Motor That Run On Liquid Air

compressing gaseous nitrogen into liquid nitrogen will, invariably, require more energy than you can derive from the evaporative pressure of the nitrogen....
 
hope you like being cold in your car, because you aren't getting heat from your motor and having an electric heater on board presents an entirely new variable, battery system, charging system, etc...capable of driving an electric heater and such
 
Neat engineering project but totally impractical. If you're going to go cryo, you might as well using liquid hydrogen which comes much closer to the energy density of gasoline, and doesn't cost much more to produce and transport.
 
This is semi pure bullshit.

1. Bullshit because:

It takes a lot of energy to compress and cool air into a liquid. That energy must be taken from an another energy source.

..it is an inefficient energy carrier. What most people don't understand, our fuels are just an energy bearer. Gasoline, diesel, coal, battery, alcohol or hydrogen, it's just how we transport energy with us for convenience. The different bearers have different density, efficiency, origin and cost. Today our best option is diesel and gasoline. High density, somewhat efficient, easy to store and cheap. Alcohol is similar in many regards, but will have a bigger impact on the environment(co2 and agricultural) than pumping oil from the ground.

2.Exciting because:

You can choose where you get your local pollution. Instead of a city filled with smog from cars, you can locate your coal powerplant outside of town, and get rid of local pollution. The total pollution will be greater though, as each transformation from one energy carrier to the next looses energy. Just like the food chain yaknow.

For humanity to solve pollution problems, we must find/exploit a renewable energy source that is efficient, and convert it into an efficient energy bearer that is easy to transport and cheap to produce. (Water, nuclear, solar, geothermic and wind fex)
 
Fireye said:
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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We pay about $1-1.20/gallon for liquid oxygen or liquid nitrogen delivered (~800-850 gallons of each per tank). The nice thing about liquid nitrogen is it is inert. You can have a tank of it pretty much anywhere you want. Liquid oxygen on the other hand has extra laws because of how well things burn in close proximity. :)
 
So we'll use these engines in power plants to turn generators to produce electricity. For my PC ;) They look impractical as portable power plants for car engines.
 
spintroniX said:
it is in fact bullshit.

Here is a good explanation:

http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2011/12/the_nuclear_physics_of_why_we.php
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Nice write up, I took one look at the original claims and thought "bullshit" but I don't have time to show why. Although the explanation I heard originally was that they bombarded nickel with neutrons to create a radioactive form of nickel that decayed and made heat... that said 1) where do you get free neutrons 2) conservation of energy still wins.
 
Whenever a new technology comes out there are so many ready to shit all over it. These new technologies are starting points they are not ready to be mass marketed and placed in your car ... yet. Personally I see this as a positive development and I look forward to these new technologies moving forward.
 
NorthernEurope said:
What most people don't understand, our fuels are just an energy bearer. Gasoline, diesel, coal, battery, alcohol or hydrogen, it's just how we transport energy with us for convenience.
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Not really, most of our fuels are actual sources of energy, if they weren't you couldn't build a complex technological civilization.

Petroleum, used to yield about 100 times the energy that was put into extraction/refining.

Today easy sources are more exhausted and the yield is about 10 times the energy put in. Still enough to keep forward progress running.

Petroleum IS and energy source, but is often conveniently used as a carrier.

Compressed Air OTOH is only a carrier of energy and a fairly inefficient one at that. You WILL get less energy out, than you put in.

There is nothing wrong with energy carriers, but efficiency becomes a big factor for them and you still need sources of energy.

Rechargeable batteries are also energy carriers, but they are extremely efficient and so are electric motors. Compressed air cycle, not so much. We are talking about close to double the efficiency on the EV/Battery side.
 
sfsuphysics said:
Nice write up, I took one look at the original claims and thought "bullshit" but I don't have time to show why. Although the explanation I heard originally was that they bombarded nickel with neutrons to create a radioactive form of nickel that decayed and made heat... that said 1) where do you get free neutrons 2) conservation of energy still wins.
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Thanks guys, way to crush my dreams, I was half way through filling out the ecat pre-order form :D

It was an interesting article though.
 
MoFoQ said:
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:
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Why do people think that when you add another layer of entropy that things get more efficient. Guess what? It's actually more efficient to use the compressed air to drive the car than to add another layer of BS in between.

The reason this is an idea at all is because our current energy storage methods are terrible. Ultimately it ends up at your power co anyway, which probably still uses coal.:(
 
stealthy123 said:
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.
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Because it takes energy to return it to its liquid state. It releases X amount of energy when it goes liquid -> gas and absorbs the same X amount of energy to go gas -> liquid, the net effect being there is no energy release to drive your car. You then add in that all energy transfer processes have some sort of inefficiency, and so the engine will actually REQUIRE energy to run instead of releasing energy.

Fact is, it takes energy to move things, that energy has to come from somewhere. One huge problem is people love these huge fuck off cars and trucks which consume massive amounts of energy to transport a couple of tiny people. Its absolutely obscene to see a 3 tonne truck transporting a single person who weighs maybe 50-90kg. If society made the jump to being minimalistic and only using vehicles that matched the actual transport requirements instead of exceeding them by an order of magnitude, it'd have a more significant effect on emissions than anything else.

Cars just keep getting heavier and more powerful and people just keep buying vehicles that are completely excessive for their needs and then we complain about emissions... its absurd.
 
People handling liquid nitrogen without gloves on = I automatically assume they are idiots.
 
Tudz said:
Because it takes energy to return it to its liquid state. It releases X amount of energy when it goes liquid -> gas and absorbs the same X amount of energy to go gas -> liquid, the net effect being there is no energy release to drive your car. You then add in that all energy transfer processes have some sort of inefficiency, and so the engine will actually REQUIRE energy to run instead of releasing energy.

Fact is, it takes energy to move things, that energy has to come from somewhere. One huge problem is people love these huge fuck off cars and trucks which consume massive amounts of energy to transport a couple of tiny people. Its absolutely obscene to see a 3 tonne truck transporting a single person who weighs maybe 50-90kg. If society made the jump to being minimalistic and only using vehicles that matched the actual transport requirements instead of exceeding them by an order of magnitude, it'd have a more significant effect on emissions than anything else.

Cars just keep getting heavier and more powerful and people just keep buying vehicles that are completely excessive for their needs and then we complain about emissions... its absurd.
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okay, so liquids that go to gas at low temps don't release comparable energy to super cooled liquids do when they go to gas.

thanks for the science lesson.
 
what about the Japanese startup company about 2-3 years ago with the prototype car running on water? it was using the hydrogen for fuel using some type of sound wave to efficiently break the bond of ordinary water to burn for fuel, it used both parts the hydrogen and the oxygen. But it suddenly dissapeared from the net, another inovation bought out? most likley. we won't be free of fossil fuels until money isn't being made by it anymore, then the better options will become available.
 
Tudz said:
Because it takes energy to return it to its liquid state. It releases X amount of energy when it goes liquid -> gas and absorbs the same X amount of energy to go gas -> liquid, the net effect being there is no energy release to drive your car. You then add in that all energy transfer processes have some sort of inefficiency, and so the engine will actually REQUIRE energy to run instead of releasing energy.

Fact is, it takes energy to move things, that energy has to come from somewhere. One huge problem is people love these huge fuck off cars and trucks which consume massive amounts of energy to transport a couple of tiny people. Its absolutely obscene to see a 3 tonne truck transporting a single person who weighs maybe 50-90kg. If society made the jump to being minimalistic and only using vehicles that matched the actual transport requirements instead of exceeding them by an order of magnitude, it'd have a more significant effect on emissions than anything else.

Cars just keep getting heavier and more powerful and people just keep buying vehicles that are completely excessive for their needs and then we complain about emissions... its absurd.
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Cars are getting bigger and heavier? Since when? My puny 1987 s10 only weighs around 300lbs less than the 3/4 ton pickup I use for work. The entire engine compartment and cab of my s10 would probably fit inside the engine compartment of the 3/4 ton pickup. I guess plastic cars from 2004 may weigh less than plastic cars from 2011, due to all the stupid safety regulations, but they are still lighter than the older vehicles.

Also, let me know how your "small, minimalistic" cars handle a Maine winter. I understand that some people purchase big vehicles for no apparent reason, but that portion of the population isn't significant. Most of the time you see people driving big cars because they need them for work and dont want to buy a second vehicle just to drive to the corner store.
 
EDIT: Reading comprehension fail. Converting liters to gallons would make it $2.50.
 
Snowdog said:
Not really, most of our fuels are actual sources of energy, if they weren't you couldn't build a complex technological civilization.

Petroleum, used to yield about 100 times the energy that was put into extraction/refining.

Today easy sources are more exhausted and the yield is about 10 times the energy put in. Still enough to keep forward progress running.

Petroleum IS and energy source, but is often conveniently used as a carrier.
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No, they are all energy carriers. The process of creating petroleum and such took more energy to create than we get back out of it - it's just that we weren't the ones that created it. Law of conservation of energy and all that is such a buzz kill, I know.

Rechargeable batteries are also energy carriers, but they are extremely efficient and so are electric motors. Compressed air cycle, not so much. We are talking about close to double the efficiency on the EV/Battery side.
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Yup, similar story with hydrogen as well. The advantage of them is the "recharge" cycle is much shorter, though.
 
wizdum said:
Cars are getting bigger and heavier? Since when? My puny 1987 s10 only weighs around 300lbs less than the 3/4 ton pickup I use for work. The entire engine compartment and cab of my s10 would probably fit inside the engine compartment of the 3/4 ton pickup. I guess plastic cars from 2004 may weigh less than plastic cars from 2011, due to all the stupid safety regulations, but they are still lighter than the older vehicles.

Also, let me know how your "small, minimalistic" cars handle a Maine winter. I understand that some people purchase big vehicles for no apparent reason, but that portion of the population isn't significant. Most of the time you see people driving big cars because they need them for work and dont want to buy a second vehicle just to drive to the corner store.
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Since the early 80s almost all cars have been getting heavier. I know there's exceptions, but if you follow a series of vehicles from the early 80s up until now, or the average weight in a particular class of vehicles, you'll find they've been getting consistently heavier. My base model 1979 family car is 1250kg and 120hp... the current model of the same series is 1690kg and just over 250hp. For the most part if you look through the general specifications for older cars and compare them to the same type of car now, the newer ones will be heavier and more powerful.

Also, don't misquote me, I never said "small, minimalistic", I said "minimalistic and only using vehicles that matched the actual transport requirements". I don't live in Maine, but if it requires you to own a huge arse truck to get around... that's your transport requirement. My mate owns a 1 tonner Ute... because he hauls a lot of stuff around, that's his transport requirement.

You go to any office carpark and see half the cars are huge arse SUVs and tell me those people actually need them while holding a straight face :p Hell, my sister drives 1610kg worth of 4WD an hour to work each day and then an hour home, she's used it a couple of times to move houses which made good use of the large amount of space it has, but other than that she's hauling 1600kg of vehicle around to transport her 60kg-ish of weight around. Its not the inefficient petrol driven engines that's making an impact, its the inefficient use of transportation.
 
jackofalltrades said:
what about the Japanese startup company about 2-3 years ago with the prototype car running on water? it was using the hydrogen for fuel using some type of sound wave to efficiently break the bond of ordinary water to burn for fuel, it used both parts the hydrogen and the oxygen. But it suddenly dissapeared from the net, another inovation bought out? most likley. we won't be free of fossil fuels until money isn't being made by it anymore, then the better options will become available.
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It will invariably take you more energy to break the hydrogen bonds in water than you can recover from combusting the hydrogen and oxygen back into water.
 
kllrnohj said:
No, they are all energy carriers. The process of creating petroleum and such took more energy to create than we get back out of it - it's just that we weren't the ones that created it. Law of conservation of energy and all that is such a buzz kill, I know.
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This is pedantic nonsense. By this logic there are no energy sources.

For practical human purposes, energy sources are systems that we get more energy out of than we put in.

So Petroleum is a valuable energy source, compressed air is not.
 
jackofalltrades said:
what about the Japanese startup company about 2-3 years ago with the prototype car running on water? it was using the hydrogen for fuel using some type of sound wave to efficiently break the bond of ordinary water to burn for fuel, it used both parts the hydrogen and the oxygen. But it suddenly dissapeared from the net, another inovation bought out? most likley. we won't be free of fossil fuels until money isn't being made by it anymore, then the better options will become available.
Click to expand...

It doesn't work because it's bullshit. There's no grand conspiracy to stamp out fossil fuel alternatives.
 
In regards to the e-cat system, currently giving it the benefit of the doubt, the DOD(department of defense) has bought a few of the megawatt plants and he has sold several others of that size, i am waiting to see if the home unit comes to market for the price that he said it would be (500 dollars us)

home unit will not generate power(electricity), it will be a heating coil/burner replacement system for a hot water(steam) system-supposedly.

if it comes to market for that price AND it's a heating elemental replacement unit that can provide enough heat for my system to heat my house, for the price of the recharge unit every 6 months (rossi said ~10 dollars) i'll be first in line to pop one in. again if it does what it says it does, my 700 dollar a month heating bill in the winter will be eliminated, if not no skin off my back, but i'd love to save 3000 a year in heating costs.
 
MoFoQ said:
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.
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Elsewhere emissions is just a scare tactic by big oil. Yes, electric vehicles are powered most likely by some sort of non-renewable source somewhere down the line, but the overall carbon footprint is minuscule compared to even the most efficient hybrid car.

I.E. a fossil fuel power plant is far more efficient with energy produced per gallon than any car. People just imagine them not to be because they're big.
 
Tudz said:
Since the early 80s almost all cars have been getting heavier. I know there's exceptions, but if you follow a series of vehicles from the early 80s up until now, or the average weight in a particular class of vehicles, you'll find they've been getting consistently heavier. My base model 1979 family car is 1250kg and 120hp... the current model of the same series is 1690kg and just over 250hp. For the most part if you look through the general specifications for older cars and compare them to the same type of car now, the newer ones will be heavier and more powerful.

Also, don't misquote me, I never said "small, minimalistic", I said "minimalistic and only using vehicles that matched the actual transport requirements". I don't live in Maine, but if it requires you to own a huge arse truck to get around... that's your transport requirement. My mate owns a 1 tonner Ute... because he hauls a lot of stuff around, that's his transport requirement.

You go to any office carpark and see half the cars are huge arse SUVs and tell me those people actually need them while holding a straight face :p Hell, my sister drives 1610kg worth of 4WD an hour to work each day and then an hour home, she's used it a couple of times to move houses which made good use of the large amount of space it has, but other than that she's hauling 1600kg of vehicle around to transport her 60kg-ish of weight around. Its not the inefficient petrol driven engines that's making an impact, its the inefficient use of transportation.
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You don't need a huge truck to survive a Maine winter, you just need a "normal" vehicle. All these minimialistic "smart" cars handle horribly in bad weather, and people are dieing because of it.
 
Zangmonkey said:
It will invariably take you more energy to break the hydrogen bonds in water than you can recover from combusting the hydrogen and oxygen back into water.
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Question is, how much would it cost compared to gasoline. It's not a self perpetuating machine, water powered engines use electricity to turn water into hydrogen, which is pumped in lieue of vaporized gasoline.


Try googling "HHO", they've been apparently doing it for years now, most of them home built in garages. Tho the most novelty use seems to be using the hydrogen as blowtorches (uses 12v batteries to power the extraction process). Lots of hydrogen, but not fast enough being made to actually power a car, at most they can use it to supplement gasoline so they'll use less fuel, but no pure hydrogen yet. They can use them to power motocycles, but only after collecting them in pressurized bottles (a bottle can last atleast fifty miles). Different configurations will produce different quantities so there's no set rule of thumb yet.

Considering they've shown this to actually work, it wouldn't be too far fetched for a private company to be able to create one that produces enough quantities to actually power a car. Of course, the question is, considering the laws of thermodynamics, wouldn't it be simpler to have that 12volts power an electic motor rather than convert the fuel for an internal combustion engine?

There's also the matter of how energy is stored if you choose to simply have some sort of refinery in your garage. Is it more practical to store 50 miles worth of electricity in lithium batteries? Or store 50 miles worth of hydrogen in pressure vessels?
 
wizdum said:
. All these minimialistic "smart" cars handle horribly in bad weather, and people are dieing because of it.
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Citation needed for all this dieing because of poor winter handling of these cars.

I live in Canada, and grew up in New Brunswick (next door to Maine), every car I have owned in the last 25 years has been a compact well under 3000 lbs.

Despite the harsh winters, Canadians skew to smaller cars, Corrolla/Civics outsell Camry/Accords. Yet we don't seem to be suffering from mass issues going off the roads.

You need two things to drive safely in winter: #1 A Brain, #2 good tires.
 
This this what we will have to resort to????


perriair.jpg
 
Just go pure electric. There's no other form of propulsion that's more efficient. It takes more electricity to refine a gallon of oil->gas than it does to drive 20 miles in a Nissan Leaf. I doubt compressing air -> liquid is very efficient either.

Currently own a Leaf btw and loving it!
 
toffty said:
Just go pure electric. There's no other form of propulsion that's more efficient. It takes more electricity to refine a gallon of oil->gas than it does to drive 20 miles in a Nissan Leaf. I doubt compressing air -> liquid is very efficient either.

Currently own a Leaf btw and loving it!
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The fatal flaw in your logic is that while your car makes no pollution to move the same amount of pollution a normal car would make is now spent creating the electricity required to charge your car. The electricity you used every night to chage your toy car is not magically created ;)
 
This thread reminds me of the quote in "The Matrix": "Do you think that's air you're breathing?" :D
 
schnell said:
The fatal flaw in your logic is that while your car makes no pollution to move the same amount of pollution a normal car would make is now spent creating the electricity required to charge your car. The electricity you used every night to chage your toy car is not magically created ;)
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You're correct but it's much cleaner and (inclusive) efficient than burning it from a car engine.

Also when I charge during the day it is clean, I have solar panels on my roof which can make more than enough energy for the task.
 
Yea, if your car's engine core is -256 degrees, I wouldn't recommend tryout out the car's heater - you may flash-freeze.
 
schnell said:
The fatal flaw in your logic is that while your car makes no pollution to move the same amount of pollution a normal car would make is now spent creating the electricity required to charge your car. The electricity you used every night to chage your toy car is not magically created ;)
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I'll also add: It's not a toy. I am able to drive it 100 miles in a day and pay $2.72 cents doing it. (free actually due to solar panels)

Come back when gas is $5 or even $6 / gal and we'll see who's car is a toy ;)
 
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