Sunday, March 9, 2008

Air Powered Car - Alternative Energy

Trans Revolution God's gift and our hope: World's First Air-Powered Car: Zero Emissions

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Hi MFB,

I read your comment and understand your points concerned with our dependence on foreign oil. As you noted, 80-90% of oil is consumed by transportation; therefore, a revolutionizing transportation is the key. Such as air-powered car would be the ideal invention if the invention is further developed. Of course, we have electric and hybrid cars already, but those are not widely used yet because of cost-inefficiency as well as other issues such as it will cost just as much as to consume electric than oil.

I understand that you have ranked the types of alternative energy.

If you assign a score to each category, shown in the ( ), and added them up, you would come up with this:

electric car: 10
hybrid car: 10
air car: 7
hydrogen: 5

If we could develop air car, I think that it is the most efficient and practical as it does not consume natural resource and we have plenty of air. We need to focus on developing energy resources like this as well as solar energy. I think that air car is the answer for transportation energy need and solar energy for household.

Further developing the energy source will solve most of our problems.

We need an invention like Bill Gates with windows.

Thanks again

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Air power news is a revolution which will lead our economy. Air power is the next generation of our energy source.

Air power is a revolution for all human race. It would be beneficial to focus on solving problems like all scientists in engineering field, and whoever, need to develop alternative energy. "Air Power" energy is the most effective, so far, superior than "Solar Power"!

http://www.popularmechanics.com/automotive/new_cars/4217016.html

I think that the Gov should give incentives and rebates to buy the air cars, so that many will have motivation to buy those.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmqpGZv0YT4
http://www.theaircar.com/acf/air-cars/air-cars.html

The Air Cars

Compressed air is an energy vector that can be used, in a viable way, to transport both people and goods.

The main goal of Air Car Factories is to develop and manufacture a vehicle driven by a compressed air engine with a level of performance that will respond to the actual needs of today’s market. With this aim we have drawn up a full agenda and an R&D plan of action for production start up.


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By MFB

A simple 5 step process:

1. Clearly define the problem. Ok, this can be several things, but I think the ultimate problem is to reduce the use of oil, and for me in particular, the use of foreign oil.

2. Gather data about the problem. This would include what does all this oil get used for? If we reduce the demand for oil, then we could buy less foreign oil. In this country, a vast majority of oil is used for transportation (around 80-90%). This would include cars, trucks, trains, airplanes, boats, etc. Since I am worried about reducing the use of foreign oil, is there any domestic sources of energy that could be using in substitution? There is oil, coal, natural gas, nuclear, and other forms of renewable (solar, wind, biomass, geothermal, waste, etc.).

3. Generate possible solutions to the problem. Ok, so we know what the problem is and have gathered some data on the problem. Now we have to come up with some solutions to reducing our use of foreign oil.

One solution would be to pump more oil here in the U.S, like out of Alaska. While this solves our dependence on foreign oil problem, it does not help with out overall dependence of oil. Another solution would be to shift the use of oil to other forms of energy that are domestic. Well, a car can not run directly off of coal. Some buses run off of natural gas. And unless you have an aircraft carrier, nuclear is out of the question.

But what do we have here in the US that uses all these forms of energy (coal, natural gas, nuclear, other) and is readily available? How about electricity? What if you used electricity, generated from coal, natural gas, nuclear, to replace oil? Well, what about an electric car? You could charge the battery from electricity that is generated from a domestic source, and in return, you use less oil, and in particular, less foreign oil.

There are other solutions to this problem, including you air car, but it also uses electricity to compress the air that will power the air car. One other solution would be the hydrogen fuel cell car. Even one more solution would be a hybrid gas-electric car.

4. Implement the best solution. Ok, we have our possible solutions, and now we have to implement the best solution. Well, which solution is the best? This is where the whole efficiency thing comes into play, as well as cost, safety, and current state of technology. Without going into too much detail, the efficiency of the above solution,from best to worst, would be:

electric car(4)
hybrid car(3)
hydrogen fuel cell car(2)
air car(1)

Ok, how about cost, from best to worst? I think this would be:
air car(4)
hybrid car(3)
electric car(2)
hydrogen fuel cell car(1).

Safety, from safest to least safe would be:
hybrid car(2)
electric car(2)
air car(1)
hydrogen fuel cell car(1).

And finally current technology. The order would be:
hybrid car(2)
electric car(2)
air car(1)
hydrogen car(1).

If you assign a score to each category, shown in the ( ), and added them up, you would come up with this:

electric car: 10
hybrid car: 10
air car: 7
hydrogen: 5

You could play with the order and numbers a little, but this clearly shows that the hybrid car and electric cars are currently the best solutions for reducing our oil consumption, and our dependence on foreign oil. The air car and hydrogen fuel cell car would be the worst solutions, with hydrogen being the absolute worst.

5. Iterate, if needed. This last step is only need if the current solution does work out and you need to back up and try something different. However, from looking at the above analysis, I think if we go with the electric car solution, you probably will not need to iterate.

So to review:

1) The problem is to reduce the use of oil and foreign oil.
2) Find a source of energy that is not oil and is a domestic source of energy. This would be electricity generated from domestic sources of coal, natural gas, and nuclear.
3) The current best solution would be to use an electric car to take advantage of these domestic sources of energy.

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