Now Car Run on Air Design by Muslim Egyptian Students

Posted By: technopediasite

➤The students are rolling out a vehicle that runs on compressed oxygen.

➤Vehicle can hit 40 kilometres an hour, say students.

➤It can last 30 kilometres before needing to be refueled.

A group of Egyptian students has designed a vehicle they say will battle rising energy prices and promote clean energy by running on nothing but air.

The undergraduate students, who built the vehicle as part of their graduation project from Helwan University just outside Cairo, are rolling out a prototype one-person vehicle that runs on compressed oxygen.

The go-kart-like vehicle comes as Egypt pushes ahead with painful economic reforms that include deep cuts to energy subsidies, measures tied to a three-year $12 billion (roughly Rs. 82,300 crores) IMF loan programme it began in late 2016.

The students say their vehicle can hit 40 kilometres an hour and last 30 kilometres before needing to be refuelled, and it only costs about EGP 18,000 ($1,008.40) to build.

"The operational cost of the vehicle... will be almost nothing. You are basically using compressed air. You are not paying for fuel and also you do not need cooling," said Mahmoud Yasser, a student who helped design it.

The team is now looking to raise funding to expand the project and mass produce the vehicles. They believe they can eventually get the vehicles to top 100 kilometres an hour and run for 100 kilometres before needing to come up for air.

If I pumped pure oxygen into my car engine

The internal combustion engine in most cars burns gasoline. To do the burning, an engine needs oxygen, and the oxygen comes from the air all around us. But what if cars carried their own and pumped pure oxygen into the engine instead?

The air around us is about 21 percent oxygen. Almost all the rest is nitrogen, which is inert when it runs through the engine. The oxygen controls how much gasoline an engine can burn. The ratio of gas to oxygen is about 1:14 -- for each gram of gasoline that burns, the engine needs about 14 grams of oxygen. The engine can burn no more gas than the amount of oxygen allows. Any extra fuel would come out of the exhaust pipe unburned.

Now question is arises that oxygen can be used as fuel? Why not….. Any substance can be used as a fuel if it releases energy and gain stability. Oxygen at normal conditions is very stable so you need to supply energy to make it unstable. You may go for Ozone as fuel to create Oxygen. But Oxygen can't be. If you are able to prepare a catalyst which create Oxygen free Radical at normal conditions and they are made to react which would release Energy, this would be the only case where oxygen can be used as a fuel