Compressed Air Power Secrets:
Pneumatics for Inventors (3rd edition),
what started out many years ago as a 12-page stab in the dark is now a
374-page magnum opus on the calculations and theory of compressed air as
an energy carrier. Includes the equations for various modes of air
compression and air motors and engines. Special emphasis is on
pressure equalization as a better way to compress air, with mathematical
and theoretical proof. All math is simple algebra, and every step is
explicitly laid out. This book is written especially for the
unpedigreed non-engineers who populate the ranks of the deeply interested:
people who want to design and build air cars and have the intelligence to
go ahead and try it.
Item #02-09
Homemade Air Engines that Work, DVD and documentation,
including 11 x 17 foldouts of detailed drawings: (1) Torquerack One,
prototype for an air engine that puts out almost twice the torque it would
put out if it used a crankshaft, by replacing the crankshaft with gears;
(2) The Littlefoot Engine, a two-stage compressor converted into a
two-stage air engine.
Item #14B-00
Air Car Design Manual (second edition),
Compressed air is
solar energy, air engine theory, the most efficient air engines ever
commercially built, air engine valves, vehicle power requirements, hybrid
and closed-cycle pneumatic power plants, extending range, technical press.
Item #28-00
An electric motor
is an inefficient machine while coming up to normal speed; a steam
engine is inefficient until the walls of the cylinders are thoroughly
heated; but a compressed air engine is most efficient,
thermodynamically, with the first movement of the piston, because the
walls of the cylinders are then at their highest temperature. This
fact would point to the use of compressed air locomotives wherever
stops and starts are to occur with great frequency.
U. S. Patent No.
868,560, Interheater for Compound Compressed-Air Engines, Patented
October 15, 1907, by Charles B. Hodges of Pittsburgh, Pennsyvania.
The French three-stage design beginning on the next page was based on
Hodges’ patent, but takes it a few steps further; heat was absorbed
before all three stages, and regenerative braking was incorporated to
add compressed air and heat to the tanks and interheater.
From Air Car
Design Manual
The Magic Valve,
Bob Neal’s means for
putting low pressure air into a high pressure tank, patented in 1936,
Interview with air car inventor George Heaton, check valves and waves,
interview with Bob Neal’s son, wave compounding by reflection in
closed-end tubes, Neal patent file.
Item #07B-00
Maxwell’s Demon Gets a Job (3rd edition),
The answer to James
Clerk Maxwell’s famous riddle about self-fueling air engines and the 2nd
Law of Thermodynamics, with the cloak of physics jargon removed by our
discovery that the Bernoulli Effect qualifies as the solution to the
eminent scientist Maxwell’s profound riddle.
Item #07A-00
Air Car Basics, 1981, Air cars compared
with eight other alternatives, our first essay on air cars.
Item #42-00
