Compressed air cars for urban transportation.

For more than 180 years, engineers have been working meticulously on the compressed air car, but without any economically viable results. The Luxembourg-based company MDI has come a long way in its development and pledges to launch the zero-emission AirPod 2.0 soon. Researchers at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology have taken a closer look at the air pressure concept for passenger cars and come to a surprising result.

“Even under highly optimistic assumptions the compressed-air car is significantly less efficient than a battery electric vehicle and produces more greenhouse gas emissions than a conventional gas-powered car with a coal intensive power mix,” said Professor Ibrahim Dincer.

Thus, together with Dr. Reza Alizade Evrin, the team investigated a prototype vehicle using thermal energy storage materials for heat recovery — current technology works without any heat recovery. “Energy density in compressed air is very low compared to other sources of renewable energies, lower efficiency, around 50 %, due to round trip conversion of energy into pressurized air, and then back out again,” said Dincer. “Such an efficiency is mainly since air heats up during compression. This waste heat, which holds a large share of the energy input, is dumped into the atmosphere.”

Image source: Advanced Science News.

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