I don’t understand why a car would have both if they both provide rotational energy, unless they just stack? I don’t know what’s going on.

  • SmokingMenthols@lemmy.worldOP
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    1 year ago

    My education is in automation and my current job works very heavily with pneumatic systems, so my usable idea of what a motor and engine is are very different from most people familiar with the terms. I would get some seriously strange looks for saying that a compressor engine was bad comparatively.

    • Spuddaccino@reddthat.com
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      1 year ago

      Typically, people do associate the terms with different forms of power, but they’re really the same thing. A motor creates motion using supplied power. That’s what a car engine does: it uses the chemical energy in fuel to move pistons.

      If I understand correctly about your line of work, this is consistent: the supplied power source is converted to rotational motion in the fans. Your compressor engine is also a motor.

      If you have something else that turns the airflow into electricity, then you have a generator there, and will need another motor to make stuff move again.

      This is also why hybrids need an electric motor and a gas engine: they have a generator that turns motion into electricity, so they need something that turns electricity back into motion.