed air or a battery. My guess is that the battery
would win hands down - especially the latest ones.

The other "interesting" issue would be the explosive potential of a
large, high-pressure air tank in a collision. I'm guessing the thing
has to carry VERY highly compressed air to have any range at all - I
saw a recent edition of 'Myth Busters' where they detonated a SCUBA
tank inside a 40 foot sea freight container. Ugly, ugly, ugly. Had
that been inside a car, everyone within 50 feet would be in a HUGE
amount of trouble (probably a lot further, if you include shrapnel).

I want one of these Mark. I think it addresses all of your concerns
😉
http://www.goes.noaa.gov/guam/GUAMIR.JPG
Michael J. Klein & Asian Castings Consortium
[email hidden]
Yangmei Jen (Hukou), Taoyuan Hsien, Taiwan, ROC
Please replace mousepotato with asiancastings
---------------------------------------------

Jasper Janssen said:

jim beam said:

and yet there is so much hype about "hydrogen, the clean energy source".
i know i sure wouldn't care to be around a 12kpsi hydrogen cylinder in
a hydrogen powered vehicle collision.

Hydrogen cylinders are fairly benign by comparison with air-motor 'fuel',
for a given amount of power storage. It's not gonna explode, after all,
just burst.

Jasper

google for "burst scuba tank" and get back to me. scuba tanks have less
than half the pressure of proposed vehicle hydrogen tanks, with
non-flammable contents.

David L. Johnson said:

Most "zero pollution" cars use this same fallacy. See, this electric car
is totally pollution-free. You just plug it in overnight to charge it up.
There should be a required picture of a coal-fired power plant, belching
out black smoke, in the background on all these ads. It's the same for
hydrogen, since something has to provide the energy to separate out the
hydrogen from the oxygen if they use water. If they use petroleum it's
even worse.

Quoted message said:

It's really all just a question of whether the energy density is higher
with compressed air or a battery. My guess is that the battery would
win hands down - especially the latest ones.

The other "interesting" issue would be the explosive potential of a
large, high-pressure air tank in a collision.

Hydrogen would be even better.

All this talk about alternative fueled cars is absurd. We would save more
oil than we import if our cars were not so over-powered.

No kidding. If tomorrow, all cars were suddenly electric or hydrogen,
the sky would be black from the pollution from producing that much
electricity to charge batteries or make hydrogen.

Gotta get energy from somewhere, no such thing as a free lunch. Make
energy, create pollution. Not a scientist but seems we need to look
elsewhere for clean energy, like a 'Mr Fusion' type idea.

jim beam said:

google for "burst scuba tank" and get back to me. scuba tanks have less
than half the pressure of proposed vehicle hydrogen tanks, with
non-flammable contents.

You really gotta see the mythbusters episode on that. I think it was the
Shark Week one; they were trying to see if you could blow up a scuba tank
with a rifle like in Jaws.

--

David L. Johnson

__o | As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not
_`\(,_ | certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to
(_)/ (_) | reality. -- Albert Einstein

Qui si parla Campagnolo said:

David L. Johnson said:

Most "zero pollution" cars use this same fallacy. See, this electric car
is totally pollution-free. You just plug it in overnight to charge it up.
There should be a required picture of a coal-fired power plant, belching
out black smoke, in the background on all these ads. It's the same for
hydrogen, since something has to provide the energy to separate out the
hydrogen from the oxygen if they use water. If they use petroleum it's
even worse.

Quoted message said:

It's really all just a question of whether the energy density is higher
with compressed air or a battery. My guess is that the battery would
win hands down - especially the latest ones.

The other "interesting" issue would be the explosive potential of a
large, high-pressure air tank in a collision.

Hydrogen would be even better.

All this talk about alternative fueled cars is absurd. We would save more
oil than we import if our cars were not so over-powered.

No kidding. If tomorrow, all cars were suddenly electric or hydrogen,
the sky would be black from the pollution from producing that much
electricity to charge batteries or make hydrogen.

Gotta get energy from somewhere, no such thing as a free lunch. Make
energy, create pollution. Not a scientist but seems we need to look
elsewhere for clean energy, like a 'Mr Fusion' type idea.

Dear Peter,

Watch the skies, everywhere! Keep looking. Keep watching the
skies!

(Particularly after dawn and before sunset.)

Ned Scott

Quoting joshua <[email hidden]>:

Quoted message said:

quoting http://www.theaircar.com/thecar.html
minutes at a price of 1.5 euros. After refilling the car will be ready
to driver 200 kilometres.
The car also has a small compressor that can be connected to an
electrical network (220V or 380V) and will recharged the tanks
completely in 3 or 4 minutes. "

Well, a normal UK ring main might give you 30A; at 220V for 4 minutes
that's 1.5 MJ. Only it's not because of the weird power output of AC, but
we're within a factor of two.

Let us imagine that we then travel at a rather pedestrian 50kph, so
travelling those 200km takes 4 hours. (Note that the site itself discusses
urban use at an assumed maximum speed of 50kph.)

This implies the power output, assuming complete efficiency (which you
don't get, of course) is 110W.

50kph at 110W in something as big as a car would be a pretty neat trick.
It'd be a pretty neat trick on a bicycle.
--
David Damerell <[email hidden]> flcl?
Today is Second Tuesday, August.

David Damerell said:

Quoting joshua <[email hidden]>:

Quoted message said:

quoting http://www.theaircar.com/thecar.html
minutes at a price of 1.5 euros. After refilling the car will be ready
to driver 200 kilometres.
The car also has a small compressor that can be connected to an
electrical network (220V or 380V) and will recharged the tanks
completely in 3 or 4 minutes. "

Well, a normal UK ring main might give you 30A; at 220V for 4 minutes
that's 1.5 MJ. Only it's not because of the weird power output of AC, but
we're within a factor of two.

No, it mostly is. The "230 V" that EU mains power is now all labeled at
(closer to the old 220 for mainland and closer to the old 240 for the UK.
I'll roundly ignore this difference for the rest of the post) is actually
the effective voltage, not the peak voltage -- when hooked up to a
resistive load, Veff * Ieff equals Watt. Originally, it was specced as
being "the DC voltage which, when hooked up to a resistive load, will give
the same power output as the AC voltage you are describing". What that
works out to for a pure sine wave, incidentally, is square root of two
times Vpeak, and the same SQRT(2) * Ipeak for current.

A compressor is essentially an electric motor driving a very small
cylinder pump, and motors are not quite resistive loads, but they're not
all that far off either. Non-resistive loads mean the current and the
voltage are not quite synchronised, and then Ieff * Veff = VA and VA * cos
phi = W. The cos phi (cosine of by how much the current and the voltage
are desynchronised) is also known as the "Power Factor", and it's what
"Power Factor Compensation" on many new devices is meant to combat.

Do UK mains fuses nowadays generally consist of the automatic
switch+'fuse' resettable integrated units or old-fashioned
ceramic-fuse-body-with-appropriate-fuse-wire thingies? 'Cause real mains
fuses like that are generally rated at 30 minutes at 50% overcurrent, and
for 5 minutes they might provide as much as 70 or so percent overcurrent
without blowing. The automatics are more accurate (and more trouble).

Jasper

jim beam said:

Jasper Janssen wrote:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Hydrogen cylinders are fairly benign by comparison with air-motor 'fuel',
for a given amount of power storage. It's not gonna explode, after all,
just burst.

Quoted message said:

google for "burst scuba tank" and get back to me. scuba tanks have less
than half the pressure of proposed vehicle hydrogen tanks, with
non-flammable contents.

*Burst* scuba tank? I don't buy it as a regular occurrence. Worst
accidents that happen with decently designed and not overpressurised
cylinder tanks involve the valvehead blowing off. Nice bottle rocket
effects that can certainly be lethal, but short of significantly weakening
the sidewall of an oxygen cylinder you're not going to get anything that
can be genuinely described as 'burst'. Those things can take a massive
beating. The main way you can weaken the sidewalls of cylindrical gas
tanks -- aside from malice aforethought -- involves leaving them in a
fire. This is why a fire with propane tanks involved is No Fun. A car fire
with a hydrogen tank involved is also No Fun, but I very much doubt it'd
be much worse than current LPG and CNG tanks which ride around in their
tens of thousands.

Hydrogen isn't explosive outside a very narrow mix of O2 and H2, and it's
lighter than air so it just goes up into the air as soon as it gets
outside your car. The H2 didn't even contribute all that much to
Hindenburg's demise, after all. Also, fuel tanks can be designed with a
much higher safety factor, because they don't have to be vaguely
neutrally-buoyant.

Jasper

Qui si parla Campagnolo said:

No kidding. If tomorrow, all cars were suddenly electric or hydrogen,
the sky would be black from the pollution from producing that much
electricity to charge batteries or make hydrogen.

Gotta get energy from somewhere, no such thing as a free lunch. Make
energy, create pollution. Not a scientist but seems we need to look
elsewhere for clean energy, like a 'Mr Fusion' type idea.

What we need is more hydro and more nuclear plants, plus a decent storage
facility. Hell, the US government has charge of *how* many nuclear
warheads containing how much highly refined, highly radioactive uranium,
plutonium, and tritium? And we believe somehow that it's completely
impossible to have a storage facility for mostly lightly contaminated
reactor byproducts?

Jasper

Jasper Janssen said:

jim beam said:

Jasper Janssen wrote:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Hydrogen cylinders are fairly benign by comparison with air-motor 'fuel',
for a given amount of power storage. It's not gonna explode, after all,
just burst.

Quoted message said:

google for "burst scuba tank" and get back to me. scuba tanks have less
than half the pressure of proposed vehicle hydrogen tanks, with
non-flammable contents.

*Burst* scuba tank? I don't buy it as a regular occurrence. Worst
accidents that happen with decently designed and not overpressurised
cylinder tanks involve the valvehead blowing off. Nice bottle rocket
effects that can certainly be lethal, but short of significantly weakening
the sidewall of an oxygen cylinder you're not going to get anything that
can be genuinely described as 'burst'. Those things can take a massive
beating. The main way you can weaken the sidewalls of cylindrical gas
tanks -- aside from malice aforethought -- involves leaving them in a
fire. This is why a fire with propane tanks involved is No Fun. A car fire
with a hydrogen tank involved is also No Fun, but I very much doubt it'd
be much worse than current LPG and CNG tanks which ride around in their
tens of thousands.

Hydrogen isn't explosive outside a very narrow mix of O2 and H2, and it's
lighter than air so it just goes up into the air as soon as it gets
outside your car. The H2 didn't even contribute all that much to
Hindenburg's demise, after all. Also, fuel tanks can be designed with a
much higher safety factor, because they don't have to be vaguely
neutrally-buoyant.

Jasper

jasper & david

http://www.napsd.com/cscuba.htm

and look in dive safety training manuals. sure, tanks/valves have burst
disks & are regularly inspected, but the problem with any pressure
vessel is that when they go, they tend to go big.

as for the "jaws" experiment, there's a big difference between a tank
that is still ductile because it contains no flaws and one that is
partially cracked to the point of brittle rupture. fracture mechanics.

jim beam said:

Jasper Janssen said:

jim beam said:

Jasper Janssen wrote:

Quoted message said:

>Hydrogen cylinders are fairly benign by comparison with air-motor 'fuel',
>for a given amount of power storage. It's not gonna explode, after all,
>just burst.

Quoted message said:

google for "burst scuba tank" and get back to me. scuba tanks have less
than half the pressure of proposed vehicle hydrogen tanks, with
non-flammable contents.

*Burst* scuba tank? I don't buy it as a regular occurrence. Worst
accidents that happen with decently designed and not overpressurised
cylinder tanks involve the valvehead blowing off. Nice bottle rocket
effects that can certainly be lethal, but short of significantly weakening
the sidewall of an oxygen cylinder you're not going to get anything that
can be genuinely described as 'burst'. Those things can take a massive
beating. The main way you can weaken the sidewalls of cylindrical gas
tanks -- aside from malice aforethought -- involves leaving them in a
fire. This is why a fire with propane tanks involved is No Fun. A car fire
with a hydrogen tank involved is also No Fun, but I very much doubt it'd
be much worse than current LPG and CNG tanks which ride around in their
tens of thousands.

Hydrogen isn't explosive outside a very narrow mix of O2 and H2, and it's
lighter than air so it just goes up into the air as soon as it gets
outside your car. The H2 didn't even contribute all that much to
Hindenburg's demise, after all. Also, fuel tanks can be designed with a
much higher safety factor, because they don't have to be vaguely
neutrally-buoyant.

Jasper

jasper & david

http://www.napsd.com/cscuba.htm

and look in dive safety training manuals. sure, tanks/valves have burst
disks & are regularly inspected, but the problem with any pressure
vessel is that when they go, they tend to go big.

as for the "jaws" experiment, there's a big difference between a tank
that is still ductile because it contains no flaws and one that is
partially cracked to the point of brittle rupture. fracture mechanics.

Dear Jim,

The picture of the damaged water tub shows that I was
completely justified in refusing to let my larger pet
snapping turtles employ SCUBA equipment:

http://www.napsd.com/tank5.jpg

They lived in such tubs full of water and would undoubtedly
have attempted to escape by such means. I shudder to think
what they would have done with tanks full of hydrogen.

Carl Fogel

David L. Johnson said:

There should be a required picture of a coal-fired power
plant, belching out black smoke, in the background on
all these ads.

That "required picture" would have to come from a deep archive, because
modern coal-fired power plants [e.g. URL below] are *not* /_"belching
out black smoke"_/.

http://www.turnerphotographics.com/nature/issues/images/9812076w.jpg

--
"Bicycling is a healthy and manly pursuit with much
to recommend it, and, unlike other foolish crazes,
it has not died out." -- The Daily Telegraph (1877)