pure O2 injection?

I've gotten a variety of answers to this question, none from anyone who has ever tried this, or even engineers who would possibly know. What would happen if you ran pure O2 from a tank into your air intake hose? I know this would displace regular air with a more combustible gas, it would also be very cold. Your O2 sensors would probably sense the rich air and send more fuel (on fuel injected engines). Would this be dangerous? If you don't really know the answer there is no need to respond.

Well, on top of the fact that if you got into an accident or something went wrong with the tank you would be completely incinerated Oxygen is just too damn flamable and burns too hot for safe use.

Because pure oxygen would create such violent combustion that it would be uncontrollable, and the engine would grenade with just a little bit of oxygen. The nitrogen atoms act as a buffer to soften the combustion process—they slow down the combustion to a controllable rate.

O2 can be used but it shouldn't by safety reasons. Also, the speed and temperature (around 50% higher than with air) of the combustion will increase stress in the engine.

The O2 sensors will not compensate with fuel for all that extra oxygen.

You'd have to be bloody insane. That and there's two reasons that NO2 is used:
1) Denser oxygen!!!
2) Also has excellent cooling properties. And as we all know, cooler is better for compressed gases.

And it's ridiculously flammable to boot.

What about ozone?

Originally posted by Gasoline Fumes
What about ozone?
I assume you mean compressed air. That would be interesting though why bother. You would have all of the same equipment as a NOS system so why not just use N2O.

Ozone is O3 for anyone wondering, not just compressed air. And it wouldn't make any sense. It's reactive with CO2 and other greenhouse gases.

well, back to my compressed air thought: check this out:
www.theaircar.com

Ozone(O3) is one of the components of our upper atmosphere, if it weren't for ozone, we'd probably wouldn't be here. Ironically enough however, it is an air pollutant in the lower atmosphere, and makes up smog which accounts to many deaths during hot weather. So this is probably one of the reason Ozone would not be used.

Oxygen, as others mentioned before, creates high combustion temperatures, and would cause more heat on the engine(not a good thing). Excessive heat is never good.

Nitrous Oxide is N2O by the way, in other words, laughing gas, the anesthetic doctors use.

As hot and touchy as oxygen is, ozone is much worse. It would not wait for high temps or pressures to begin burning. It would start on contact with anything flammable. Even storing more than small amounts of ozone is dangerous, even at super cold temps. Where do you think you would get it? NASA doesn't even use ozone as a rocket fuel!

Originally posted by higgimonster
Oxygen is just too damn flamable and burns too hot for safe use.


Oxygen is flamable:eek: ? We better let the people of earth know so that they don't light a match and start the entire planet on fire.

Okay thats what I thought, O2 wont burn by itself, requires fuel of some kind.

O2 won't react with itself (at least not often enough to be noticeable), but it will react with damn near anything else you throw its way.

Aluminum will burn just fine in a pure-O2 atmosphere...

I suppose if someone wanted to take the chance, and had the appropriate equipment specially designed for use with oxygen, they could probably add just enough oxygen to raise its percentage in the air by a couple percent without many problems. I'd only do the experiment with plenty of equipment to monitor combustion temps so I wouldn't melt my pistons, or worse.

I agree with sciguyjim, if you were to raise the oxygen count per cubic foot of atmosphere that your engine consumes you could increase the performance. However just like nitrous you would also need to richen the mixture to balance the air/fuel ratio. A bad mixture could put you over stoiche and quickly destroy your engine. The reason that nitrous works safely is that they have the jets spray proportionally with fuel to insure a safe mixture, and the nitrogen acts as a cooling agent to help prevent detonation and preignition. What you have to realize is that if your air/fuel mixture is near 14.7 parts oxygen to 1 part fuel or higher in oxygen content you WILL destroy your engine. Rich is slow, too rich runs like shit, but it is safe. Lean is fast, too lean is really fast and on the edge of destruction. I think that your car would fly for almost half a minute then the pistons would weld themselves to the cylinder walls and the fun would be over. To sum up my thoughts, it's dangerous to use (risk of fire). Your A/F ratio would be too lean, your cylinder temps would be too high. If you were lucky you would just melt your motor and not kill yourself.

yeah, dude...enhanced oxygen does in fact help combustion, thus we have turbo. HOWEVER, pure oxygen is highly flammable. The friction caused by rubbing your hand against your shirt will make enough heat to cause combustion in a pure O2 environment. You need outside gasses, (Nitrogen, Carbon Dioxide, et al.) to bring down these combustive properties.
This could go places, however, I would be interested to see it as an alternative to all common forced induction systems. Isn't how they made the blues brothers car, so it could drive underwater?:D

Originally posted by Fireinthesky28
yeah, dude...enhanced oxygen does in fact help combustion, thus we have turbo. HOWEVER, pure oxygen is highly flammable. The friction caused by rubbing your hand against your shirt will make enough heat to cause combustion in a pure O2 environment. You need outside gasses, (Nitrogen, Carbon Dioxide, et al.) to bring down these combustive properties.
This could go places, however, I would be interested to see it as an alternative to all common forced induction systems. Isn't how they made the blues brothers car, so it could drive underwater?:D
Once again it is being stated that pure oxygen is highly flamable. This is NOT the case. No fuel, no fire. Pure oxygen is a very dangerous material and is a fire hazard but only because it makes other things burn, not because it combusts. As ivymike1031 had previously stated, aluminum burns quite nice in a pure O2 environment. I wouldn't doubt this, however it is testimony to my statement. Aluminum is the fuel and oxygen is the oxidizer, you do need both. ivymike1031 hit it on the nose when he said that oxygen won't react with itself, but it will with almost everything else. Fireinthesky28 I am in agreement with you in part. The outside gasses like nitrogen and carbon dioxide don't really stabalize oxygen's combustive properties as they due reduce our atmosphere's oxidization properties. Oxidization is obviously the key to combustion, so basically these other gasses that dilude our atmosphere to a mere 21% oxygen, keep the oxygen from reacting with everything it comes in contact with. Anyways, I am probably not qualified to give a chemistry lesson, so I will leave it at this. If you want to dump pure oxygen into your engine I suggest settling for a nitrous oxide kit, they have already done the work to make sure that it is safe in your engine. I did all of this homework for you 8 years ago when I was installing a liquid oxygen tank in a 16V Jetta GLI. Lucky for me I did my homework before I road tested.:D

just on an anal/technicality point. In the real world no matter how you use pure O2 there will always ba a fuel. whether it be the sweater you rub your hand against or the bottle you store it in or the dust particles in the air (not sure if they count though).

point taken....:)

Originally posted by higgimonster
just on an anal/technicality point. In the real world no matter how you use pure O2 there will always ba a fuel. whether it be the sweater you rub your hand against or the bottle you store it in or the dust particles in the air (not sure if they count though).

As a chemist, I have used high pressure pure oxygen. There are special procedures and fittings and gaskets needed to use it safely. And, the dust IS important. Before putting the piping together, you have to try to wipe out all dust particles before opening up the high pressure O2 or the dust can burst into flame on contact. If there's a trace of oil in the piping, it can explode when the O2 is released. I know of a case similar to this where this happened and the user was killed.

I drink liquid oxygen for breakfast instead of coffee. I think that it makes me run faster and jump higher. :newburn:

Take the chemist's advise (sciguyjim), and live to start another thread :) .