Compressed air engine

Hans_de_Vries

It seeeems that a six-seater car with a Guy Negre compressed air engine will cover one hundred miles in city traffic on one charge of compressed air that costs about 30 pence when a mains driven compressor is used.
Can you investigate, please?

moonrakerz

http://www.electrifyingtimes.com/guynegre.html

rdwarr

Very good. Now, how much petrol does it take to run the compressor?

Hans_de_Vries

rdwarr wrote:

Very good. Now, how much petrol does it take to run the compressor?

Not a drop! A windmill or voltaic solar panels on the roof may supply all the compressed air for free - that is, apart from the cost of installation.
The engines emit zero pollution - just cold air - run silently, allow regenerative braking, don't consume any energy when stationary before a traffic light and, to boot, in comparison with conventional internal combustion engines are cheaper and easier to manufacture. They have been ignored by the motoring press which is a shame because the investment for producing compressed air engine cars is a fraction of the investment needed for conventional cars. And the savings for their owners dwarf any savings ever mentioned in Martin's columns!

rdwarr

It seems almost too good to be true. The one concern I have is to do with conservation of energy but I'm hopeful that further reading will allay that one.
In my car I spend £20 to go 100 miles. If it can be done for 30p I'm interested!

mikey-mike_2

as my granny used to say..."if it sounds too good to be true then it probably is!"

Hans_de_Vries

mikey-mike wrote:

as my granny used to say..."if it sounds too good to be true then it probably is!"

Quite! The core of the problem is not how good the technology is - that has been proven - but about attracting money looking for investment into setting up small-scale factories - 130 staff and run of the mill technology.

wdyw

Hans_de_Vries wrote:

Quite! The core of the problem is not how good the technology is - that has been proven - but about attracting money looking for investment into setting up small-scale factories - 130 staff and run of the mill technology.

I read as far as their stated amount of energy stored in the air that could be used to power the engine, laughed loudly, and then went to the next thread.

Generali

If it works, I find it hard to believe that it won't get investment. There are huge sums of money in the City at the moment chasing Green investments. A lot of people (far brighter than me) reckon it will be the next bubble.

That makes me think that if this isn't getting investment it either doesn't work or the people trying to get the money are hopelessly amateur.

tomstickland

A basic sum involving motor efficiency x compressor efficiency x engine efficiency would be interesting.
ie: energy output by vehicle / energy required to compress the air.

moonrakerz

If it WAS that good, Ford or GM would have made the inventor "vanish" by now !