Air fuelled zero emission road transportation: A comparative study

Haisheng Chen, Yulong Ding, Yongliang Li, Xinjing Zhang and Chunqing Tan

Applied Energy, 2011, vol. 88, issue 1, 337-342

Abstract: Road transportation using air as a fuel has attracted much attention over the past decade. The fuel (air) can be in two forms, compressed gas form and cryogenic liquid form and engines based on both forms of air have been investigated. Prototypes of air powered road vehicles are expected to emerge over the next few years. However, there have been debates over the advantages and disadvantages of the two technologies. This paper aims to compare the two technologies from the technological point of view. Engines for a typical small scale passenger car are used for the analyses and the comparison is based on the shaft work, coolth, efficiency and energy density. It is shown that the shaft work outputs and the coolth available to engines powered by both fuels increase with increasing working pressure and temperature. Given the working pressure and temperature, liquid air powered engines have a slightly lower specific work outputs than compressed air powered engines. The volumetric energy density of liquid air, however, is much higher than that of compressed air, and liquid air has much higher coolth than compressed air. On the other hand, the efficiency of the compressed air powered engines is higher than that of liquid air powered engines mainly because of the higher energy consumption of liquefaction plants. The analyses also suggest that an effective use of coolth be a key to improve the overall efficiency of liquid air powered engines.

Keywords: Zero; emission; Road; transportation; Compressed; air; Liquid; air; Engine (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306-2619(10)00255-2
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:appene:v:88:y:2011:i:1:p:337-342

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/405891/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... 405891/bibliographic

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Energy is currently edited by J. Yan

More articles in Applied Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().