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I used to work at a paintball field. We had large compressed air tanks (16"dia x 5'h) and typical co2 tanks (8"dia x 5.5'h). When things went wrong, it was very valuable to have had some training. I wouldn't want Joe Commuter to have that same compressed air setup in his garage filling up his car.
Incidentally, our big compressor had 3-stage compression... probably the same way that the french co is using staged decompression.
When we moved to a new facility we had to drain nearly-full air tanks. There were 3 of them. The amount of energy stored is pretty significant because they made a hell of a ruckus for 10 minutes when they were emptying. Not taking care would have blown eardrums, if not air embolisms. They were 3kpsi.
This discussion inevitably turns to efficiency. I know that a 68cu air cylinder filled to 5000psi in half a minute gets HOT. That isn't coming from the compressor, but from the source tanks that were at room temp. I'm pretty sure that is an indication that the process is rather lossy, but i'm no compressor engineer.
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