The_7

the purpose of nos is to get the extra oxygen so you can burn more fuel and go faster (warp mode if your paul walker ) so why has no one tried pure oxygen tanks....you could get so much more power out of it, and even if you didnt want to use more power cause u dont want to blow your car you could have something rigged so it would mix with air to "dilute" it and then one tank would last alot longer than a nos tank. what do u guys think?

Kenku

Well, I'm pretty sure people *have* tried pure oxygen at some point. There's a reason it's not done. The pair of nitrogen molecules bound to the oxygen molecule make nitrous break down slower and burn a bit cooler. Running O2 would burn the air/fuel a lot faster than is practical for an engine to withstand; think flame front speeds closer to detonation than burning, a sudden chamber pressure spike instead of a more gradual (by engine speed terms anyway) build up of pressure as it burns.

Marshall

In short: Kaboom

DrPJM1

Zoom Zoom KaBoooom!

infinitebass

Lets put it this way...those tanks you see at the dentist's office with pure O2 in them...if they were to explode, there's enough power to blow most offices to the ground.

Do you REALLY want something with that kind of power sitting in your trunk?

Teh nitrogen keeps the oxygen from actually exploding and just decomposing.

Blake

SLOWT2

but for those few seconds before u died u would go HELLA fast............

Railgun

As soon as you let it go...BLAMMO! I think you'd barely feel a surge before it went.

Aico

I recall vaguely that O2 is a very unstable substance(gas). It wants to react with some other stuff really badly and so releasing a lot of energy. Like in an explosion.

Or is this O?

CHemistry was never my good side.

jeff48

O2=Oh Too Much!!!!

LT1RX7

o2 is the same as o ther is no o2 on the periodic table

LT1RX7

it is just the way oxygen joins with nitrogen to make a stable atom. for the electons to balance it take 2 oxygen atoms for every nitrogen atom.

And yes oxygen would melt the motor.

Turbo 3

iTrader: (3)

To answer some of the questions/misconceptions above...

Oxygen is not a flammable gas... it is an oxidizer, which means it supports combustion, it will not blow up on its own nor will it explode. It will, however, make any flame it comes across become extremely active. Good example is an oxy-acetylene torch. You use a fuel gas (Acetylene) to light the torch with and use the O2 as an accelerator/oxidizer.

O2 is the same element of O but not the same thing. It's based upon the the number of free valance electrons that free O has, -2, that it wants to bind up with something else, like another -2 to form a stable molecule. Not all elements will do this but that's "normally" you'll find them in nature.

O2 is stable, therefore. If you were to actually get a free single O-2 in nature, that would be very reactive as it is trying to "bind" with other molecules in order to form a stable one.

Putting NO2 or O2 in your trunk is not very dangerous. Putting a tank of a type of fuel would be, say when you get a tank of LPG for your grill and put it in the seat next to you when driving home with it. See what a 20 lb. cylinder of that will do to your day.

Ever wonder why RV's and trailer homes get disintrigrated when one of those blows? Look at some NFPA sites for pictures, pretty impressive.

I believe the nitrogen allows the O to separate slowing during combustion so it's not all at once and burns too quickly, leading to a sonic boom/pinging in the combustion chamber. It also provides a cooling effect from the expansion of the liquid compressed gas, back into a gas.

The_7

aaaaa i see now.....the nitrous is a controlled burn while the oxygen would be instant....i am a power addict and im always coming up with crazy ideas...for example imaging running an engine on pure liquid hydrogen and pure liquid oxygen thats rocket fuel... i know it would explode but just imaging the power if it didnt.....someday im going to try it....either way it would be cool...i either get a car with a million horsepower or a cool explosion .....also turbo3, i have had to argue with so many people that nos isnt flammable, some of them still dont believe me

Digi7ech

iTrader: (1)

Turbo 3's got it down.

There are 2 purposes to Nitrous.
Cool the intake charge and add a little more oxygen.

The Nitrous acts as a courier for the oxygen so that way it doesn't ingite too soon(you know what i mean[ignite/help flame/etc])

When the nitrous breaks apart into nitrogen and oxygen the process cools the intake charge.

And it's supposed to be for every 10 degrees cooler or so it adds X amount of horse.

I believe that's where most of the gain comes from.

I'm no MR Wizard though.

911GT2

Allow me to elaborate.

There are what's called valence shells around the nuclei of atoms. They hold the electrons. They have specific names and orders in which they are filled. Shells of the S order can only hold 2 electrons. Shells of the P order can hold 6 electrons. Shells of the D order can hold 10. The order goes like this:
1S 2S 2P 3S ...

Oxygen has 8 electrons, so it's electron configuration looks like this:
1s2 (2 for the number of electrons in that shell)
2s2
3p4

Now remember, p shells can hold 6 electrons. And shells like to be full. (Noble gases, the most stable elements, have their last shells full, i.e. 2 electrons in the S shell, or 6 in the P)

If an element has an unfilled shell, it wants to make it that way, becuase doing so makes it electrically nuetral. Oxygen is missing 2 electrons in its 3p shell, thus it wants to gain to electrons, giving it a charge of negative 2. (electrons are negatively charged)

Nitrogen has a charge of +1. So 2 nigtrogens would have to bond to every one atom of oxygen to make a nuetral compound (compounds like to be nuetral for the same reason shells like to be full) Hence, N20.

Oxygen is often found bonded to another oxygen molecule because 4 free electrons are not as easily found as 2 are. So two oxygen molecules will hover close to eachother and "share" the two electrons between them. And electrons move so fast that the atoms have no idea that they ever leave.

What this has to do with how pure oxygen burns in an engine I have no idea, I just wanted to talk chemistry for a little while I guess...

Turbo 3

iTrader: (3)

Thank you for elaborating. Wasn't sure if I should go into that level of detail but you did so quite nicely Except for the part about the electrons moving so fast that the atoms don't know that they leave. Not quite true as that is why they have X number of degrees between the charges, say like water having 109.5 deg. but for the purposes of this discussion... Just don't go into eV for the electrons related to the sharing and bonding I have willfully forgotton how to calculate that!

911GT2

I never even got that far in chem. Took 1 semester of it this past winter, that post was all I remembered! But hey, it sounded smart didn't it?

Turbo 3

iTrader: (3)

I've had a year of freshman chem, 1 sem of organic, and 1 sem of analytical...plus a year of phyics plus or minus my real broad area science degree If you don't use it though...