I want to reduce
the cost of compressing air so much that we can all thrive, energy-wise,
on nothing more than the dissipated solar energy—ambient heat—that
resides in ordinary atmosphere in all kinds of weather, day and night,
brought to you by compressed air. In the absence of solar radiation,
absolute zero is about 460 degrees F. below zero. That's a lot of
ambient heat, and it's free if you can get it into an air tank cheaply.
I began the air car
project because I was overwhelmed with concerns about the problems faced
by humanity and its home on this planet. I needed a task that I
could focus on so I would feel that I was contributing in a unique and
positive way. I decided to tackle a project that I felt would attack
many of society's ills at once: replacing petroleum as the energy base for
all that we do.
As a piano
technician, I knew about air motors from my experience with rebuilding
player pianos, and I wanted to prove that cars could run on air, not
knowing that it had already been done. I studied all the
alternatives and analyzed the situation one criteria at a time till I
concluded that I was not fooling myself: air was the best way to go.
(See my book Air Car Basics for this analysis of the alternatives.)
In 1980 I met a
real air car inventor, George Heaton, who talked me into focusing on
compressed air engines rather than suction motors like those found in
player pianos. Thus began my search for the power secrets of
compressed air, spurred by this man who claimed that he had been able to
put low pressure air into a high pressure tank.
In 1983 I bought a
set of plans from air car inventor Terry Miller, and finally found a
workable base for thinking and researching the facts about compressed air
and how it is used. In particular, he emphasized the importance of
knowing and understanding where the energy was coming from. Somehow
I had gotten all the way through school believing that an engineer is
someone who drives a train. It was Terry Miller who introduced me to
air car engineering.
In 1986 I
interviewed air car inventor Bill Truitt, and was convinced that his
seemingly anomolous claims of a self-fueling air car were sincere. I
began a search for the source of energy that could make a self-fueling air
car possible.
In 1988 a
researcher told me about inventor Bob Neal, whose U.S. Patent No.
2,030,759 claims, like George Heaton, to enable the injection of low
pressure air into a high pressure tank.
While I continued
to assemble the world's largest collection of information on air cars and
compressed air power secrets, it eventually became obvious, for reasons
explained in detail elsewhere on this website, that compressed air is an
overlooked source of solar energy.
In 2003 I realized,
and proved mathematically using standard engineering charts, that it isn't
even necessary to put low pressure air into a high pressure tank.
Any system of producing and using compressed air with greater than normal
efficiency has some promise of being at least partially self-fueling, if
carefully planned.
Among my
accomplishments of the past 27 years:
-
I have built a collection of
information relevant to air powered cars that is the biggest publicly
accessible collection in the world. My most important findings are
right here on this website, and in greater detail all through the books
and tapes in the Pneumatic Options catalog.
-
I have found the answer to the riddle
of Maxwell’s Demon, first posed in 1870 by James Clerk Maxwell, who
Einstein called the father of modern physics. I have discovered
that the Bernoulli Effect is Maxwell’s Demon, but as pointed out in a
Scientific American article on Maxwell’s Demon, the demon is not really
a way around the second law of thermodynamics as Maxwell stated, because
the sun continually replenishes the Earth’s atmosphere with energy, so
it is not a closed system and we are not re-using energy. The
Bernoulli Effect (Maxwell’s Demon) manifests a situation in which energy
in the form of compressed air is flip-flopped back and forth between
potential and kinetic, and each form of energy is not only thus able to
be used for what it does best, but each is also out of the way when it
is needed least or when its presence would be undesirable. The
Bernoulli Effect means that pressure and velocity can be traded with
each other to keep a nearly-full tank from ever getting empty. You
just have to be smarter than the tank. Also more practical than
the physicists who’ve spent the past 130 years arguing about a little
demon in a tank and have never made a shopping list of the hardware that
might be used to demonstrate the effects of unequal zones of pressure
inside an air tank.
-
I have discovered (beginning in 1988)
the Equalization Engine concept which might be the secret behind Bob
Neal's tank. Information is available at
New and Untested Design Ideas for Air Cars. At the present time
I consider this my most promising new information and invite comment.
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I have built an air powered go kart.
It accelerated so fast from a dead stop headed up a steep hill with a
big person on it, that the steering was almost impossible to control.
All it took was a scuba tank, an old air drill for a motor, and a valve
to let the air out of the tank.
-
I have built a Tesla turbine.
Drawing up the plans took six months, and paying the machinist took
longer than that. I have not done extensive tests on it.
(READ ABOUT VIDEO IN CATALOG)
Now because of a French
air car
inventor named Guy Negre
(see www.theaircar.com), everybody knows about air cars, and for the first time I can feel the demand for
a real air car product outpacing my expectations. The big
carmakers have real electric hybrids on the market. The government
is clamping down on air pollution. People are talking about running
out of oil for the first time in years, and the price of gas has recently
hit an all-time high. Oil wars threaten us all.
Whether it is
actually wise for industrial civilization to continue to have access to
plentiful sources of energy, it remains to be seen. It is my belief
that only pneumatic technology coupled with solar energy can keep us
going. As for getting the wealthy and powerful to share, well that's
a different story.
My favorite slogan
is: More power to us all!
Luther
R., Founder
Pneumatic Options
