O2 vs N2O

[454Casull]

Instead of nitrous, what about oxygen?

Per weight, it carries more oxygen (obviously) and the cooling effect can also be realized, under the same pressure.

[ivymike1031]

It's also one of the more dangerous things that you could conceivably carry around with you - even metals (like Al) will burn in a pure O2 environment.

[454Casull]

The intake charge wouldn't be pure O2, there's atmospheric mix too (70% N2, 25% O2, etc.), but you probably already knew that.

So what about a mix of N2O and O2?

[Whitebread]

A mixture of N2O and O2 is what you get with a NOS system and an atmospheric air charge. Mixing N2O and O2 together isn't worth it, that's just more damage to your engine plus the mixture is more unstable than just N20.

[ivymike1031]

If you want to get around the limits on O2% in atmospheric air, how about switching to a fuel with a lower (than 14.96) stoichiometric AF ratio? That way you'll require less air to burn the charge - the tradeoff would be in the LHV for the fuel (often a lower stoich AF means less bang per molecule). Perhaps you'd want to try a mixture of Methanol and Nitromethane? I think you'd find that to be quite sufficient for getting your kicks. :frog:

[SaabJohan]

Gasoline, SAFR 14,7, energy content 40-44 MJ/kg
Methanol, SAFR 6,4, energy content around 20 MJ/kg
Nitromethane, SAFR around 1,7, energy content around 11 MJ/kg

N2O plus O2 is what hospitals use.

[flylwsi]

i know i've seen a thread on this, but if you injected o2, it would basically burn your motor up, b/c of the rise in heat etc...

at least from what i remember... but it is pretty dangerous from what i remember...

[Steel]

if you really wanna see your cylinders flying up through your hood, bangbang, along with your ramrods too, then go ahead and use pure O2

[SaabJohan]

You can inject pure O2, but then the engine have to be delevoped for this, and you must store the O2 in the car and that is nothing that you want to do.

[Holyterror]

You hit the nail on the head. It's a weird feeling to fly a small plane and suddenly remember that there's a giant fuel tank between your legs. I don't want pure oxygen in the back seat.

When dealing with pure O2, you have to consider where it's stored and where it's going. Basically, until it bonds with a hydrocarbon and is flushed out the exhaust, the oxygen is going to be pressurized for the entire time. A pressurized oxygen environment is an open invitation for just about anything to blow up. Remember the Apollo 204 fire (yeah, before my time too, but maybe you've read about it)? Nobody is sure what actually started the fire, because there were so many things that could have exploded. Thanks to the pressurized oxygen in the cabin, spontaneous combustion was quite possible. Velcro, for example, was found to catch fire instantaneously. Strange but true. You could end up with burning metal, and that's a really bad thing. Who knows. Since O2 injection is not the most common thing in racing, I doubt many people know just what could happen. Maybe your aluminum heads would catch fire and start a ferro-aluminum thermite reaction with the rusting iron block. Okay, my imagination is running wild, but you get the point.

It's very risky and unlikely that your engine (or you) would survive for long, but yeah, it's an interesting concept. So give grandma back her respirator; she'll get more use out of it than you will.