Theoretical question
 

Sitting at the shop yesterday, drinking my coke and talking with my coworker after just burning a test pipe off of an old 911 SC.

Anyways, as I am putting the torch away I get one of those momentary ideas, one that sounds intriguing, but has a severe "Hey Y'all, watch this!" redneck death causing potential.

Anyways, my point: Oxygen for welding is about $20 - 30 per cylinder. How hard would it be to shoot pure oxygen into the intake system, or have the car run on straight oxygen without ANY outside air?

You would still need a way for the car to meter the air, but you could use much smaller intakes since you would be running pure oxygen.

I throw this one out as purely a theoretical exercise.

AFJuvat

Straight oxygen will increase combustion temperatures considerably. When octane burns in the presence of air which is about 72% nitrogen and 18% oxygen, some of the nitrogen reacts and forms NOX. Much of the nitrogen does not do anything and is just along for the ride through the engine. The excess nitrogen has to be heated when the other reactions that are exothermic occur. This keeps a lid on combustion temperatures to some extent because the temperatue of the nitrogen must be raised. This takes energy and lowers flame temperatures.

Combustion is an energy balance based on exothermic and endothermic reactions that are going on in the process. The burning of the fuel is the big exothermic one but it is contained to an extent by what is called 'excess air'. The amount of air that is injected into a furnace, for instance, is a control on the temperatures reached by the products of combustion. This is necessary because metals in furnaces get reactive to the exhaust gases beyond certain temperatures. So excess air is injected to keep a lid on the temperatures. If you were to use only oxygen, combustion temperature would be much high because there would be no nitrogen that had to be heated.

maybe you could get craig to try it...

_____________
-too many cars

Injecting a small amount of pure oxygen and the correct amount of additional fuel would be similar in effect to NOS. You could run it for a short burst without any problem. But who is going to guess how long a short burst is? Is it 30 seconds or is it 5 seconds before combustion temps rise to a harmful level. I occasionaly inject pure oxygen into vehicles in the winter when they come into the shop as a no-start it helps to compensate for all the additional unburned fuel left behind from the customer cranking on it until the battery dies. And occasionaly it will result in one hell of a backfire!!! oh well, they probably needed a new muffler anyways... :D

Seems like the (nearly) inert volume of nitrogen in the cylinder improves efficiency by absorbing combustion heat, expanding, and doing mechanical work.

Gene

Here's a thought: (and I am familiar with the "Hey, Y'all! Watch this!", I've heard it many times) My G-Mother-in-law gets comp. Air with a high % of oxygen in it. She has a transportable device that I fill from the large tank so she can go places. The small tank is about the sice of my airbox. And it has a meter and tubing. Liquid air: read coooold.

When developing the Firemaker mk II, my friend dried comp. oxy from an oxy-acetaline tanks during field trials. He pretty much just succeded in burning himself...badly.

<A HREF="http://todwic.tripod.com/fire">fire page</A>

I would think that a small rocket chaimber on the back with Oxygen and gas injection would be more efficent and more fun.

the 944 is the 'funnest' car ive ever driven?

assuming of course that all of the grounds are ok, very important in rocketology.

I never drove his truck, I had him drop me off and he would zing through an intersection with the firemaker mk II at full flamage. We're talking Huntington Beach, through beach and edinger....good times.

You have to be kinnding me you know the guy who built that truck! I laughed so hard I crapped my pants!

Liquified O2 stright into the intake is a great idea. I am for anything that will stop te thinning of the gene pool.

He also made a RC motorized skateboard. Skateboard had dirt wheels and a Poulan chainsaw motor. The RC worked the front wheels and the throttle. You stood on it and rode and steered w/the RC.

Wow cool! Fugazi sticker, skatebaords in the back of the truck, It looks like my truck!:)

It ruled, he'd leave a flaming puddle of gas where ever he turned it on. You should have seen people's faces.

On a not completely irrelevent note, I've been on fire more times than anyone deserves to be.

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ain't that a bisnatch :D

I was told that if you put your hand in gasoline and light it it won't burn your hand immediately because it's burning the gasoline.

SO...

I sprayed my arm with hair spray and lit it.

Now apparently hair spray burns a lot faster,
so the only thing left burning, was: my arm.
my arm then caught the bathroom wall on fire too.

thinking about stupid things I've done,

my brother told me that if you shoot your toe with his bebe gun, it wouldn't hurt. He demonstrated, what I didn't know was that he didn't load a bebe. So I loaded it, pumped it all the way up, aimed for the big toe, and pulled the trigger. OOOOOOOwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!
good thing it wasn't the one we got after that one. It was the most powerful pellet gun you could get. We shot it strait through a metal matchbox car!

I like you. You're not like the other people, here, in the trailer park.

Here's a trick with which to amuse your friends. Get a syringe, with a smallish needle attached and fill it with milk. Then, gently peeling your eyelid up and squishing your eye to one side, insert the needle behind your eye and squirt the milk into the cavity linking your eye to your nasal passage. Now grasp your rib cage firmly with both arms and clench your muscles to expel the air from your lungs. Delight your friends as the mixture squirts vigorously from both ears.