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Of all the reasons to be named one of your city's Top 100 Most Influential People, Melbourne-based designer and Coroflotter Dean Benstead's got a cool one: He's developed a motorcycle prototype, called the O2 Pursuit, whose only fuel is a scuba-diving tank.
That's right, no gas, no electricity, just compressed air. "A solar panel and a compressor now becomes your refinery," Benstead told SmartPlanet, "and without huge battery packs to dispose of, we now have a low-cost to free powered bike with minimum impact on the environment."
Benstead designed his air-powered 02 Pursuit motorcycle around the "Engineair" technology developed by fellow Melbourner Angelo Di Pietro. The Di Pietro Motor is an astonishingly brilliant rotary-piston design that uses far less parts than a conventional motor, can deliver instant torque, and provides a friction-free environment for the piston to turn by cushioning it with air.
I encourage anyone interested in motors to read the full description of the Di Pietro Motor at this link, and you can keep abreast of Benstead's O2 Pursuit developments here.
See also: Chris Flechtner's Beezerker
Comments
When you remember that an internal combustion engine is really just an air pump (listen to/read any verbiage about tuning and note how much breathing comes up), this seems like someone took it down to first principles.
Bookmarked.
the concept of using compressed air as an energy source isn't new, but minuscule energy-to-volume ratio of a compressed air cylinder means these ideas are generally pretty fanciful:
A scuba tank holds air at around 200 Bar. A quick wiki search shows that the energy density of air at 300 Bar is 0.2 MJ per Litre. Compare that to the 34.2 MJ per Litre for Petrol and things aren't looking good.
Frankly Im surprised Edward Linacre (melbournian who won the dyson award) didnt make it into the top 100.
Unless I'm missing something huge, I can't agree with the "astonishly brilliant" comment -- it's a rotary vane motor, which is a pretty common industrial device. As for compressed air as an energy source -- the heat from combustion in a gasoline engine provides most of the expansion (that performs work), and they seem to be ignoring the energy required to compress the air in the first place (which is a lot). I can see it having applications in clean room environments...where air motors are already in use. (sorry for the late post...been on holiday...)