I wish this would work...

[upful living]

This was sitting in the walk way of my office. I wish it was as cool as it looked. Unfortunately, it's not.

Would have been awesome though!

 

[give me vtec]

for an air compressor???

 

[upful living]

You nailed it.

I knew what it came off. But had not explored the physical functionality of the piece before. A sad discovery I might point out.

 

[Chris Crew]

air motor

Switch your valves around and hook 'er up to a tank of compressed gas and you got yerself a dandy airmotor. There is a green company in France that makes a line of cars and small delivery trucks that run on compressed air.

 

[wheelbender6]

I think there is an auto manufacturer in Europe that propels the car with compressed air.

 

[give me vtec]

Switch your valves around and hook 'er up to a tank of compressed gas and you got yerself a dandy airmotor. There is a green company in France that makes a line of cars and small delivery trucks that run on compressed air.

I dont know if you are implying that this would work on a bike... But I definitely don't think this would work. On a car you have a place to store the giant tank of air... on a bike we dont even really have the space to store a small tank of gas.

Can you even "switch the valves around"??? How would you do this???

 

[give me vtec]

I think there is an auto manufacturer in Europe that propels the car with compressed air.

there is a company that sells compressed air cars...

http://www.mdi.lu/english/

My question is this... are they really more "green". How much energy does it take to compress the air? Is the energy "clean energy" (if that even exists)... or is it conventional coal energy? I'm not a physicist but isn't there a law out there that says that energy is never lost... only transferred to friction and heat. My point is that it takes a certain amount of energy to move a mass a given distance... correct??? Wouldn't it require a similar amount of energy from the electrical outlet to compress the gas as it would from the gasoline??? I know a ton of energy is lost in an internal combustion engine to heat... but how much energy is lost on the way to your house through the grid? I guess it then becomes a question of where the energy comes from in reference to coal, nuclear, wind etc. Is there really a "green energy" solution to our problems? Even with wind turbines and solar panels there are a ton of toxic chemicals used as lubricants and batteries. Even "hybrid" cars... you have to replace the batteries every 3 or 4 years (at a cost of about $4000)... Do we have a program to recycle the lead and lithium??

I dont want this to be considered or become a political thread... just my thoughts, and would like to hear other thoughts as well.

 

[Chris Crew]

airmotor

you are all correct--"switching the valves around" is one of those easy to say, hard to do things, and yes, a 120# bottle of compressed gas would weigh a bike down a bit, and yes, it would probably cost more per mile in terms of energy and absolute present value dollars to fill the bottle, but how cool would a vee twin aircycle be?

 

[give me vtec]

you are all correct--"switching the valves around" is one of those easy to say, hard to do things, and yes, a 120# bottle of compressed gas would weigh a bike down a bit, and yes, it would probably cost more per mile in terms of energy and absolute present value dollars to fill the bottle, but how cool would a vee twin aircycle be?

agreed, would be pretty cool...