In the winter you compress the air at home and use the heat to keep your house n... | Hacker News

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		MaysonL on July 11, 2008 \| parent \| context \| favorite \| on: Car that runs on air, from the makers of the world... In the winter you compress the air at home and use the heat to keep your house nice and toasty. Your calculations are off: energy density of gasoline ~35 MJ/L, compressed air at 300 bar ~ .15, so per volume is ~230 times, so w 10x efficiency, it's down to 23X volume required: tank to be used is 340 L : divide by 23 ~= 15 L ~= 4 gal. Much closer to their claim, no? The compression stations will have heat exchangers, so be able to use at least some of the wasted energy... (Note: energy density figures from Wikipedia)

ars on July 11, 2008 [–]

Man, that's embarrassing. I also got my numbers from wikipedia, but typed .01 instead of .1 in my calculator :(

So yes, now I have to retract what I wrote about the size of the tank. I have new respect for the power of air.

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