NA boost?

[enzo@af]

Okay, so I was in math today, not really paying attention because it's pretty easy. Well, anyhow, I thought of this....

What if, instead of having an intake, you simply attached a valved tank of Oxygen gas to the intake manifold. If you had it valved to keep the intake manifold at a constant pressure (say, 5-10psi), it would essentially be like running low boost without the lag of a turbo. And, because you wouldn't need to lower compression (because it's pure oxygen, not only the what, 20% you find in air), you could run it with low "boost". And, because it's pure air, the exhaust gases would be much much cleaner.

Does this make any sense to anyone? Yeah, I know it's full of problems and things that would arrise, but it just seemed like it could work.

[texan]

What would happen is the engine would turn over just once before flying into a million peices. If you understand the chemistry of combustion, you should understand how bad a thing it would be to fill a chamber full of pure 02 and gasoline, then go compressing it and expecting combustion (what you would get is explosion, not combustion). All fuels are burnt through oxidation reactions, and giving the molecules of gasoline tons of free 02 to react with will make controlling when and how quickly combustion occurs nearly impossible. Piston engines rely on compression, spark timing and naturally low O2 levels to control exactly how and when combustion occurs, the mixture you are speaking of would not tolerate even minor compression without becoming unstable. Think of it this way...

Nitrous is two parts nitrogen, one part oxgyen. It's bonded together at normal temperatures which keeps it from easily reacting with fuels, but at 570 degrees farenheit the molecule flies apart and you get air with 33% oxygen content. This is above atmospheric by only 13%, yet we all know that only small amounts of nitrous need be injected into a motor to see gigantic power gains (and gigantic increases in maximum cylinder pressures). We also know that unless you add the proper amount of extra fuel, the motor will turn into a hand grenade.

Nitromethane, the stuff Top Fuel motors use, is over 50% oxygen by volume. Again, it's bonded and won't react at room temps, but feed in some compression and the fuel becomes it's own supply of oxygen. In fact, nitromethane is not technically a fuel, because it will burn without the presence of air, it's an oxidant. That's right, you could plug up the intake ports of a motor running nitro, and so long as you injected the substance into it's cylinders, compressed and ignited it, it would burn like a mofo and make TONS of power.


So now that you know this, imagine what happens when you put 100% unbonded oxygen into a cylinder with plenty of gasoline (which has a low vaporization and auto-ignition point), and then compressed the snot out of it. KABOOM! This is neither a safe or effective way to harness the heat energy from a burning mixture, cylinder pressures will rise way too fast and everything will fly apart in no time. Thankfully our atmosphere is only 20% oxygen, otherwise our beloved piston motors would never have come to be.

[Chris]

Yeah, and for every gallon of gas, 25000 gallons of air is burned! SO, if you filled your trunk with compressed air-in-a-can, it wouldn't last long.
BUT, if you could purpose-build an engine (with, say foot-thick titanium cylninders, etc) you could maybe get, well, lots of power. But then why wouldn't you just use nitro-methane, which makes lots of power, more than gas. So it could work, but why?

[TheMan5952]

Not to mention you would have to be continually compressing the air with a onboard Compressor, because as tank air levels lower, you lose the amount of internal pressure.

[Chris]

And an onboard compressor would be heavy and this whole system is working like a SUPERCHARGER!!
SO, this compressed air idea may have seemed good, but is really very stupid

[kris]

Originally posted by Chris
And an onboard compressor would be heavy and this whole system is working like a SUPERCHARGER!!
SO, this compressed air idea may have seemed good, but is really very stupid

I wouldn't say it was stupid, just not a efficient thing to do.

[Chris]

True, at first it seemed kinda good, bu tunder scrutiny it fell apart

[DVSNCYNIKL]

I agree with Texan. Not a practical thing to do. Just as an example also, look at nitrous. Yeah you get all that power and stuff, but after prolonged use, you car is just had the hell kicked out of it. More power is not always a good thing.

[Sluttypatton]

This idea was the topic of another thread, only rather than pure O2 I was suggesting Compressed air, but after I did some math I posted:

I have done some math and I have concluded that this is impossible...Ridiculous pressures aside, it would be impossible to flow enough of this to make any meaningful horsepower increase, and furthermore that horsepower increase would decrease relative to engine speed increase. This is because the maximum flow of the solenoid would produce a miniscule hp increase at low RPM and as the solenoid is already at maximum flow, it could not flow more as engine speed increased, resulting in a smaller power increase as RPM increases [ Sf<=20000ccm, Air*Rpm+Sf=X, X is the total gaseous content of the cylenders, and as Sf(solenoid flow)is <=20000ccm while a 2.0L engine can theoretically use 13104000cc's of air @7000RPM (in a stoic mixture), 20000cc's becomes less than .2% of the total gaseous content, while @1000RPM Sf=1.1%], that may not make sence as it is late and I am tired so I may have left some steps out or got the equation wrong. The next problem is that not enough of it could be stored in a tank to produce even the maximum solenoid flow (which already produces little extra power at maximum flow.) So close yet so far away...

Follow this: Automotive Forums .com > Cars in General > Engineering/Technical > Maybe the first new idea since nitrous...then again, maybe stupid
To find the original thread.

[Sluttypatton]

Everyone dismissed this idea very quickly but it is still plausable. If one were to get a tank of liquid oxygen and inject minute amounts of it into the incoming air it would, when thoroughly mixed with the ambient air, enrich the incoming air. Keeping a tank of LOX in a car is relatively safe as once oxygen is liquified it can be stored at low pressures. Injecting a VERY small amount before the manifold would effectively enrich the air and allow for more fuel to be burnt. O2 mixed with atmosphere could work.

[castovicini]

How about small amounts of liquified air at 70% N2, 30% O2. It would be a cross between CO2 cooling and Nitrous?

[454Casull]

N2O serves better as a power adder than LO2.

[Steel]

and liquid oxygen is NOT a safe thing to store. Get into a car accident, the tank ruptures, kaboom. A spark flies the wrong way and even bigger kaboom.

[Sluttypatton]

A nitrous tank can also rupture, and the impact of such a rupture would certaintly go "kaboom" and kill or maim you. Plus the inhalation of such a massive quantity of nitrous (assuming your still alive after the kaboom) would certainly kill you. Upside: the nitrous probably won't feed the flames, unless the flames get pretty hot and unbind the nitrogen and oxygen...but if your car is in flames, you still got problems, nitrous or no nitrous.

You are right though, oxygen would certainly cause your car to burn very quickly and violently.

Nitrous bottles have (rarely) been known to explode in parked and unmoving cars. They could also rupture in an accident.

It boils down to bottle placement, and safety...don't mount the bottle in the cabin please; it's dangerous and illegal, mount it in the trunk.

[Neutrino]

has anyone noticed how this thread was started by mods.....and then you common folk just hat to join in the conversation...


btw i find patton's ideea pretty interesting...use minute O2 quantities to enrich the air...maybe up to the same percentage as N2O.....the only advantage it would be though is its cheaper to refill O2 than N2O?


although btw the reason i don't like nitrous its because it just makes me incomfortable to have a big bottle of higly presurised gas close to me......and btw how much safer is to have the bottle in the trunk above the gas tank?

also i bet a gasoline fire would be hot enough to split the N2O and fueling the fire....if i'm not wrong a gasoline fire is hot enough to split H2O