Compressed Air Headed For America. Still.
No, we’re not anticipating more congressional hearings. The AP ( Breitbart) reports that inappropriately named Zero Pollution Motors is trying to bring MDI’s compressed-air technology to America. Again. Still. There’s only one problem. “Air compressors are one of the least efficient machines to convert electricity to work,” says Harold Kung, professor of chemical and biological engineering at Northwestern University. “Why not use the electricity directly, as in electric cars? From an energy utilization point of view, the compressed (air) car does not make sense.” What the professor appears to be missing is that the firm is called Zero Pollution Motors. Put that in your chemical engineering bong and and give it a toke.
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What is the energy density of the compressed air fuel? Compressed air might have a future if the energy density is much better than what we have in batteries today.
Anybody here ever go scuba diving and see a tank get filled too fast? Only happens in crappy little dive shops with a bad regulator manifold. I saw one once. Tank blew off the filler attachment and through a wall. Started a fire due to the heat it was venting when it stopped in another wall. Pretty spectacular. Luckily no one got hurt. But now picture this while talking about filling a compressed air tank to the levels being tossed about here in "a few minutes". I see many disasters happening.
If you comporessed the air into a thermally isolated cylinder the temperature would be more likely to cause nuclear fusion than the compressed air would be likely to be a useful method for transferring energy.