On cold air and clean transport

Summer's coming.  It's 0100hrs and 32C here.  It hit 41C earlier today.  Though the humidity hasn't kicked in yet so it's bearable still.

But you can feel people slowing down.  It really does drain it out of you and you lose all inclination to move at all if possible.  Or, you turn up the aircon in the apartment or office or car and live in a cold cocoon.

I was pondering this because I recently saw a demo of an air-powered car.  A neat new design using multiple cylinders so that compressed air powers the first cylinder but is still somewhat compressed so it is shunted to a second and then again a third to extract the maximum power per shot of compressed air.

And what comes out the other end?  Icy cold air - in this case at -10C.  But that's all.  Then when it ran low on fuel it stopped at a local gas station and refilled the tanks  - at least with enough to get the car back to base where it would receive a safe full fill from it's very own compressor in the garage.

100km on a single charge in two smallish SCUBA sized tanks and pennies in electricity needed to refill.  It's by no means a panacea.  Electricity needs to be made somewhere but it is cleaner by far than battery power - no heavy metals or nasty mining waste or transporting iffy materials round the world to build the tanks and compressors - and cheaper to maintain.  I've got a compressor in my garage at home in the UK that's not much off 100 yeas old.  Not many batteries last that long...

I hope we can raise some investment to go to the next phase.  This is a great idea that has huge potential if fully developed.  Got a whizzy new and extra efficient compressor design using similar concepts to launch too.