Design and implementation of an air-powered motorcycles

Currently in Taiwan, there are more than 13 million motorcycles, mostly driven by internal combustion engines, and the pollutants, carbon monoxide (CO) and unburnt hydrocarbons (HC), generated by motorcycle are responsible for more than 10% of the air pollutants released to the atmosphere. The studies show that the internal combustion engines of motorcycles may generate up to two times more pollutants than those of automobiles. In order to improve the air pollution condition and eliminate the pollutants exhausting, this paper presents a new idea of using compressed air as the power sources for motorcycles. Instead of an internal combustion engine, this motorcycle is equipped with an air motor, which transforms the energy of the compressed air into mechanical motion energy. A prototype is built with a fuzzy logic speed controller and tested on the real road. The experiment data shows that the speed error is within 1 km/h and the efficiency is above 70% for this system when the speed is over 20 km/h. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.