Pure Oxygen injection as opposed to Nitrous Oxide?

[Beagle]

Purdue's LOX bbq lighting contest. Yes indeed, Costco grill reduced to ash in 3...2...1

Be careful please DG... no BOOM, okay? I smoke, so I won't be anywhere near it.

[Warpspeed]

I can tell you right now what the problems will be.

First, adding pure oxygen will reduce the proportion of nitrogen in the engine, and it is nitrogen that is the real working fluid in the engine.

Nitrogen makes up 78% of the atmosphere, it is inert and does not burn.
But what it does do is expand when heated, and it is that expansion of nitrogen that actually pushes the piston down the bore.

If you reduce the proportion of nitrogen, and increase both oxygen and fuel, you will end up with MUCH hotter combustion, but also much less expansion, and lower combustion pressures.
Much more heat and fury, but with less torque and power production.

People figured all this out over a hundred years ago, so what is the answer?

The answer is to add both more oxygen and more nitrogen together. That creates more heat, but more importantly it creates much higher combustion pressures, which is what we are really trying to do to make power.

So how do you add both more oxygen and more nitrogen?
Two ways.
A supercharger just forces in more atmosphere (oxygen + nitrogen) and works great.
The proportions stay the same, and it is relatively trouble free.
Second way is adding nitrous oxide, or nitromethane, both add both oxygen and nitrogen, and also work great.

Adding pure oxygen is just dumb.
It can produce slightly more power, but at the cost of hugely increased combustion temperatures and much faster combustion.
It will go into severe detonation very early, long before it makes anywhere near as much power as adding both oxygen + nitrogen together.

All this is nothing new, it is knowledge that has been around for about 100 years.
Supercharging works.
Nitrous oxide works.
Nitromethane works.
Pure oxygen does not.
End of story.

[BigBlockMopar]

A skylight in the dyno cell may be appropriate.
I dug up a couple of pics of what things look like when it goes bad (rocket style)
BKB

Why am I thinking 'Mystbusters Episode' here?

[JeffMcKC]

I know in Garlits Museum their is a front engine Dragster with maybe 2 tanks feeding into the engine, I am thinking the sign said it was oxygen. It was not Millers Oxygen car that was outlawed.

[dieselgeek]

If you reduce the proportion of nitrogen, and increase both oxygen and fuel, you will end up with MUCH hotter combustion, but also much less expansion, and lower combustion pressures.
Much more heat and fury, but with less torque and power production.

I can appreciate your practical experience, but you are presuming we're running 100% oxygen by mass in the combustion chamber, when in reality we're upping the oxygen content by about 10%, far less (on the initial try) than even a 150hp shot of nitrous oxide. There's going to be more Nitrogen in the mix than many guys running similar or larger hits of nitrous.

Adding pure oxygen is just dumb.

I'll be sure to tell the guys trying it that you feel this way, LOL. They have practical internal combustion experience that far exceeds mine and yours combined - designing engine management systems probably sounds or looks easy to you, but having a little experience at it myself - it takes a whole different level of understanding "what's going on in there" than most people realize. That's not a dig at your work experience either, which is obviously a large and respectable quantity of practical experience...

These guys aren't expecting it to be totally awesome but they were commissioned to find out, thus this post.

Thanks for the input.

[Brian Lohnes]

I know in Garlits Museum their is a front engine Dragster with maybe 2 tanks feeding into the engine, I am thinking the sign said it was oxygen. It was not Millers Oxygen car that was outlawed.

I can add nothing to this awesome conversation other than to refute Jeff's claim on Garlits' car.

Jeff, that car was an experiment to ditch the blower for huge tanks of compressed air to force feed the motor. It definitely did not have pure oxygen in it, just good old air like we all breathe.

[1trickpony]

What is the motor going to take? I would think the added heat would do some damage. Obviously this won't be a junkyard motor, but what would it all take?
Does LOX burn faster than NO2?
Just trying to think of how the piston is going to come back up instead of threw the oil pan.

[JeffMcKC]

I can add nothing to this awesome conversation other than to refute Jeff's claim on Garlits' car.

Jeff, that car was an experiment to ditch the blower for huge tanks of compressed air to force feed the motor. It definitely did not have pure oxygen in it, just good old air like we all breathe.

OK that explains it, I went there all three times after Leaving the Nude Truck Stop just down the road.........

[BKBridges]

I was having a hard time with the Gartlits car rumor... glad thats cleared up! (thanks for the Cpn Jack repost Brian... Im glad/sad we never happend across some turbonique hardware when I worked for Flometrics...)
Bench racing the O2 injected BBC I'd hard mirror polish the heck out of a set of aluminum heads and hard anodize them as thick as possible (.003"?). Add nickle 200 valves and bronze guides. Armor plate the tops of the piston with something like a zirconium plasma coating as Warpspeed is on the money re: heat of combustion... Use nicle 200 rings with low to no tension, nickle plate the cylinder liners and put them in a polioshed and hard anodized aluminum block. Ceramic ball and roller bearings with Nyolube for the rods and crank and cam as you wont be running oil in the motor... Then Id stand about 100feet away behind a blast wall and remotely fire it up. Nitrogen brings a lot to the table that pure O2 just takes away...

[JeffMcKC]

As they told me when I went through the Edison Museum and was looking at about a 1000 light bulbs in a room, they were the ones that did not work he had saved. Edison said people used to tell him the had more than a thousand failures,,, he said no, I don’t have a 1000 failures, I can tell you a thousand ways not to do it........

[Warpspeed]

I can appreciate your practical experience, but you are presuming we're running 100% oxygen by mass in the combustion chamber, when in reality we're upping the oxygen content by about 10%, far less (on the initial try) than even a 150hp shot of nitrous oxide. There's going to be more Nitrogen in the mix than many guys running similar or larger hits of nitrous.

I never at any time suggested using 100% oxygen.
That would be like detonating some plastic explosive.

O/k so normal atmosphere contains 21% oxygen, and you are increasing that to 31% oxygen content. And presumably reducing the nitrogen from 78% to 68% (roughly).

That will burn maybe 50% more fuel, because the oxygen content has increased by 50%

But how will there be more nitrogen in the mix when you are displacing atmospheric nitrogen with more introduced oxygen ?

This will probably work up to a point, but as I said earlier, 50% more heat being absorbed into around a third less working nitrogen will increase combustion temperatures hugely.
It is going to be hell on piston crowns, exhaust valves, and spark plugs.
It will require vastly less timing, and detonation will be what stops you.
It will work, but it is a very dangerous and potentially engine threatening way to increase power.

You guys are not the first to try this idea, and will not be the last.
But the results will never be any different however many people try it.

There are much safer and well proven ways to increase power.

[Caveman Tony]

DG, a couple things from an ex-USAF dude who put LOX on C-17s daily.

- Frogs WILL shatter if soaked in LOX and dropped onto cement.
- LOX plus anything petroleum equals 'POOF'... aka, 'BANG'... aka... cloud of smoke, sirens, etc...
- Grounding wires on EVERYTHING. If there isn't a bunch of steel wire with alligator clips grounding everything to a steel/copper rod in the GROUND... RUN... don't WALK away. RUN. Static discharge with LOX means 'poof' ... and a visit to the Shriner's Burn Unit.
- If the LOX container is parked on asphalt... RUN. Not only is that a harbinger of 'poof'... but its an indicator that the folks involved may not be as astute as advertised. Asphalt has petroleum in it... (DG, you knew that, but that was for the folks who didn't...)

Here's my take:

If they can figure out a way to run a motor with ZERO oil in it... wow.
If they can't... well, the valvetrain will have oil... and if it does, then the valveguides will have even trace amounts... therefore, the valvestems will have trace amounts... and they will thus be exposed to LOX, and therefore will be torched off in short order. Mr. Piston, meet Mr. Valve. Sideways.

I wanna see a BBC that runs SANS OIL. Just for cool factor.

[Caveman Tony]

although, the more I think about it, the more I think it may be feasible if done with Direct Injection.

[Huskinhano]

Although not specifically useful I remember reading an early 60's hot rod mag where a team was experimenting with LOX on a dragster. The motor was a 426 Chrysler wedge. I remember the article stating the motor had a very unique staccato exhaust note. I don't know if it was this article or one about Garlits with the LOX tanks the track officials weren't too happy with the LOX tanks traveling down the track at well over 100 MPH and cut testing short.

[TC]

I think this guy sums it up nicely.........

Why not inject Oxygen instead of Nitrous Oxide (NOS*)?

There are LOADS of reasons.

a) When you compress nitrous oxide gas into a bottle it goes into a liquid - It collapses. Its a bit like looking through a clear cheapo cigarette lighter... With its own vapour or "gas" above holding it in this state. Liquid is hugely more dense or compact than a pressurized gas can be. So It takes up massively less space than compressed gas does and solves its own storage problems. It also means that the bottle pressure never changes as the content level varies. Its sits there in perfect equilibrium. as long as there is at least some liquid Nitrous left. Only the temperature can change the pressure.



So that means that a bottle that's almost empty has the same 800 psi in it at room temp as one that's just been filled. We can then jet the nitrous system in a simple way and get a consistent liquid nitrous flow regardless of "how much is left" in the bottle as long as some is!

It boils off and restores its own 800 psi at room temperature pretty damned quick no matter how fast we use it up or leave it stored. It keeps itself liquid just like LPG or many other gasses.

An Oxygen atom (technically O1) cant live on its own it gets lonely. It combines with itself. So really its O2 (or for short periods O3 or Ozone if you prefer but it prefers 2 atoms because 3 is a crowd but it cant live just with itself it gets lonely! Weird or what)

Now O2 or Oxygen as we know it cannot be compressed into a liquid. This causes huge problems. You have to cool it really cold to get it liquid. Now you can keep it liquid by allowing it to boil off slowly like you see on TV with liquid nitrogen. boiling away... Or like NASA did with the moon landing Saturn Five Rocket.
A bit impractical for a car...






But you can compress it. Unfortunately as you use it the pressure then falls off fast. So you need a regulator and regulate the gas that comes off at whatever fixed pressure you choose. But it better be a big regulator! You are going to need a lot of this gas.

Now even a BIG bottle with say 3000 psi of compressed oxygen in it is still very little actual Oxygen compared to the amount of oxygen stored in a small bottle of LIQUID nitrous oxide.

b) We inject LIQUID nitrous oxide at a controlled rate via a jet into the intake system. Here it starts to absorb heat from the air in the cars intake system causing MORE AIR to be drawn into the intake due to the rate of contraction and cooling of the intake air. At least in sane power output settings! So manifold depression actually increases at the same time as you are adding more oxygen! Clever trick. And at the same time the charge is drastically
cooled. To way cooler than any intercooler could ever achieve! This charge cooling and manifold depression increase along with increased charge density is where much of the extra power and anti detonation property comes from.

Introducing gaseous oxygen instead does two things... If you could add enough to get any appreciable power increase it takes the place of the incoming air via the carb/throttle body. Because its not liquefied. So its "bigger" physically than the nitrous charge.

On the face of it not an issue. But unlike nitrous oxide which:

i) does the opposite,
ii) cools the charge massively. But that's not the worst! That bad bit is that it both "blocks off" the nitrogen cooling in the intake and contains none itself.

c) consider what happens in the combustion chamber. With nitrous we have the
Nitrous Oxide compound in very cold dense form (no free oxygen here until AFTER compression / combustion!) and we have the normal air (plus a bit extra since its
now ice cold) and the fuel. Under compression nothing happens until the
spark.

Then as the normal ignition process of air (oxygen/nitrogen/fuel) takes place the NITROGEN absorbs the heat and expands and because the Nitrous oxide compound doesn't split up until after ignition then the initial charge that's compressed and then ignited is over rich too. At this time the Nitrous oxide compound splits! Then it releases 2 nitrogen atoms and 1 oxygen atom from every N2O compound molecule. So now the freshly released oxygen can oxidise the remaining fuel. And its all very safe and actually helps prevent detonation.

Now try this with Oxygen instead! You have very little nitrogen. You have the fuel. And you have a warmer charge that's very Oxygen rich BEFORE ignition. Under compression any tiny glowing particles left over from the previous combustion cycle, or a hot valve or plug electrode will cause ignition! Very early! And very quickly. Effectively you will run over your own crankshaft. Ever play oxygen on to a bit of hot metal? Or watched a science teacher relight an extinguished taper by dipping in a test tube of oxygen? Its not what you want happening before the spark! And even if you don't run into those problems there are more!

d) After ignition you will have horrendous heat problems. Think melted. Because... The Inert Nitrogen (78 percent of air and 64 percent of the split up Nitrous Oxide) is absolutely essential.

It is this that prevents the horrible detonation and runaway heat problems that your car would have by absorbing the heat generated and expanding to shove the piston down. It is the most abundant gas in the combustion chamber. And it really does need to be. And remember that the BULKY gaseous oxygen that you add to your engines intake system actually displaces the nitrogen that would have entered by the throttle plate.


Incidentally I tried it anyway with the oxygen gas from a welding torch on
an unsuspecting 125 Honda. Sounded awful and emitted many sparks. Good job
it wasn't mine...

http://www.nitrous.info/oxygen-instead-nitrous-oxide.htm