Air powered Motorbike

For those interested in alternative energy sources a 21 y.o. industrial design student has built a motorbike that runs on compressed air.

Article

The stationary test runs we've run have been very positive - the bike can hit speeds in excess of 100km/h in its current build, and with more development we can see the range of the bike doubling or tripling," Benstead says.

Refuelling would be free once you have a compressor.

Unfortunately at this time it only gets 15 minutes of of power per tank. Still pretty cool for city commuting though. And no emissions.

reply to post by Krusty the Klown

They've been talking about it since 2007 at least.
This thread is about the car version:
www.abovetopsecret.com...

Neet idea ...probably would work well in place of taxies ,it not like you are going to venture vary far so would lend to less theaft ...pull up to a air station and charge it up for another 20k ....peace

15 minutes?

How far could you go even for city commuting?

They would have to get the travel time way longer than that to even be practical for any uses.

I invented a car that would run without any type of full. No gas, air, water or anything.

The only draw back was it only ran down hill......... I am still working on that.

reply to post by LightSpeedDriver


Kool, thanks Lightspeed.

reply to post by mwood


Yeah, endurance is the issue at this prototype stage.

How about a bigger tank in a sidecar??

reply to post by LightSpeedDriver


Refueling would not be 'free' once you have a compressor. That compressor still takes energy to produce the compressed air, either in the form of a petrol compressor, or electric compressor.

Unless you produced compressed gas by means of bacteria chomping through your own waste products in a huge drum construction thingy?? But I doubt they could produce the gas pressure required...

Besides the point, energy is used to do 'work'. All this is is converting one type of energy, into another type of energy, and each time this is done energy is lost in the process in the form of heat and sound (compressor). So the efficiency of this system really needs to be worked out fully, including ALL energy used.

This isn't really a new idea by any stretch..

There was a show called Beyond Tomorrow that had air powered cars ( Yes, cars.. not a motor bike ) .. you have to consider the energy that goes into compressing the air in the first place. After all, you don't get something for nothing.

So the tech is quite old .. but never really been utilized, have a look... I imagine it's just not that practical, and probably also dangerous.

More info about the guy I posted above in the video

I guess he began production in 2000 .. so the idea of air compressed vehicles is at least that old

Guy Negre - Wikipedia

reply to post by miniatus


Beyond 2000! Man, that show was all kinds of awesome when I was a kid! Such a shame most of the stuff never happened though... But it did make me dream of the future, and was probably why I did engineering at Swinburne university!

Edit! Gah, you edited it to Beyond Tomorrow! Lol! BTW, is there a USA version of that show? Or are you an expat aussie?

Originally posted by Qumulys
reply to post by LightSpeedDriver

 

Refueling would not be 'free' once you have a compressor. That compressor still takes energy to produce the compressed air, either in the form of a petrol compressor, or electric compressor.

Besides the point, energy is used to do 'work'. All this is is converting one type of energy, into another type of energy, and each time this is done energy is lost in the process in the form of heat and sound (compressor). So the efficiency of this system really needs to be worked out fully, including ALL energy used.

Good point Qumulys.

The only thing I could think of in terms of free energy would be the compressor being powered by solar energy. The problem there is that you would need a fairly big solar array and batteries to get the necessary oomph to power the system.

Originally posted by Qumulys
reply to post by miniatus

 

Beyond 2000! Man, that show was all kinds of awesome when I was a kid! Such a shame most of the stuff never happened though... But it did make me dream of the future, and was probably why I did engineering at Swinburne university!

Edit! Gah, you edited it to Beyond Tomorrow! Lol! BTW, is was there a USA version of that show? Or are you an expat aussie?

edit on 10-1-2012 by Qumulys because: (no reason given)

Yeah the show was amazing - this show is Beyond Tomorrow which seems to have the exact same kind of production.. but they changed 2000 with tomorrow keeps it from sounding dated I guess

Interesting concept, however I see the bike has no lights.

It would not be street legal here in the US for that reason.

To have lights would require a battery, which is additional weight.....and so on, less efficient vehicle.

However, what if the fenders were solar panels, to charge the battery.

I do have an air compressor that runs off the cigarette lighter in my truck.......

Let the sun charge the battery, use the battery to refuel the bike.
Its a possibility.

reply to post by Krusty the Klown


Well, yeah, there's solar, but as you say, that takes up huge amount of land space, which means land rates, someone to mow the grass, etc. And the initial energy put in to create the solar panels. There's always a cost in energy somewhere.

Although, upon further thinking, the only 'freeish' way I can come up with, is "Hydropressed" tm (I copyright this word, SOPA and all that...)!!! If you had a powerful enough river/waterfall, you could get a paddle wheel in it, but NOT generate electricity, instead to reduce energy loss due to conversion, you could compressor the air at the source!

So, you'd have compressed air-lines to your house... So long as you were pretty close to the waterfall.... Lol, just thinking out loud here.

A-more-efficient-design-is-a-lightweight-motorcycle-minus-the-engine-and-then-powered-by-your-legs-moving-a-crank-in-a-circular-motion.The-only-drawba ck-is-the-energy-required-to-fuel-the-legs.
There-doesnt-seem-to-be-an-escape-from-consuming-energy-of-some-sort-except-death.

reply to post by Krusty the Klown


Wouldn't the amount of energy required to compress that air be a greater energy than the bike could produce? Forget about how far or fast it moves, you still have to make payments on the compressor and pay for its upkeep...and, a small addition here...the energy used to run IT too!

There have been compressed air vehicles since the late 1800s.
en.wikipedia.org...
en.wikipedia.org...
www.narrowgaugechaos.com...

These mine locomotives ran on 100 psi air and now they have tanks on the market that hold 5000 psi air.(350 bar)

I have spent a number of hours running these air locomotives in a mine.

reply to post by Krusty the Klown
they could make wind turbine compressors ..peace

reply to post by Qumulys

Of course, I never claimed otherwise but I think the point is that we don't need 20 cent fuel for almost 2 dollars a litre. I am sure the electricity used is cheaper or at least on a par with the petrol/gas price but a world without oil spills is a much cleaner and nicer place.

As for the bucket of waste on the side? Umm, no thanks!

Regarding the technicals, I'm sure any problems could be satisfactorily worked out, as long as someone actually tries but they seem to have produced a fairly remarkable and usable prototype already.

All it is, is a Steam Engine ran on compressed gas in a tank instead of steam from a boiler.