Air-Hybrid: Internal Combustion to Air Engine

There's a global war among scientists and researchers to develop the air engine. I recently had a posting about some work being done by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. (This is an older post, one where Blogger's blockquote feature was having problems. Excerpts are in italics).

This is a masterpiece being conducted by British researchers. Here, they managed to convert a plain-jane internal combustion engine into an engine that runs on compressed air, aka, the "air-hybrid engine." In theory, this will achieve the same fuel economy as gas-electric hybrid, but with substantially lower costs. Read below:

A car that runs on air is being developed by engineers at a top British university.
The team have achieved what could be a major breakthrough in the battle to create greener and cheaper motoring.

They have found a way to adapt a normal petrol combustion engine to run on compressed air - generated within the vehicle - to give an extra boost to power the motor and considerably reduce the cost of running a car.

The result is a new low-cost 'air hybrid' engine which significantly cuts emissions of carbon dioxide - the so-called greenhouse gas blamed for global warming - cuts fuel consumption by around 30 per cent and offers the driver of a family car fuel economy of around 65mpg.

Existing 'green' hybrid cars - such as the Toyota Prius and the Honda Insight - use a petrol engine and braking energy to generate on-board electricity to give supplementary power to the vehicle.

The new Brunel engine uses the same principle. But in this case, the engine and the braking generates its own compressed air to provide the added boost to the car.

The work by Brunel University’s School of Engineering and Design in west London could lead to an engine which would be considerably cheaper and cleaner to run.

A spokeswoman for the Brunel team said: 'The idea is that using the engine's compression to brake the vehicle not only could slow the vehicle down, but also the pistons could compress air and drive it into a compressed air tank.

[...]

Existing 'green' hybrid cars - such as the Toyota Prius and the Honda Insight - use a petrol engine and braking energy to generate on-board electricity to give supplementary power to the vehicle.

The new Brunel engine uses the same principle. But in this case, the engine and the braking generates its own compressed air to provide the added boost to the car.

The work by Brunel University’s School of Engineering and Design in west London could lead to an engine which would be considerably cheaper and cleaner to run.

A spokeswoman for the Brunel team said: 'The idea is that using the engine's compression to brake the vehicle not only could slow the vehicle down, but also the pistons could compress air and drive it into a compressed air tank.

- Brewskie