particleeffect

i've always wondered why pure Oxygen injection isn't used instead of nitrous... not that i know too much about the nature of pure oxygen.

is it because it would be too expesive to fill? or that the inert nitrogen/chemical split when nitrous is combusted helps lower combustion temps?

theloudroom

Good question.

Maybe it increases the burn rate too much? That's my guess.

I've seen oxygen make regular lighter fluid act like an explosive.

pinkfloyd

n20 burns cold. pure oxygen burns very very hot.

particleeffect

yeh that makes sense.

Shamrock.James

mainly becuse if something went wrong which it most likeley would your car would become a freaking bomb...

as stated before oxygen burns very hot....

and to put it simply imagine detontation where you have too much Air to Fuel ration but about a million times worse.

Oxygen has a big tendancy to ingnite itself and is just plain dangerous...

so maybe ... just maybe it would be possible if you had an injector placed halfway through the combustion cycle, angled in the direction the rotor is spinning..

Still i would be very doubtfull and very scared..

and i would prefer to watch behind a double-brick wall.


Oh and if you get you hands on some compresed oxygen be very carefull with it.

scathcart

The nitrogen atoms in N2O act as buffer to the combustion of iso-octane, slowing the combustion down to prevent the engine from detonating. In a combustion engine, the explosions are relatively slow, and adding oxygen would simply cause instant detonation, regradless of how much fuel you added.

particleeffect

ahh, and by nature the oxygen doesn't come out of the nitrous till detonation. instead of causing the detonation or make it much more likely due to the huge increase in volitility.

felix_is_alive

because kaboom, thats why

Steel

pure oxygen would make the combustion completley uncontrollable, and you'd blow you engine within a few (crazy) seconds. It would also make the combustion temperatures skyrocket very quickly above the melting points of steel and iron, nevermind aluminum. Not to mention i wouldn't want to be carrying around liquid oxygen at high pressure with me, that's just ASKING to die.

Piranha

Are you guys horrible at chemestry?

The problem isn't that oxygen ITSELF is explosive, it needs fuel to burn. Having that much oxygen however makes things a lot easier to burn, to the point of being explosive. Not only that, oxygen isn't that cheap.

If you had enough fuel of course you could run oxygen, what do you think rockets burn?

theloudroom

So the consensus here it that oxygen would make the detonation velocity (may not be the proper term for this context) too high?

It would be like the difference between using a "low" explosive and a "high" explosive?

I'm not really buying the whole temperature thing, since that would be a function of your a/f ratio and the total amount of fuel burned. The combustion of a certain amount of gas is going to release a certain amount of energy.
I could understand temperature being a secondary reason, but I'm guessing it's not the main one.

Kenku

Flame front velocity. Yeah.

Nitrous oxide works because it takes energy to break the nitrogen molecules away from the oxygen... it slows down the chemical reaction compared to pure oxygen. What *this* means is that the pressure builds up gradually, burning in a manner comparable to normal air/fuel mixtures. Oxygen however, has no such chemical bonds to break... the flame front will propogate through the entire mixture far faster and cause... well, let's just call it detonation, okay? The comparison between low and high explosives is a good one... a perfectly accurate one would be looking at brisance, but now we're getting to unconventional terminology.

Temperature is a secondary concern, but it still is one. It's not just a function of air fuel ratios and the rest. There is a set amount of energy in a molecule of gasoline sure, but the nitrogen in air acts as a buffer... the unused nitrogen absorbs heat from combustion. Nitrous oxide has a lower percentage of nitrogen, so there's less inert gas to absorb heat, so it burns hotter. Pure oxygen, there is *NO* inert buffer.

Oh yeah... rocket oxidizers. Liquid oxygen, hydrogen peroxide and nitrogen tetroxide are common ones. And rocket engines burn without detonation because the pressure inside them isn't actually all that high; all that rocket engines *ARE* is a device to convert pressure to velocity. The same reason that gunpowder either expodes or burns depending on conditions.

On top of all this, does anyone here actually think oxygen *HASN'T* been tried?

scathcart

The reaction rates are not even comparable between a rocket and a internal combustion engine are not even comparable; its like comparing a wood fire to the explosion of TNT.
You cannot run pure oxygen in an internal combustion engine, no matter how much fuel you have. The reaction rate would be so significant as to cause the explosion to bounce repeatedly in the combustion chamber and destory all of the seals.
You questioned our chemistry?

Dom_C

check out this link, It's not pure oxygen but an oxygen additive. http://www.vpracingfuels.com/vp_01_f...D8023427AF40B5
There race fuels are badass too.