Hacker News Reader

Comment by antisthenes | Hacker News Reader

The extremely obvious compromise is that you need to have a high-PSI air tank on hand as well as a donor bike. The donor bike can probably be gotten for very cheap or free, but the tank...

I looked at the prices of 80-gal 200 PSI rated tanks online, and the conclusion is...not great.

It's going to run you roughly $1000, for which you can realistically buy a whole set of cordless battery powered tools AND an outlet-powered air compressor on top of that.

View on HN

> I looked at the prices of 80-gal 200 PSI rated tanks online, and the conclusion is...not great.

Or you can get a bunch of empty propane tanks for a few bucks and call it a day…

The point is that this solution works without access to electricity and is resilient to the loss of industrial supply chains

How are you going to make an air tank that can handle 200 PSI without industrial supply chains?

There are a bunch that are already made. I think this setup is really impractical, but once you have it, you aren't reliant on the supply chain to feed the power plant, but you are reliant on it for finding a source of food to power the human pedaling.

For the tank:

> There are many used air compressors for sale that have faulty motors or pumps, and are therefore quite inexpensive

And the pneumatic parts/equipment:

> An additional benefit of using compressed air for energy is the low cost of air tools. The current trend is pushing toward more battery powered equipment, so people are selling off their “outdated” pneumatic tools.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com