Motor That Run On Liquid Air

man, that thing sounds horrid. Can already see my ears bleeding in rush our with hundreds of those whirring away.
 
was there leaky gas inside cause it sounded like it was leaking something.
 
there are still issues with it...and like "electric vehicles", it just "defers" the emissions to a different part of the process as you still need energy to make the liquid air.

then there's the leakage issue.

shoot, if it's the same stuff as those compressed air cans...then there's the "bitterant" that they may have to add to it 'cuz some teenagers try to get high off the exhaust pipe of their liquid air car.

also, compressed air cars aren't a new idea:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressed_air_car


perhaps a combination of ideas would be better....use the liquid air/compressed air to run micro-turbines that generate electricity that powers hub motors.
Hub motors can also double as regenerative braking systems which will reclaim some of the energy when u brake.
The reduced reliance on batteries would help reduce the weight of the vehicle as well.

It's either that or wait for someone to invent a Mr. Fusion :cool:
 
How far would you go on an insulated tank of liquid air?

Also -256 degrees sounds pretty cold! Hope they really consider the integrity of the tanks!
 
bodan said:
Any gas can become a liquid. High School Chemistry is that way ->>>
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Thank you sir, but I know. I said "almost" since two words were made into one rather than liquid-to-air.
 
It "runs" on LN2, just like a steam powered train engine runs on coal.

Problem is, you are not going to get very far on LN2 before it turns to gas and LN2 requires a lot of energy to produce. Totally impractical.
 
The word you're looking for is fluid. Gas and liquid indicate phase.

Typical pump and motor losses for compressing air for a shop are phenomenal. This uses a refrigerant process, but this quote doesn't inspire confidence, "The Dearman engine is currently undergoing independent testing by Ricardo Engineering to assess its feasibility." Bet you a buck it fails to exceed anything offered today.
 
we are paying $5.62 USD a gallon here in Australia. And that's the cheapest its been in ages.
 
SuicidalGoat said:
3.50? Sign me up! 3.70 for gas here in upstate ny
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I'm upstate as well, but it sounds like you are a little higher than me. Gas in town is about $3.45, and it goes up 10 to 20 cents once you leave town. Still sucks. It was down to $3.25 in December.
 
It's about $3.40 a couple miles south of Redmond. You only get 9/10 of a gallon, too.
 
THRESHIN said:
zero emissions? so where did the energy come from that gets the liquid air?
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the same place where it went to get oil turned into gasoline.

not like you can run a car on the stuff right out of the ground...

however once you fill up these modified liquid nitro cars... they add no new emissions. still a pipedream thou... nice if it happened but not holding my breath for em. sides I would prefer steam powered cars
 
does the gas go away after the piston moves?

I guess what I am asking, why can't the gas be returned to its liquid state repeatedly? kinda like a heatpipe.
 
Holy crap that looks promising! As for the noise - I'm sure that it'll be done away with if this design ever goes big time. I'm convinced that they're not trying to reinvent muffler system here, and that it's the last thing on their list to implement ;)
 
Yantelope said:
man, that thing sounds horrid. Can already see my ears bleeding in rush our with hundreds of those whirring away.
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Agreed. The engine in that car sounded just annoying. I hope they actually do make something functional and efficient out of this technology, but for engine sound porn eeehhhhh I still take good old V8 gasoline crematory thank you very much. :D
 
So you have this gas/fluid that expands as it warms up... right... there's nothing wrong with that at all. At least with gasoline the expansion is controlled by how hard you press the gas. With this you'll have your LN2 expanding from the start, hope that fuel canister you store it in is strong enough to hold that constant pressure.

This is flipping silly, reactions are where you get energy, phase changes.. not so much
 
I thought South America already had some compressed air powered taxis.
 
A long time ago.....

When I was a kid, I had a red car that ran on air. It was basically a clear plastic bottle with the frame of a car around it with a working plastic piston engine. If I remember right, there was an air pump used to compress air into the bottle. Then you just gave it a little nudge and watched it go. It was one of the toys that survived longer than most before I took it apart - which it didn't survive. I wish I could remember the name of what that car was because the same principal was made into action with a toy about 20 to 25 years ago. It was pretty fun too.
 
There are two big issues with this type of engine:
1) You have to get the Oxygen down to under 90kelvin (-297F, LiquidO's boiling point), which takes an enormous amount of energy.
2) You have to be able to safely store LiquidO for extended periods of time without having the fluid get above 90kelvin.

This means you have a huge amount of energy to get the "fuel" down to a usable temp, and then you expend a huge amount of energy to maintain the fuel at the appropriate temp. I don't see why anyone would consider this a good idea.

Here's an excerpt from the Liquid Nitrogen Vehicles wiki page:
Cost of production
Liquid nitrogen production is an energy-intensive process. Currently practical refrigeration plants producing a few tons/day of liquid nitrogen operate at about 50% of Carnot efficiency.[1]
[edit]Energy density of liquid nitrogen
Any process that relies on a phase-change of a substance will have much lower energy densities than processes involving a chemical reaction in a substance, which in turn have lower energy densities than nuclear reactions. Liquid nitrogen as an energy store has a low energy density. Liquid hydrocarbon fuels by comparison have a high energy density. A high energy density makes the logistics of transport and storage more convenient. Convenience is an important factor in consumer acceptance. The convenient storage of petroleum fuels combined with its low cost has led to an unrivaled success. In addition, a petroleum fuel is a primary energy source, not just an energy storage and transport medium.
The energy density — derived from nitrogen's isobaric heat of vaporization and specific heat in gaseous state — that can be realised from liquid nitrogen at atmospheric pressure and zero degrees Celsius ambient temperature is about 97 watt-hours per kilogram (W-hr/kg). This compares with 100-250 W-hr/kg for a lithium-ion battery and 3,000 W-hr/kg for a gasoline combustion engine running at 28% thermal efficiency, 30 times the density of liquid nitrogen used at the Carnot efficiency.[2]
For an isothermal expansion engine to have a range comparable to an internal combustion engine, a 350-litre (92 US gal) insulated onboard storage vessel is required.[2] A practical volume, but a noticeable increase over the typical 50-litre (13 US gal) gasoline tank. The addition of more complex power cycles would reduce this requirement and help enable frost free operation. However, no commercially practical instances of liquid nitrogen use for vehicle propulsion exist.
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Liquid Oxygen has a better expansion ratio than Liquid Nitrogen (1:861 vs 1:694), but that still is probably WELL below what the chemical reaction of Gasoline can provide.

(Also, RE: the $3.50 remark, that probably isn't intended to be a reasonable price estimate. I'm not sure how much it would cost to bring down oxygen to liquid temps.)
 
It all comes down to efficiency and energy density. If it's efficiency is crap all you're doing is making more pollution somewhere else. If the density is crap and you have too fill it up every 20 or 30 miles it's also crap. This is really long on oooooh I'm running my car on compresses air; which has been done and really short on numbers. Efficiency, range, range per gallon, etc.
 
Fireye said:
There are two big issues with this type of engine:
1) You have to get the Oxygen down to under 90kelvin (-297F, LiquidO's boiling point), which takes an enormous amount of energy.
2) You have to be able to safely store LiquidO for extended periods of time without having the fluid get above 90kelvin.

This means you have a huge amount of energy to get the "fuel" down to a usable temp, and then you expend a huge amount of energy to maintain the fuel at the appropriate temp. I don't see why anyone would consider this a good idea.

Here's an excerpt from the Liquid Nitrogen Vehicles wiki page:


Liquid Oxygen has a better expansion ratio than Liquid Nitrogen (1:861 vs 1:694), but that still is probably WELL below what the chemical reaction of Gasoline can provide.

(Also, RE: the $3.50 remark, that probably isn't intended to be a reasonable price estimate. I'm not sure how much it would cost to bring down oxygen to liquid temps.)
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Ding ding ding! This is one of the reasons (besides greedy/corrupt politicians/oil barons) that petroleum will be with us for a long time. You can argue that if we spent the resources developing alternative energy sources (those not derived from petroleum in some fashion) we would be done with the hydrocarbon thing. Maybe, but it didn't happen that way. Unless the tree-huggers bribe the politicians more than the oil companies (very doubtful), gasoline ain't going anywhere.
 
THRESHIN said:
zero emissions? so where did the energy come from that gets the liquid air?
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Depends on where you live.

But yeah, you still need to expend energy to compress the gas.

The heat exchange liquid is a pretty cool innovation. This guy is a master tinkerer.

-Ian
 
Um, yeah.......

Not going to get much range on that.

And to those who decry "yeah, what about the emissions to generate the energy to charge the car/compress the air/get the Hydrogen/etc", we have a category of energy production called "renewable energy". The majority of my energy comes from renewable resources already, without even TRYING, because my electricity provider (and part of the country) is ahead of the curve. And for only a few bucks a month, I guarantee that all my electricity is from renewable resources.

In some places (like Iceland) renewable energy is already 100% of electricity production.
 
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