Just a "technical" comment to riff raff (hi, mate!), as I'm "on duty" with Korean GP and Steven's out of town and Principessa birthday is Saturday. Five seconds to finish qualy, so I have just the time to write one of my "short" posts.
(IMPORTANT SIDE NOTE: you can send her gifts to me, I'll be happy to store them for her. She likes books on tyre friction and circuit design, as you all know. DISCLAIMER: any mistakes in the news are made by Kiril, not by me):
Energy density of compressed air
can be almost doubled IF air is heated before compression.
That's easy to do in an F1 car (and provides you refrigeration, so double whammy).
The expanded air (if not heated) would give you problems with freezing the KERS engine, because of adiabatic decompression. No one in his right mind would design a compressed air engine without it, or the pipes would clog.
A beautiful example of a compressed air engine is the Brotherhood one (oh, I'm sure you remember the Brotherhood brothers, bros), because those guys knew well what happens when air is compressed: it heats. The same, but in reverse, happens when it decompress: it gets cold as hell.
I guess the cyclists in the forum have burnt once or twice while pumping air in their bicycle tyres...
Brotherhood engine: stick it in a new F1 car and you have a KERS without adiabatic problems. It can give you 4500 psi with one hand tied behind its back
This magnificent KERS prototype also runs on steam, so it will give you an advantage for F1 2020 season, when, as we all know, engines will have one cylinder (a.k.a as "V1 engine"), which will make them more efficient than the old and noisy V6 of the 2010's,
and they will use carbon monoxide fuel or solar heated steam only (to alleviate global warming, of course, although carbon monoxide engines are tricky to design: you have to burn all the fuel before using it).
For example, you can read about the
Tresher nuclear submarine tragedy and ponder how important is to design things that doesn't kill you by "adiabatic messing":
Pressure for compressed
commercial air cars is around 300 bar, riff...
(... and, yes,
you can design and build a regular, commercial car without spending one hundred million euros in building a prototype to race at Le Mans: that's the usual procedure, btw).
That's the pressure used in torpedo propulsion for decades, if not centuries (that's what the Brotherhood engine was used for: the first torpedo built by Whitehead, propelled by compressed air, reached the then
impressive distance of 180 meters, almost twice the length of a modern submarine).
Whitehead ponders why his (battered) test torpedo did not move further (he heated the air afterwards). Notice his look: it seems he works for McLaren, the poor guy...
So, you might want to redo your calculations, young man, taking in account the real pressure and the adiabatic thingamagij. You get a C+ for effort, anyway.
