Air-Driven Automobile Engine

[Gannon]

Can a normal four-cylinder gasoline engine actually operate on compressed air instead of gasoline as its energy source?

[Moppie]

Huh?

What have you been smoking?


Compressed air fired into a cylinder would push the piston down, if timed right into all the cylinders could make an engine turn over, but it would be with enough force to produce any usable power out of the crank, and it would require such a large store of compressed air it would be a totaly pointless exercise.
The enigne of course would not be "running" in the sense that combustion was occuring either.

Remeber you need to burn something to get combustion, and "air" in any form will not burn.

[Black Lotus]

There are small C02 powered piston engines out there. I'd imagine that you could extensively modify an auto piston engine to run on air also. Would hate to see the air storage tank, or think about the range.
Steam power would be a better choice.

[curtis73]

I had a toy car that ran on air. The tank was literally the entire car and it ran for about three seconds, but its possible.

pressures inside a cylinder can peak at 1200 psi, and that happens 4000 times per minute at idle in a V8. The amount of air you would have to store would be very prohibitive to design

[MagicRat]

I might add that the British Museum (London) has compressed air powering a wide variety of antique (mostly steam) engines for display purposes.

A gasoline engine can do so as well, but would require modification and, as noted above would not be practical.

[Gannon]

Yes. Many companies worldwide have been operating compressed-air-driven cars using a standard gasoline fourcylinder engine but replacing the gasoline fuel input with compressed air from a tank. Of course, there is no combustion, so the electrical supply for the spark plugs is not needed, nor will there be any need to change the oil very often. The compressed-air tank is stored in the trunk. The piston upstroke compresses and heats the atmospheric air in the cylinder chamber until just about top dead center, when cool compressed air is injected to drive the piston down and turn the crankshaft. The process repeats itself until the compressed air is depleted. The exhaust is just cool air. The horsepower rating is about 35 horsepower for some models, but the value will increase to more practical values with further development. Using traditional electricity sources to compress the air, there will be some carbon dioxide air pollution for the overall process, but only about a fifth or less that of conventional autos. Perhaps the best-known air-powered car is that designed by French inventor and engineer Guy Nègre for Motor Development International (MDI) in France. The car has a maximum speed of about 110 kilometers per hour and can travel about 300 kilometers at a cost of less than a cent per kilometer.

http://www.7thdim.net/airauto

[TheSilentChamber]

Sounds boring. I want stuff that goes boom.

[CBFryman]

Originally Posted by curtis73

I had a toy car that ran on air. The tank was literally the entire car and it ran for about three seconds, but its possible.

pressures inside a cylinder can peak at 1200 psi, and that happens 4000 times per minute at idle in a V8. The amount of air you would have to store would be very prohibitive to design

as did i, saposeably a scale modle of one that ran 200mph. but for how long it ran 200mph probably wasnt very far. maybe you could rach 200mph and coast to where you are going .

If you pumped it upway past how many pumps the isntructions say and let it loose it would accelerate for about 3-4sec and probably had a top speed peaking at 30mph or so on pavement. it had a range of maybe 100-150ft on pavement as well.

it was a basic 2 stroke design, intake-exaust-intake-exaust. the problem with the design was that if you wernt careful the engine would turn the wrong way causing the car to go backwards .

I can see using something besides air working. a gas such as CO2 that can be compessed into a liquid (even dry ice powered car, harnesing the energy of the ambient air temperature) but then agian i cant because imagine the polution and mass of C02 needed to run the car very long.