WHAT IS AN AIR
CAR?
Not a flying
car. Air cars have tires and run on the road like any car.
Instead of a gas engine they have an engine that runs on compressed air.
Instead of a gas tank they have an air tank, like a scuba tank but
bigger.
HOW FAST CAN
AIR CARS GO?
The sky's the limit.
Depending on the design, air can make a car putt-putt around town or
burn rubber on the race track. Air engines work like steam
engines: expansively rather than combustively. This gives them the
highly desirable characteristic of maximum torque at starting speed,
unlike the gas engine which must be geared down from the high speeds at
which it must function.
HOW FAR DO AIR
CARS GO BETWEEN FILLUPS?
There are three answers for three different types of air
car.
-
Hybrid air
cars carry a gas-powered engine and compressor on-board, so their
range depends on the efficiency of the system and the size of the gas
tank.
-
Conventional air cars, such as the pneumatic locomotives that were
available commercially from 1890 to 1930, stop at air stations to
refuel. These cars can be designed to go 5 to 500 miles between
fillups, depending on the efficiency of the system, the size and
pressure of the tanks, and the ingenuity of the designer.
-
Self-fueling air cars are powered by solar energy and can travel
non-stop until they break or develop an air leak. Such cars are
experimental in nature, and getting an inventor to give up his secret
is harder than figuring it out for yourself. Hint: absolute zero
(if the sun went out, for example) is 460 degrees below 0 degrees
Fahrenheit.
HOW COULD
SOLAR ENERGY POWER AN AIR CAR?
No solar
panels, mirrors, lenses or other solar collectors are involved.
The Earth's atmosphere is a gigantic air tank containing four
quadrillion tons of compressed air at the pressure of 14.7 pounds per
square inch at sea level, slightly less atop Mount Everest.
If not for
the sun's heat, our atmosphere would freeze and fall to the ground as
snow. The sun adds about 500 degrees of temperature to the air and
all this heat is stored in air. When air is pushed into a tank,
that is, compressed above atmospheric pressure, its internal energy
(solar heat) becomes available for use as a piston-pushing or
turbine-driving power.
WHY HASN'T
THIS ALREADY BEEN DONE?
Compressed
air cars have been around since the 1880s. Dozens of patents have
been granted to inventors of air cars. After about 1930, the term
"air engine" was no longer used in engineering textbooks, and the
pneumatic locomotives which once proliferated in mining were mostly
replaced by electric conveyances which had not been safe or reliable
until then. It was becoming apparent by 1930 that compressed air
was going to displace the fuel industry with free solar energy, and
sometime during the second world war it became unpopular in engineering
circles to think optimistically of compressed air as an energy carrier.
Gas was cheap at the time, and there was little apparent need to
consider alternatives; we ate what the oil companies fed us, and now we
are paying $3.00 for a gallon of gas in the U.S. while people in other
countries are paying even more.
The short
answer: we are letting profit-oriented mega-corporations make our
decisions for us, instead of thinking about what we could be doing to
improve our conditions and the condition of our environment. And
why not? We Americans are still living like aristocrats compared to the rest of the
world.
WHAT IS THERE
TO LOSE IF WE WERE TO SWITCH OVER TO AIR?
WHAT'S WRONG
WITH THE OTHER ALTERNATIVES?
Electric
cars use power generated by coal, nuclear power, and dams. They
require hours to recharge. Batteries must be replaced frequently,
and have no place to go when they die. Materials used in
conventional batteries are caustic and poisonous. Materials used
in exotic batteries are as scarce as petroleum. Batteries are many
times heavier than air tanks.
Hydrogen
cars use combustion engines, which are Rube Goldberg devices that an
enlightened public would refuse to buy. Hydrogen must be stored in
an altered form to keep it from being many times more explosive than
gasoline or diesel. Hydrogen cars exhaust water, which will freeze
on the road in cold weather and increase the humidity of the atmosphere,
worsening the greenhouse effect. Hydrogen is much more costly to
produce as a fuel than fossil fuels.
The simplest
solution is the best solution. Air tanks don't really wear out or
explode; not like batteries do, and nowhere near as often. Air
engines require less frequent oil changes than gas engines, and can be
designed to be almost lubricant-free. Air tanks can be filled in a
minute or two. No chemical reactions take place in the compression
of air. Air compressors actually clean the air, and no air motor
increases greenhouse gases. All the necessary technology has
existed for 100 years. Simple solutions cost less. Homespun
mechanics will be back in business. High tech = high cost.
Compressed air is solar energy. Solar energy is free energy.
