FISITA2010-SC-P-05

Study on Development of Compressed Air Car for a Practical use

Kato, Yuki*, Hayashi, A. Koichi, Yamada, Eisuke
Aoyama Gakuin University, Japan

KEYWORDS – Compressed air, Air Car, Ecology, Environmental problem, Hybrid

ABSTRACT
The commercial vehicle is required recently to change the power sources and materials for
every part of the vehicle more ecological and for any environmental problem such as CO2
emission and air pollution.
The compressed air vehicle (CAV) has been studied for several years, but it seems difficult at
this moment to complete with a commercial vehicle which uses fossil fuel to get a dynamic
performance such as acceleration and running range. Hence the hybrid CAV with a few
electric power source and CVT is considered. The analysis of how the CAV runs and its
efficiency are shown in this paper.
The plug-in hybrid CAV concept is used to design a compressed air, electrical energy storage,
and kinetic energy recovery system to provide the torque to each CVT. In order to make this
system possible for a compressed air based vehicle (not an electrically based vehicle), the
battery is filled with a half of the total energy of the main air tank. In our simulation, the main
air tank of 70.0 MPa and its volume of 100 L to 800 L are applied in the present case. The
volume of the sub air tank is 100 L. Two Lithium ion battery cells are connected in series and
the 160 of them are connected parallelly.
The specification of typical Japanese light track made by Mitsubishi Motor Company is
included in the simulation program since a simple CAV prototype was made a few years ago.
Then the 10/15 mode of simulation is performed to analyze the commercial vehicle in Japan
on the test bench. The CVT is defined for its each power source while running and the
different strategy for the typical conditions such as velocity, acceleration, and braking G is
used to improve the whole performance. There are three phases in the strategy; Phase 1 to use
the main air tank and the sub air tank for the acceleration, Phase 2 to use the sub air system
and electric motor without the main air system when the velocity reaches to Vc, and Phase 3
to use the sub air system as a kinetic energy regenerator while gracing. The acceleration is
controlled by the CVT during the operation. When the reduction ratio of the CVT reaches out
of its range (say, 0.3 to 1.4), it will be locked and while braking, the general friction brake
system is operated.
The simulation results will be sown in this paper. The Vc is defined as 20.0km/h. Although
the 800L main tank is large, it can run 470km. This vehicle can be used as a city commuter.
But at lower volume, the running range rapidly becomes shorter, which is not practical.
However, the 800L CAV shows 15.9% Well-to-Wheel Efficiency. Although this efficiency is
higher than Gasoline vehicle, it is about a half of the efficiency of Fuel Cell Hybrid car.
Thinking about the Well-to-Wheel Efficiency, which is good analysis way for using natural
energy resource, it seems not enough and must improve the efficiency.
In conclusion, although the acceleration and running range are not satisfied, our CAV concept
shows a possibility for a practical use such as about 470 km of running range with the 800 L
tank, which can run the public road the same as the fossil fuel vehicle. The real prototype
CAV is now developed to see how it can run.
TECHNICAL PAPER

INTRODUCTION

Commercial vehicle is required recently to change its power sources and materials for every
part more ecological and to consider any environmental problem such as CO2 emission, air
pollution and exhausting natural resources. To respond these requirements, many automobile
manufacturers have been trying to develop new ecological vehicles such as electrics, fuel cells,
diesels, and hybrids. What I introduce, one of these concepts could be introduced here, which
is considered to get zero emission performance and extremely low energy consumption for
the construction and the customer use, is the hybrid compressed air vehicle.

A compressed air vehicle (CAV) is proposed to develop a zero emission car driven by
compressed air. There might be some difficulties to have enough performance to run the car
on public road. To build the CAV for a practical use, a hybrid system with an electrical
powered motor and a recompressing energy recovery system are applied to get further
acceleration and longer distance per one-time filling compressed air to the car. The present
study will show an analysis of the theoretical performance and a method of how to use our
idea to give an advantage to the CAV. A prototype innovative CAV analysis will be shown in
this paper.

RELATED RESEARCH

Major studies of CAV are shown in Table 1.

Table 1 the history of CAV researches

No. Constructor Name Year Country
1 MDI Air Pod 1991~ France
2 MDI One Flow Air 1991~ France
3 Aoyama Gakuin Univ.[1] Mini cab 2005 Japan
4 Aoyama Gakuin Univ.[1] Mini cab turbo 2005 Japan
5 5th grade chase Air car 2007 America
6 Dalhousie University Air powered racing kart 2008 Canada
7 Students of Technical College Air powered motorcycle 2009 India
8 Chinese senior student Air powered bicycle 2009 China
9 Nihon Univ. Air powered bicycle 2009 Japan
10 Air Car Factory Cold External Combustion Engine - -

As for the CAV development, there are very few researches in the world, and the project of
the CAV mass production by the MDI Co. is only widely reported by media. MDI announced
the business tie-up with TATA motors for the mass production project of CAV in 2007, but
this project has been delayed. They still not succeed the project: there are not many
professionals for the CAV. These CAVs are often developed based on bicycle and are not one
of real CAV research project. Many of them are just hobby crafts. On the other hand, there are
some researches by universities. They have been succeeded with the method of remodelling
the stock internal combustion engine or bicycle. From this point of view, this research, which
is based on an actual van-type Automobile to develop for the practical use of a CAV, is a very
unique research in the world.

Next, the specifications of the CAVs are listed in Table 2.

 Table 2 the spec of CAV developed in the past
No. Air tank pressure Air tank Capacity Max Power Max Speed Urban range
[MPa] [L] [km/h] [km]
1 35.0 175 4kw 45~70 220
2 35.0 300 15cv 90 100
3[1] 14.7 47 6.9kw 32 -
4[1] 14.7 47 6.9kw 32 -
5 - - - - -
6 - - 3.4HP 43 -
7 - - - - -
8 - - - 80 0.5~0.6

There are many blanks which are not announced their specification numbers in Table 2. And
the MDI specifications (#1 and #2) are the targets for their engineering process in their
website. From these values the general understandings of a CAV are not obtained in this
Table, because of very few studies and information. Only our laboratory shows the
experimental data (#3 and #4) of the simplest prototype CAV which consist of one air motor
and fixed drive train without any change of the ratio of shaft speed, but the maximum speed
of 32km/h is obtained at that time. This number of 32km/h means that the simple CAV is not
practical for the public road, because the max speed is too slow. Many researchers of a CAV
adopt this simple concept of the system.

In order to improve our CAV from the data above, it is necessary to change the CAV concept
drastically to be accepted in our present and future society like the Internal Combustion
Vehicles that has been developed over 100 years.

NEW HYBRID CAV CONCEPT

In order to get enough potential for a CAV as commercial vehicle, the new type of system
concept of a CAV is designed by keeping its zero emission and simple characteristics as
future environmental solution for automobile.

CVT
ELECTRIC
MAIN AIR TANK

AIR MOTOR
MOTOR
BATTERY

THROTTLE
VALVE
SUB AIR TANK

PRIMARY
VALVE CLUTCH
AIR
MOTOR
TIRE

Operating air flow Electric energy flow

Fig.1 The new hybrid CAV system concept
The hybrid CAV concept is suggested in Figure 1 using a compressed air, electrical energy
storage (Battery), and recompressed kinetic energy recovery system to provide the torque to
each CVT. In order to make this system to work as a compressed air based vehicle (not an
electrically based vehicle), the battery filled with energy is a half of the total energy of the
main air tank.

This system is consisted of three types of drive systems:

1. Main air motor system; originally a simple compressed air vehicle system
2. Sub air motor system; a kinetic energy recovery and release system
3. Electric motor system; accelerating the vehicle of two air-motored systems to support the
shortage torque which the driver requires momentary. Then the whole system is a Plug-in
parallel hybrid system

In order to control the torque of each system, the CVTs (Continuous Variable Transmission)
are installed. And in order to shut down the main air motor system to save the compressed air
exergy, the automatic controlled clutch is set between the main air motor shaft and the sub air
motor system. This system is necessary to supply the compressed air for the main and sub air
tank, and the electricity for the battery. The compressed air is supplied at the filling station
where high pressure air pump and the storage tank are installed. The electricity will be
supplied by the general electric outlet which does not require the high voltage and high
electricity current.

NUMERICAL ANALYSIS OF THE CAV PERFORMANCE

In order to analyze the CAV performance, the car specification is provided as shown in Table
3. The specifications of the essential number of the vehicle components are adopted from the
typical Japanese light truck made by MITSUBISHI MOTOR COMPANY to use them for a
simple CAV prototype made a few years ago in our laboratory.

Table 3 the specification of the CAV for the numerical simulation

Basic specification
Weight 795[kg]
Effective tire diameter 0.54[m]
Front Area 2.3157[m2]
Air motor specification
Maker GAST
Model 16AM-FRV-13
Max Power 6.9[kW]
Number of vanes 6
Electric motor specification
Maker Advanced DC
Model 140-01-4005 direct recoil motor
Battery specification
Type Lithium-ion
Cell layout 2 series, 160 parallel
Drive train specification
Main air tank volume 100~800[L]
Main air tank pressure 70.0[MPa]
Sub air tank volume 100[L]
Supplying electric current for the E-motor 60[A]
Recovering pressure of sub air system 0.7[MPa]
Operating pressure of main system 0.56[MPa]
Assisting pressure of sub system 0.42[MPa]
As shown in Table 3, we choose the commercial components for each system are selected to
provide more practical and reliable results comparing with the simple theoretical model. The
air motor is a vane type reversible air motor made by GAST .Co in US. In this simulation, the
same air motors are used for both of main and sub air-drive system. The battery is made of the
Lithium-ion cells and its specification is provided by the new concept model of HITACHI
that was released on AUTOMOTIVE ENGINEERING EXPOSITION in 2009. This battery
cell has 3.6V and 4.8Ah potential, and has the energy concentration of 4500W/kg. As for the
electric motor, the direct recoil DC motor which is a general model for the self-made EV
constructed by ADVANCED DC MOTOR .Co, in US is selected. The limit current of this
motor is 500A and the continuous operating limit is 60A. Hence its operating electric current
are kept as 60A constantly. When the current is 60A, the max power is 3.8HP. For the
transmission, it is considered that the practical specification of CVT is covered 0.3~1.4
reduction ratio.

The running road model is chosen for the 10/15 mode of simulation, which is a general bench
testing method for the commercial vehicles organized by JAPAN AUTOMOBILE
MANUFACTURERS ASSOCIATION (see Figure 2).
80
10mode 10mode 10mode 15mode
70
60
Velocity [km/h]

50
40
30
20
10
0
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700
Time[s]
Fig.2 10/15 mode outline

In the simulation, the vehicle runs on the road, which has a repeating 10/15 mode driving
strategy until its main air tank becomes empty. For the numerical simulation, we set a
traditional 4th-order Runge-Kutta method are used for time integration and a quadratic
Shepard method for the interpolation for the scattered catalogue data of air motor torque and
air consumption speed related with motor speed.

THE SYSTEM STRATEGY OF THE CAV

The system strategy is planned with the system construction (Figure 1). The issues of a simple
CAV with just only main air-motored system for the practical use on the public road are the
running range and the dynamic performance such as accelerating or top speed. Hence, in
order to save the stored air pressure exergy for enough running range, the strategy is planned
to use only the main air system while the vehicle is accelerating from 0.0km/h to the optional
speed, Vc. Then, in the speed range above Vc, the electric motor and sub air system are
operated and the main system is separated from the main drive shaft to control the clutch and
to be shut down completely.
 Velocity Phase 1 Phase 2 Phase 3

Vc

Time
Figure 3 System strategy of the CAV

In Figure 3, there are three phases; Phase 1 to use the main air tank and the sub air tank to
release kinetic energy to control the vehicle torque for the required acceleration by CVT
operation, Phase 2 to shut off the main air system and to use the sub air system and electric
motor when the velocity reaches to Vc, and Phase 3 to use the sub air system to regenerate
kinetic energy while gracing. The acceleration is controlled by the CVT during the operation
strategy. When the speed reduction ratio of CVT becomes out of its range (say, 0.3 to 1.4), it
will be locked and while braking, the general friction brake system is operated.

NUMERICAL SIMULATION RESULTS

The dynamic performance is studied in terms of its running range and acceleration. In the
acceleration point of view, the vehicle has enough accelerating performance if it runs the
10/15 running simulation mode. The simulation shows that the system of the hybrid CAV
completes the 10/15 mode: its running range is related to the initial air tank volume and
battery capacity. Then the main air tank volume is changed from 100 to 800L to compare
each by the running ranges (see Figure 4).

500
450
400
Running range[km]

350
300
250
200
150
100
50
0
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900
Main air tank volume[L]

Fig.4 Relation of the main air tank volume and the running range
It is easy to predict that the main air tank volume becomes larger, which means that with more
energy into the tank, the car will be able to run longer distance. If the main tank has 800L
volume, the vehicle can run 470km with the repeating 10/15 mode road models. Although
800L air tank is too big comparing with the general commercial vehicle because of the layout
limitation, it provides enough distance to use every day base. Compared with another type of
cars, we can say the hybrid CAV is practical for the market (see Table 4).

Table 4 Running range of each type of vehicles

Running range Fuel energy efficiency
Maker/Model(Year) Type
[km] [km/MJ]
Toyota/Vitz (2009) 1496cc Gasoline Engine 781 0.607
Toyota/COROLLA(2009) 1797cc Gasoline Engine 860 0.561
Toyota/PRIUS (2009) Split Hybrid 1597 1.158
Honda/INSIGHT (2009) Parallel Hybrid 1200 0.979
Honda/ACCORD (2008) 2354cc Gasoline Engine 741 0.327
Nissan/TEANA (2006) 3498cc Gasoline Engine 700 0.326
Subaru/IMPREZZA (2007) 1994cc Gasoline Engine 780 0.424
Mitsubishi/iMIEV (2009) Electric 160 2.730
Nissan/LEAF (2010) Electric 160~ -
Honda/FCX CLARITY (2008) Fuel cell 620 -
Hybrid CAV simulation 800L, 70.0MPa for main air tank 470 1.575
*1: multiplied the 10/15 mode fuel efficiency [km/L] and the fuel tank volume
*2: manufacturer announced spec

The range of this CAV shows little shorter than the gasoline fuelled vehicles, which have
almost three times longer range than CAV especially for the hybrid model. On the other hand,
this value of 470km by CAV is three times longer than that of the commercial electric vehicle,
such as iMIEV, made by MITSUBISHI. Although the CAV has the same range as that of the
internal combustion vehicles, it has enough running range for use in the practical road. There
will be no problem for everyday use.

Next, the fuel efficiency is studied while running (see Table 4). This value is calculated by the
running range divided by with the energy stored (Equation 1) at the gasoline cars.

𝑘𝑚 𝑀𝐽 𝑘𝑔
𝐹𝑒 [ 𝑀𝐽 ] = 𝑅𝑢𝑛𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑔𝑒[𝑘𝑚]/ 43 × 𝑓𝑢𝑒𝑙 𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑘 𝑣𝑜𝑙𝑢𝑚𝑒[𝐿] × 0.73[ 𝐿 ] - Eq.1
𝑘𝑔

For CAV, the exergy is calculated from the initial air tank and battery specification.

The small size and high fuel efficiency gasoline vehicles such as Toyota Vitz (named YARIS
in Europe) have almost 0.6km/MJ average in the 10/15 mode simulation. For the middle size
sedan, it becomes about 0.3 to 0.4km/MJ. The internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles and
the gasoline-electric hybrid vehicles have nearly 1.0km/MJ or more of fuel energy efficiency.
On the other hand, CAV has 1.575km/MJ of fuel energy efficiency in the simulation, which is
higher than that of fuel combustion vehicles even though they are hybrids. If the energy
efficiency is translated to the Regular Gasoline consumption efficiency, it became 48.28km/L.
This value is two times more than that of the fuel efficiency of general small ICE cars.
WELL-TO-WHEEL ENERGY EFFICIENCY

If the dynamic performance and the energy efficiency are positive while running on the road,
the overall (creating, transport the fuel, and transfer to the dynamic energy) efficiency, which
is Well-to-Wheel energy efficiency, must be considered. People will not see our hybrid CAV
concept as a future environmental solution for the commercial cars without any advantages to
the overall efficiency. In fact, for the environmental issue, (especially the natural resource
exhaustion) the most important thing is to reduce the manufacturing energy and energy
supplying efficiency, which are all related to the reduction of the amount of handling energy
for every process of the car industry.

Table 5 Well-to-Tank for each energy source

Energy type Well to Tank
LPG 0.90
Hydrogen 0.70
G H 0.83
Electricity 0.37
Compressed Air ( a ) 0.27
Compressed Air ( b ) 0.43

(a) 37% 75%

Oil Electricity Compressed Air

(b) 70% 83% 75%

Gas Hydrogen Fuel Cell Compressed Air

Fig.5 Well-to-Tank flowchart for Compressed Air generation

The general energy efficiency of Well-to-Tank for each source of energy is shown in Table 5.
To store the compressed air to the tank of the vehicle, there are two ways shown in Figure 5.
The way (a) is to use the domestic electric outlet for operating the compressor. The way (b) is
to use hydrogen fuel cells for operating the compressor. Each value of efficiency in Figure 5
is considered as an average value in the general situation.

For the Tank-to-Wheel Energy efficiencies is calculated by the total exergy divided by the
integration of the workload of the vehicle running at the 10/15 mode. The Well-to-Wheel
efficiency is multiplied the Well-to-Tank by the Tank-to-Wheel efficiencies. Moreover, the
isothermal efficiency is about 75% for CAV, so that the 75% efficiency is multiplied by the
Tank-to-Wheel efficiencies (shown in Table 6). The Tank-to-Wheel values of the non-CAV
cars are considered as average. In order to calculate the Well-to-Tank for CAV, the way (a) in
the Figure 5 is chosen because it is (considered that the energy infrastructure of hydrogen is
hard to distribute in the present situation) more general in the world compared with that of
way (b).
 Table 6 Comparison of car synthesis efficiency
Type Well to Tank [%] Tank to Wheel [%] Well to Wheel [%]
CAV/100L for main 67.9 18.3
CAV/200L for main 65.0 17.6
CAV/300L for main 61.3 16.6
CAV/400L for main 60.8 16.4
27.0(case a)
CAV/500L for main 59.7 16.1
CAV/600L for main 59.6 16.1
CAV/700L for main 59.7 16.1
CAV/800L for main 59.0 15.9
Gasoline Vehicle 16.0 14.0
88.0
Hybrid Vehicle 30.0 26.4
Fuel Cell Vehicle 38.0 22.0
58.0
Fuel Cell Hybrid Vehicle 50.0 29.0
Electric Vehicle 30.0 80.0 24.0

30 CAV-600L
CAV-700L 29.0
CAV-800L
25 26.4
Gasoline
Gasoline Hybrid 24.0
Fuel Cell 22.0
20 Fuel Cell Hybrid
Well-to-Wheel efficiency[%]

Electric

15 16.1 16.1 15.9

14.0

10

Fig.6 Well-to-Wheel Efficiency of each car

For the comparison of the Well-to-Wheel efficiencies for each type of cars described in
Figure 6, the 800L CAV concept model shows that its efficiency is a half of that of a Fuel
Cell-Gasoline Hybrid Vehicle: FCHV has little advantage from gasoline vehicles. This means
that our concept of CAV does not have so high efficiency for transport. From this point of
view, the hybrid CAV concept is not the best. However, considering the actual manufacturing
and everyday use, CAV has a big advantage for a mechanical simplicity. It may not be the
best way to use fossil fuels to generate compressed air for our hybrid CAV rather than for
usual combustion engine cars, but should be a better way considering the whole industrial
process.
CONCLUSIONS

Although the acceleration and the running range are not satisfied, our CAV concept shows
some possibility to develop a car for a use of a practical vehicle such as about 470 km of
running range with the 800L tank. Our CAV can run the public road as similar as the fossil
fuel vehicle.

Better efficiency and dynamic performance may be obtained with a deeper consideration and
study with the numerical simulation model which is more realistic such as including the effect
of changing the state of stored air, the heat transfer, and the more detailed loss functions.
We must try a different type of system strategy as well.

Our real prototype CAV is now developed to see how it can run.

REFERENCES

(1) Ueno, Tetsuya, “Development of Compressed Air Vehicle using a Turbocharger”,

Aero Space System Laboratory, Aoyama Gakuin University, 2005
(2) Hayashi, A.Koichi, Sato Hiroyuki, Fujisaki Koji, “Title of Paper / Article / Book etc”,
Publisher, Volume / JP2005-3006191, Page Numbers, 2005