Gadget Master

Although renewable energy vehicles have been trundling around for years, rather slowly it has to be said, there is still no lack of interest in them.

There are all sorts of advanced and interesting technologies surrounding eco-vehicles from solar panel technology to the relatively new Hydrogen fuel cell technology. However these are all fairly expensive methods of getting from A to B. What we really need is something that is inexpensive and readily abundant that we can use at wherever we are, something like air!

The idea of an air powered car may seem a little ridiculous however David Alderson, Scott Allan, David Langille, Michael Roy and Dave Spencer of Dalhouise University in Canada, have developed one, according to Science Daily.

(In fact the project is apparently part of the curriculum, MECH 4010 and MECH 4020 - Senior Design, at Dalhousie University.)

Strictly speaking it is not a car but a go-kart capable of reaching speeds of up to 43km/h or 27mph. This is not especially fast, however considering the boys have adapted a 40 year old snowmobile engine to work entirely on compressed air it is fairly impressive.

The compressed air is stored in two standard sized scuba tanks attached to each side of a refurbished go kart and fed into the engine using a standard scuba fitting high flow regulator. The air travels through tubing to a ball valve connected to the throttle. Mr. David Langille says "It operates much like a normal rotary engine".

There are certain disadvantages with the air powered kart. The air doesn't last very long on two tanks, only about 2 minutes at full speed, and also it is not entirely zero emission as a generator is used to compress the air in the tanks. None the less these 5 men from Canada have shown us just what is possible with eco vehicles in using such a simple fuel.

With some further tweaking it is fair to say that the compressed air go-kart could progress further and become a serious eco friendly toy for the budding engineer!

Tom Wilson