30-07-2012, 02:53 PM
Green Buggy Runs on Hot Air
A garden buggy is the first commercially operated vehicle in Australia to use air as a fuel instead of petrol. But a critic says the air motor would be no use in cars.
The vehicle, which is used to pick up garden material, will maintain the lawns of Melbourne's Fiztroy Gardens after its launch today.
The vehicle runs on compressed air from a cylinder. The air is blown through a rotor, which then drives the motor.
The engine's designer, Angelo Di Pietro from Melbourne company Engineair, said the motor has very low friction making it more efficient to run than other air-powered motors.
Tests of the vehicle in the workshop showed it could reach speeds of 40 to 50 kilometres per hour on a flat surface but would run for only one hour before it needed to be recharged with more compressed air.
But Di Pietro said this was still better than the similar sized battery-powered golf buggies, which take around eight hours for the battery to charge and create waste from old batteries.
He added that there were also no emissions from compressed air vehicles like there were from petrol-driven vehicles.
But Australian researcher and engineer specialising in motor research, Dr Andrei Lozzi from the University of Sydney, said air-powered motors were not anywhere near as efficient as motors that used fuel.