Im no physicist, so correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I can tell from what I'm reading on Wikipedia, CO2 gas takes up about 808x as much space as solid CO2.
Now atmospheric pressure is 14.7 PSI. So if you just filled an unsealed tank with CO2 gas it would be 14.7 PSI in there.
So, if you filled that tank instead with dry ice, then you'd be storing the equivalent of 808x as much gas, which would be the equivalent of nearly 12,000 PSI.
And because dry ice takes time to sublime from solid into gas, then you would maybe not even need a tank with a very high pressure to hold it since you could just let the excess bleed off, and your tank of fuel would still last the day. Or maybe pressurizing the tank, or keeping it cooled would allow you to prevent it from subliming for several days. I'm not sure.
But it seems to me that dry ice would be a much better solution than compressed air for an automobile. No super high pressure tanks, you can fill up in seconds, you have a ton more range, and you maybe wouldn't lose pressure as the fuel runs out because you'd be constantly repressurzing a smaller tank.
Is this idea crazy?
