Investigation and implementation of compressed air powered motorbike engines

Over the last decades, fossil fuel resources have become very limited due to their tremendous use. Our dependence on fossil fuels has brought many environmental complications, but vehicles using compressed air as a fuel are still considered a dream. The compressed air engine (CAE) is receiving attention worldwide because it has the advantage of being renewable and has zero exhaust emissions. Motorbike engines have the highest percentage emissions of any fuel operated engines. Currently, in Egypt, there are more than 3 million motorcycles (motorbikes and covered three-wheeled motorbikes called tuktuk) powered by fossil fuels. This paper provides an overview of air power engine for motorcycles, called air bikes. The objective is to modify the four stroke petrol engine into a CAE by replacing the spark plug by solenoid valve and using the infrared modules for piston timing. A prototype of an air powered motorbike engine is implemented by modification of an 150 cm(3) Dayun petrol engine. The modified CAE speed is 300 rpm at 8 bar air pressure with 7.8 Nm torque and 245 watt power. The efficiency of the CAE reaches 9.6%. Yet, due to low-pressure value utilization, the performance of the investigated CAE is still so poor that it clearly has a minor impact in motive power and hinders its commercialization.