Air

[thefool]

If this isnt advanced enough then please move it.

Lets make this simple. Assume a paintball is a perfect .68inch sphere made of water. This means seeing as we are assuming it has a density of 1 it wieghs ~12.49608 grams.

My question is, under the 3 different compressed gasses used in paintball, N2 Co2 and air, what would be/would there be an optimum pressure/flow ratio for each gas, and if there are large effeciency advantages for one over another becasue of a greater expansion rate.

Also would there be any other gasses that would make finanial scence to use.

[Southpaw]

Well compressed air is nearly free and mostly nitrogen so out of the 3 listed I would say that it is the best.

[Glickman]

helium, if it would work with the standard o-rings

[JRingold]

Well compressed air is nearly free and mostly nitrogen so out of the 3 listed I would say that it is the best.

Exactly, one $3000 compressor and you get all the free tank fills you need. Let's see, after the first 1000 fills, it's paid for. So after about 200 playing days, or 100 weekends, so just under 2 years. Unless you play during the week, or have more tanks, or people who come by and "buy" fills from you.

Now I know where the profit is in running a paintball field...

[Kai]

I like to breath air.

[Southpaw]

Jring you are right I bet it is way cheaper to isolate co2 or any other gas and then compress it than just compressing air. Did you notice that he mentioned nothing about COST Let me change my post for the anal like you to:

The air you compress is nearly free and way cheeper than seperating out the nitrogen and then compressing it considering that air is mostly nitrogen. Out of the 3 listed I would say that it is the best of course you would need to buy a compressor think big $$ or a tank and get it filled think small$

[athomas]

Assume a paintball is a perfect .68inch sphere made of water. This means seeing as we are assuming it has a density of 1 it wieghs ~12.49608 grams.

Actually, it works out to 2.7 grams. Most paintballs are actually about 3 grams in mass. They aren't pure water, but they are usually slightly larger than .68" in diameter.

Most of the common gasses used in paintball, don't have much of a difference in flow when firing a paintball. The amount of energy difference when in a gaseous state is so slight, that you can usually interchange tanks without adjusting velocity of the marker.