Comments on: Compressor pneumatic bike

By: ACB

ACB — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 07:41:42 +0000

Old post, but worth a shot, well as fellow ID here, I’d say it’s a growing process of Innovation, but to say that compressed air generates continuous motion for the bike (most unlikely), many factors needs to be re-considered (super vacuum formed metal?I’d say it’s metal forging…expensive) that’d be like filling a tank of compressed air size of a hummer (takes a while,just to go round a block) you’d be pedaling to nowhere,good job though of generating “out of the box” innovation,you’d never know where you could pick up where somebody else left behind

By: linear actuator

linear actuator — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 07:22:06 +0000

Pneumatic tools usually requires compressed air. Now that's pretty impressive

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 19:16:35 +0000

Leave the drive train alone. That would be spinning your wheels. For pure regenerative braking, efficiency doesn't matter. The energy your storing was 100% inefficient to start with. What is important is the component weight. If the added components could be transparent to normal riding until engaged (during braking), it would be a win for sure. Time to get clever with materials and triggering mechanisms. As to thermals, stopping at a light and then reclaiming the energy seconds later gives the gas little time to transfer heat outside the system. The tricky part would be the non linear response of the system.

By: Justin

Justin — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 21:13:00 +0000

It would add an interesting element to racing…the ability to store energy. If you could do a bunch of work before a hill climb to store energy then open a throttle to zip up the hill that’d be pretty awesome. The strategy would totally change.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 04:05:00 +0000

I have been working on a concept like this myself. Not using compressed air though. I think for about 3 lbs I can build a regenerative brake system with 94% effeciency.

By: Andy Cochrane

Andy Cochrane — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 21:55:00 +0000

i like the idea of regenerative braking in bikes, and this design is really interesting in approach- the efficiency issue would need to be worked out for sure. i wonder what a hydraulic drive train would be like (it would be heavier than a chain) in conjunction with some sort of air compression for energy storage… might that solve some of the efficiency issues?

By: Richard

Richard — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 02:58:00 +0000

I actually graduated with James, and I know that the 25% efficiency was simply a base figure, and not at all meant to be the actual working efficiency.
Actual figures would be much higher; the 25% was a “worst possible scenario” figure. He’s got more research that backs his design up, maybe he could provide the higher end of the spectrum for skeptics.

By: Hallian

Hallian — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 20:20:00 +0000

I certainly like the thinking, I heard somewhere that the urban cyclist uses somewhere in the region of 70-80% of their energy accelerating again after having to top at lights or slow down for pedestrians/ traffic etc. A regenerative solution would certainly be useful but using a compressible medium in the drive I am certain is not practical. The bike would feel horrible to ride if nothing else. How about hydraulic drive with some kind of accumulator re-gen?

By: jimmythefly

jimmythefly — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 19:23:00 +0000

I’d love to have some sort of regenerative braking, I can’t stand hitting ared light and feeling like I’m just wasting all that energy into heat on my brake pads. All the solutions seem to end up too heavy, where the energy gained wouldn’t offset the extra weight. (electric, flywheels, this).

By: Fritz

Fritz — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 07:18:00 +0000

Horribly inefficient as others have noted, but you have to give the kid points for thinking waaay outside of the box. I like this kind of creativity — who knows what kind of interesting and nonintuitive solutions these folks might eventually come up with?