Calculating Joules to Compress Air: Dan's Question

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The discussion revolves around calculating the energy required to compress air in a tank to a specific pressure. The initial example involves a 4-gallon tank of air at standard temperature and pressure (STP) being compressed to 300 kPa. The energy needed for this compression is calculated to be approximately 5520.035 Joules. Additionally, there is clarification regarding the volume of gas after expansion, indicating that it would be 16 gallons instead of 12 gallons when released to ambient pressure. The calculations utilize the ideal gas law and integration to determine the work done during compression.
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So here I am at work, and the go-to people for physics are away. Here is the problem I am trying to figure out:

I'm wondering how much energy it takes to compress a certain amount of
air at a certain temperature, to a certain pressure. For example, let's
say I had a 4-gallon tank of STP air and I wanted to add air until the
pressure inside the tank reached 300 kPa. How much energy, in joules,
would it require to do this?
-Danedit: nevermind this thread. Zz gave me a bit of help. If you want, you can still give me some help, but for now, I should be fine, unless I post here again requesting help.
 
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You just do it the opposite way : calculate how much work the tank releases when it vents the gas out.

We have P=nRT/V, so you integrate the function nRT/V dV with 4 galon and 12 galon as the endpoints of the interval. 12 galon is the volume the compressed gas expand when it is released.
I am sorry not to have the numerical results for you.
 
In this case, consider the atmosphere equals to 100kPa, then the energy needed to compress air into a 4 gallon tank to 300kPa is 5520.035 Joules.
 
I ve got a question:

The gas is compressed to 300kPa with the volume of 1 gallon. At ambient condition, the pressure is 100kPa, and the absolute value of 300kPa must be 400kPa, so that the volume of gas will be 16 gallons, not just 12 gallons after being expanded to ambient pressure.
I am right?
 
So I know that electrons are fundamental, there's no 'material' that makes them up, it's like talking about a colour itself rather than a car or a flower. Now protons and neutrons and quarks and whatever other stuff is there fundamentally, I want someone to kind of teach me these, I have a lot of questions that books might not give the answer in the way I understand. Thanks
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