air hybrid engine http://www.scuderigroup.com
other off topic links steam engine http://www.mikebrownsolutions.com/mbsteam.htm fuel cell batteries http://www.ultracellpower.com biodiesel hydrogen http://www.tekkie.com > The great irony is that we have had a solution to both large scale > >shipping and storage of energy since the 1800's its *compressed air*. > >Modern studies have not been made but a compressed air line across > >Australia would be possible. Compressors are over 90% efficient. > > Does this imply isothermal expansion such that heat lost to the > environment during compression is reabsorbed during expansion? > > >2 meter > >diameter steel lined concrete Pipes can be made largely leak free. > >Workable pressures would be 50 atmospheres. A gale in a pile. Pipelines > >under the sea are not impossible particularly if your crossing shallow > >seas [ The Arafura and Banda sea are not that deep. The sea bed from > >Bali to Malaysia is only a few tens of meters deep and in places a path > >only 50 meters deep can be mapped.] You must ballast the pipe properly. > > Yes pneumatic systems have frictional losses but at a few percent > >per hundred kilometres its better than the losses in high voltage and > >superconductors. Its also a storage system. The air in the line goes in > >by day and may be drawn out at night with only a small drop in pressure. > > ...agreed, the more so the longer the pipe. > > >Large volumes of air can be diverted into former gas baring strata and > >just as the gas was retained in the past at several atmospheres the air > >will be today. One power storage plant using compressed air pushed down > >an old gas well already exists and is commercial. > > For some strange reason the world has chosen to ignore the > >relatively simple physics of pneumatic solutions in favour of other more > >exotic and expensive system that may promise solutions on some distant > >day. > > Underground storage solutions are not available everywhere. > > A more generally applicable solution might be chemical storage. > Even hydrocarbon manufacture from airborne CO2 is not out of the > question, if a sufficiently cheap, but intermittent, source of > power is available. > > In fact it might be possible to combine it with your compressed > air system. Once compressed, the air could be passed through > Ca(OH)2 before entering the pipe. This would scrub any CO2 from > the air producing CaCO3, which can then be heated (solar thermal) > to remove the CO2 in pure form and pass it to the chemical plant > where it is converted to more useful chemicals using once again > power from the Solar plant. > > Regards, > > Robin van Spaandonk > > http://users.bigpond.net.au/rvanspaa/ > > Competition provides the motivation, > Cooperation provides the means. >
