Some readers of this forum may recall that about three years ago, I patented the unique combination of matter that constitutes air, so for the next 14 years Tata can send their royalty checks to me.
After that patent expires, I plan to do as the pharmaceutical companies do and take out a new patent on air in combination with other substances. I'm already hard at work developing Air Mk II, with new, improved phlogiston.
But seriously...
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There's fuel, there's renewable fuel, and then there's user-renewable fuel! What can be better than air?
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...we need to remember that air pressure is NOT a fuel or an energy source. It's an energy transfer medium. (So is hydrogen, for another example. It's not an energy
source. It has to be manufactured/extracted, which requires a bit more energy from some other source than it will deliver.)
The energy one gets by expending the pressure of compressed air also has to come from somewhere. In most cases, it will be from electrically powered pumps, which means the actual energy source will largely be coal and nuclear power plants for the foreseeable future.
If we already had an overabundance of electrical energy, and preferably from renewable sources, then energy transfer media such as pressurized air or hydrogen would be a wonderful replacement for petroleum-fired powerplants in motor vehicles. Until that day, it only transfers the problem of providing the underlying energy to some other vendor.
