[grawprog]

I personally think compressed air tools are underrated. I worked at a shop that used a lot of compressed air powered 'things'. We had a bunch of air powered hand tools that out performed electric equivalents by a fair bit. Most of the larger machines, though mostly electrically driven, had major components that were air powered and required a compressor.

The force and energy available through natural physical processes is under rated some times...

Well...I guess all our power and energy is based on natural processes.

Hmmm...I guess...there's some natural physical processes that tend to get largely overlooked that provide more energy than one might think is I guess what I mean.

[KozmoNau7]

A major advantage of air tools over electrical tools is that the air flow and expansion causes cooling, which means you can run air tools harder for longer than equivalently-powered electrical tools, which can heat up dramatically when used hard.

Of course you have to mitigate moisture, but that is trivially solved with a moisture trap on the compressor's outlet or at the tool if you're using long air lines.

[nine_k]

You can expend any part, up to 100%, of the entire charge of a compressed air tank, momentarily. You can get a lot of power (measured in Watts) from it.

An electrical battery, even if it stores the same amount of energy, is seriously more power-strapped.

[jfengel]

Conversely, I spent some time at a physical therapy gym that used compressed air for resistance instead of metal plates. It was a lot quieter than any other gym I've ever been to, just a gentle whoosh instead of clang-clang-clang.