[opendtv] Re: Analysis: Broadcast TV Faces Struggle to Stay Viable
- From: "Manfredi, Albert E" <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 9 Mar 2009 17:13:47 -0400
Bob Miller wrote:
> The air car would also weigh a lot less so it would take
> far less energy to move it a mile. They claim 112 and 137
> miles per charge. The cost per charge they claim would be
> one Euro or around $1.27. I like that.
>
> If as you say this would work with a bus or other large
> vehicle why would it not work for a car?
As always when over-hyping whatever new invention, the whole picture
gets ignored.
Already the claim of "no pollution" is as dubious as it is for hydrogen
cars or electric cars. Similar too are the ridiculous claims for fuel
economy of plug-in hyrids, as if the electric energy they require is
somehow free. It's not, and that energy is always lugging around a heavy
battery and a gasoline engine. The latter even when it's not in use.
For these air engines to work, it means compressing air to incredibly
high pressures, and in large volumes. Because, again, you don't have
that benefit of latent energy in the air, as you do in H2 or in a
hydrocarbon fuel. So even though the air is light, the container to hold
it safely under enormous pressure is anything but light.
A gasoline tank can be made of thin aluminum, for example. John Shutt
showed you the difference in energy content of 5 liters of 3000 psi air
(that's a lot of psi) and 3.7 liters of gasoline. Enormous difference.
If his numbers are right (I'm too lazy to check, but they sound about
right), it would take 319 times the volume of a gas tank to hold the
same amount of energy in an air bottle at 3000 psi. Doesn't 319X the
size of a gas tank, not to mention the required extra strength, sound
like something to be factored into our thinking?
To temporarily store energy that would otherwise go to waste, something
that matters mostly in stop-and-go city driving, this air system might
make sense. But that becomes a hybrid vehicle. It still needs the
gasoline or diesel engine.
Bert
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