I was wondering if you could use oxygen the same way you would nitrous. Just have a hose pointed down into the carb and when you race hit a button and the car is running on oxygen. Will this work and what are some problems with this idea.

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We'll get out of here, it'll just take a hole lot of floorin.

 

It won't work, pure oxygen will cause the fuel to explode as soon as they come in contact.

 

I dont think so
you could use oxygen this way, just like N2O but it is way more expensive and much harder to store than nitrous.

 

Have you ever seen a cutting torch?
That is what you would get, a huge violent flame.
That is the same as the fuel system for a rocket. They used liquid oxygen (although some used nitric acid) as the oxidizer. They used alcohol for the fuel (the nitric acid oxidized rockets used aniline for fuel). The fuel and oxidizer are injected into a combustion chamber where they self ignite as soon as they meet. Oxidizers and fuels that ignite this way are called "hypergols".
Oxygen and petrolium are hypergols!
Apeiron is correct, they will burn violently when combined.
<font size="5" color="red"><U>DO NOT ATTEMPT TO DO THIS!!!</u></FONT>

Nitrous oxide has 2 nitrogen molecules to each oxygen molecule.(N2O) The two have a chemical bond together as nitrous oxide until the heat from compression and from the start of combustion separates them into their original components (nitrogen and oxygen.) This bond does not allow the oxygen to act as pure oxygen would. Also, once seperated in the combustion chamber, the 2:1 ratio of inert nitrogen to oxygen slows, cools and cushions the flame from the fuel & oxygen mixture, making it posible to use nitrous oxide as the oxidizer.


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Tracy /AKA IROCKZ4me

• 355 cid
• AFR heads
• Arizona Speed & Marine hydraulic roller cam w/ AFR hydra-rev kit
• modified SLP runners
• TRW forged pistons/ceramic coated
• fully balanced
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• Nitrous Express nitrous oxide

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[This message has been edited by IROCKZ4me (edited January 07, 2001).]

 

I know what a cutting torch looks like and you still have to lite it with spark and this is what allows the flame to propogate.
while it is true that there are hypergolic fuels out there , alcohol and yes gasoline are not hypergolic.
they do not react spontaneously with oxygen.
there is still a spark requirement -- otherwise think about this.
how is it posible to have gasoline in open air -- when air contains pure oxygen.
they use liquid oxygen and hydrogen on the shuttle main engines too but they still have to lite it with sparkers on the pad and hydrogen is far closer to being hypergolic than octane.

BTW dont take me as being a know it all - please disagree with me - I definately do not know it all.
James

[This message has been edited by 88305tpiT/A (edited January 07, 2001).]

 

I have seen a cutting torch. Out of all the times I used mine it never ignited by itself. gasoline and oxygen dont spontaneuosly combust. Thats what I thought, but I could be wrong.

[This message has been edited by Digger (edited January 07, 2001).]

 

RIGHT
just increasing the atmospheric concentration of O2 would not cause gasoline to become hypergolic. why do you think we need spark plugs and 10-1 compression ratios--- to ignite the fuel and oxygen.
and dont say "well deisels dont have plugs"
because diesel wont ignite in free O2 either - you have to compress it ALOT, (like try 15 or 20 to 1) thereby increasing the charge's temp enough to ignite it.

however I think something that was said before also may apply.
that is the part that Irocz4me said about the nitrous charge cooling the reaction. the fact that you could spray in freezing cold N2O and have it keep the combustion temps to a reasonable level might be another reason why people use it. whereas oxygen might necesitate using exotic metals to survive the temperatures created from a higher concentration of oxygen and fuel in the charge per volume.
however as any engineer or physicist will tell you - the higher the temp. the more thermaly efficient the cycle is and this results in more work in the same mass of charge.
all in all this is not cheap and I think If you went crazy with the O2 and messed up the AF ratio or just used the right ratio but too much you would burn up your pistons much quicker than with N2O. therefore we may not agree in theory but we do in practice.
dont do this unless you have MONEY
and preferably someone who has tried it before.

when i wrote my first post I was assuming this was hypothetical. sorry to all that read that to mean - go ahead and try it.

 

I need to be more specific! Oxygen and acetylene indeed are not hypergols. I did not intend to imply that an oxy/ace torch would self ignite. However, oxygen and petrolium are hydrgols. Gasoline and acetylene are obviously not the same. Of course you must ignite An oxy/acetylene torch with a spark. What I meant by "cutting torch" was that this is how hot the resulting flame from pure (or near pure) oxygen and gasoline would be. As I said before, oxygen and petrolium do indeed react when mixed together, the oxygen must be in a high enough concentration though. That is why you never put oil on oxygen tank fittings unless you want a hypergolic reaction and the resulting explosion. You can put a bucket of oil or deisel fuel in an open container exposed to air without it self igniting. But air and oxygen are not the same. That is why you can not put oil, deisel or other petrolium products) on the oxygen tank fittings of an oxy/ace torch.(Or any other 100% oxygen source.)
It isn't pure oxygen any more when it is naturaly in the atmosphere. oxygen is just one of many components to air. Air is composed of just under 21% oxygen. The main component of air is nirogen at 78%. Sound familiar? (Sounds alot like nitrous oxide so far but...) This is nearly 99% of the total components of air. Argon is nearly 1%. The remainder is very small quantities each of carbon dioxide, hydrogen, ozone, methane, neon, helium, krypton xenon, and who knows what other gasses. There are also water vapors and some solids including salt, dust, microbes, spores, pollen, molds etc. Not to mention the man made crap floating around. When these seperate components are all mixed together as air, they do not retain their original properties. They are no longer chemicaly independant but are just an ingredient of the total compound. Nitrous Oxide is laughing gas. Since about 99% of air is a mix of nitrogen(78%) and oxygen(21%) and these are the two components of nitrous oxide then we should all be rolling around on the ground high as a kite, right. No it doesn't work that way. The mix ratio of nitrogen and oxygen is different in air and N2O and also the remaining miniscule quantities of the other componets of air make it a different compound than nitrous oxide with different properties.
You can leave gassoline in an open container without it igniting and you can leave oil in an open container without it igniting either. (Also you don't need compression at all to ignite a gas / air mixture. You just need a spark{or heat source} and a mixture that is combustable. If the mix is to lean or to rich it will not combust at all.) Just being exposed to air will not ignite gasoline, deisel or oil, but can you put oil (or gas or deisel, all are petrolium) on an oxygen tank fitting? If you do and the concentration of pure oxygen gets high enough around the oil it indeed will ignite. But it doesn't always happen or happen imediately. Because the oxygen concentration around the oil has to be high enough. (Any profesional welders or OSHA guys out there that can explain this better?)
If you "point" an oxygen hose into the carburator and inject pure (100%) oxygen into the air cleaner assembly and carb throat so that it blows across the venturi and contacts the fuel it is likely to be a strong enough concentration of oxygen and fuel to light off and become a very hot metal burning fireball.
That isn't exactly what I meant. While the change from liquid to gassious state does cause the N2O to be extremely cold when entering the intake tract, this cooling effect is simular to that of oxygen under the same conditions. Both are cryogenic gasses.This cooling effect is minor compaired to the affect I wrote about. What I was trying to say is this;
The nitrogen and oxygen seperate during the beginning of combustion. The N2O changes from a single product (with certain properties) to two seperate products (each with there own independant properties.) The oxygen is the oxydizer for the fuel. The nitrogen "cushions", slows, and keeps the combustion temperature cool compared to the same combustion chamber using a mixture of high concentration oxygen and fuel.
If 100% pure bottled oxygen could be used this way you can bet your fire suit that someone (or everyone) would have done it decades ago and today it would be as common a practice at the drag strip as nitrous oxide use.

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Tracy /AKA IROCKZ4me

• 355 cid
• AFR heads
• Arizona Speed & Marine hydraulic roller cam w/ AFR hydra-rev kit
• modified SLP runners
• TRW forged pistons/ceramic coated
• fully balanced
• Edelbrock headers/ceramic coated
• SLP cat-back
• Paxton supercharger
• Nitrous Express nitrous oxide

My IROC-Z
EFI Performance Club on Yahoo



[This message has been edited by IROCKZ4me (edited January 08, 2001).]

 

Here are some interesting links about oxygen safety and handling:
<hr color="orange"> http://www.fda.gov/cdrh/oxyreg.html
This one is an FDA government page about a recall of aluminum pressure regulators on oxygen systems. It seems that under high pressure oxygen and aluminum in the regulators can react and become violently flamable or down right explosive, and they don't know excactly why. Interesting, Aluminum spontaniously bursting into flame in the presents of oxygen at pressure, could that mean that aluminum pistons and heads could potentially burst into flame or explode in an overly oxygen enriched combustion chamber under the pressure of compression?

This is a FEMA page about the same thing. http://www.usfa.fema.gov/alerts/niosh299.htm
<hr color="orange">
Here is a very basic Navy medical page on O2 safety. http://www-rota.med.navy.mil/safety/Safety_Topics1/English/oxygen_safety_regulations.h tm
<hr color="orange">
That was a good quote from this message board post, http://www.ganoksin.com/orchid/archi...1/msg00066.htm
<hr color="orange">
This page is from chapter 5 of NASAs safety manual dealing with oxygen use and safety. Here is a short excerpt "rapid metal-to-metal contact within components", sounds like a gasoline/piston engine to me! Also this bit is particularly relevant here too "Materials that burn only sluggishly or not at all in air burn quickly in oxygen. Almost any material will burn."
This is a very informative page. http://www-osat.grc.nasa.gov/lsm/lsm5.htm
<hr color="orange">
As a side note here is a short article on the importance of oxy/ace safety, http://atlas-safety.0pi.com/ACETYLENE.HTM
<hr color="orange">
If I seem **** about this it is only because I am. I lost a cousin to a stupid accident while he was working on his car!! If he had lived through his miscalculation I am certain he would tell you to not even entertain this idea Digger.
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Tracy /AKA IROCKZ4me

• 355 cid
• AFR heads
• Arizona Speed & Marine hydraulic roller cam w/ AFR hydra-rev kit
• modified SLP runners
• TRW forged pistons/ceramic coated
• fully balanced
• Edelbrock headers/ceramic coated
• SLP cat-back
• Paxton supercharger
• Nitrous Express nitrous oxide

My IROC-Z
EFI Performance Club on Yahoo




[This message has been edited by IROCKZ4me (edited January 08, 2001).]

 

I love the fact that you are **** about this but I still maintain that gasoline is not hypergolic. I dont know where you got this from but I read all your links and none of them said that any of the fuels they mention SPONTANEOUSLY combust in the presence of oxygen at any concentration. they all must be under extreme pressure as in the aluminum tanks.
Also I really have to disagree that air is not a COMPOUND and that the effects of changing O2 concentration in air are not as you listed. the oil on the O2 example you gave is because the O2 is under pressure -- not because oil is hypergolic.

although I really would love to write as much as you did I dont have time to.
I appologize if I sound standoffish here
so I dont want to just say you are wrong and then copout like that.
-- where did you learn specifically that Gasoline is hypergolic - I am a practicing aerospace engineer and octane ( and generally any other hydrocarbon fuel ) is not hypergolic under the conditions in the intake tract of a carburated engine. also the chemical makeup of the air (having constituants other than O2) does not impeede or otherwise retard the ability of gasoline to combust in so much as without these other elements the combustion would become hypergolic. I have no doubt that the combustion would proceed Much more quickly in pure O2. However, this notion that the concentration of nitrogen and oxygen in air effect the CHANCES of combustion upon an O2 and Octane colision is nonsense. we are not talking about radicals here we are talking about N2 and O2 -- inert gasses that require sufficient Molecular kinetic energy (temperature) to react with hydrocarbons.
simply combining O2 and gasoline in any part of the intake tract of your car will not cause the combustion reaction. the individual molecules (O2 and Octane) simply will not have enough energy to react.
the reaction only takes place when the temp of the charge becomes high enough to break the O-O in the Oxygen and the H-C bonds in the octane. your tank example attains this temp because of the extreem pressure the gas is compressed to. remember PV=nRT? when you get a little oil in that tank and pump in O2 quickly, the pressure rises enough to heat the mixture and combust the oil. but nowhere would this happen in the intake of a car. the only place it could happen is in the chamber - where its supposed to.

Oh BTW I am very sorry to hear about your cousin and please do not assume that while I disagree with you that I have no respect for what happened to your cousin.

again I wish to emphasize that I do not, nor have ever endorsed using pure O2 as a power adder. and I am not trying to figure out HOW you could either. -just saying that it would not cause a reaction anywhere other than in the chamber. simply mixing O2 and Gas will not do it under normal atmospheric conditions.

James.

 

Im getting a good chemistry lesson

 

BTW
was just looking at one of your links (the one to glenn research center) and pulled this quote up that I think pretty much proves my point.

Quote
"One of oxygen's greatest hazards is its nonevident passive mixing with hydrocarbons. Once such a mixture is ignited, the reaction may proceed violently, even explosively."

notice how they say IGNITED - if you have to ignite it, it isnt hypergolic.

hey - you do some pretty selective reading. look what I found right above some of your quotes on the same page--

"Ignition. The ignition temperature of a material in oxygen systems is not an absolute physical property. It depends on many factors. To date, no single test has been developed that can be applied to all materials to produce absolute ignition temperature values. However, relative ranking and estimated ignition temperatures for many materials have been established through experimentation. Representative values are found in Chapter 3.4 of "Oxygen Systems Engineering Review" (Schmidt and Forney 1975).

Materials will ignite at considerably lower temperatures in oxygen environments than in air, and combustion rates are greater in oxygen than in air."

but I think this one takes the cake--

"Ignition occurs when a combustible material is heated to ignition temperature. The temperature rise could be from within the oxygen system, without any added energy from outside sources. Fluid friction, chemical reactions, adiabatic compression, or impact on container walls can produce sufficient energy for ignition to occur in oxygen systems. "

All the conditions that NASA has just listed for us and that you so kindly found, would NOT be met in the intake tract of someones car.
sounds alot to me like what I wrote yesterday.
Chemistry lesson Indeed!

 

Wow! this takes me back to a time I almost became a pharmasist.Did you know that w/enough heat/pressure, hydrogen can be classified as a metal.Hehee.I'm sure some of you know this as: "it goes with out a saying"kinda thing.Anyway I enjoyed the lesson. Very technical.Good stuff.

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90 Formula-WS6-TPI-305/5 speed. Slightly worked.

 

And for the very short answer (though the tech stuff was great reading!) -

Nitrous Oxide is not flammable and won't cause explosions if it leaks. Oxygen will. Simple matter of safety. As mentioned before, N20 doesn't split into the N2 and O2 molecules until its temp. is raised by the heat of compression and combustion - so its much safer

I know you've all seen the BBQ competition where a few engineers ignited the coal with some LOX Gotta love it!


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Andris Skulte
Skulte Performance Designs
Z28tt-89 IROC T56 DFI Twin Turbo
http://www.skulte.com

 

Again I am reinforcing that I do not endorse using Oxygen as a power adder and I think that askulte's advice is prudent. although Id love to see that BBQ clip!Id say that igniting anything with a LOX source is probably fun to watch (space shuttle slo-mo videos )

I just talked with a coleauge of mine today about this and he agreed that the reason drag racers dont use pure O2 for racing is that temperature regime with a pure O2 octane or nitromathane combustion event would be out of the range of all heat tempered steels or hypereutectic aluminums.
unless you want to build your motor out of TI or a ceramic of some kind or you inject the O2 in liquid form to cool the chamber or use LOX to cool the engine (like on liquid rockets) you would melt your engine in a matter of seconds.

however I think I can bring this post to an end. while it may be possible to find a reasonable level of O2 to inject into an engine, Jerry (my coleague) told me they tried this during the early days of NASA when they were still called NACA (National Advisory Commitee for Aeronautics) to get beter performance at altitude and came to the same conclusion that askulte mentioned. O2 leaks are to dangerous for it to be used on internal combustion engines. backfires could cause explosions. but this is the same reason that they didnt and dont use N2O either. both are relatively dangerous given a sufficient ignition source. however, O2 is undetectable and potentially more of a threat that way than the sweet smelling N2O. N2O is also a liquid at a MUCH higher temperature than LOX so it is about 100 times cheaper to make and store.

all in all I just wanted to say that we also agree that O2 and Octane are not hypergolic.
he said something that I thought was funny.
when I told him someone thought they were hypergolic he laughed and said "wouldent that be great, then we could just inject fuel into the chambers and not need the spark plug industry at all, although the gasoline storage industry would more than take its place. no more self serve at the pumps!!!"

any other questions and I think we should start another post - this one is getting a little long to read and figure out what the heck we're talking about. I dont want people to have to read the whole thing

James

 

i know that crude oil when it comes in contact with pure oxygen will combust. They do not nessisarily react. oxygen is not flamable. the environment in wich the flame will take place is a issue. simply put if pure oxygen and crude oil come into contact the heat required to combust the oil is lowered to a point where spontanious combustion occurs. o2 is a bad idea for a power adder.

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90 iroc l98
last season best corected 13.62 @102
mods
full exhaust, AFPR, pulley, jet stage 1 chip, billet servo, 52mm throttle body and a few other little things.

 

Tell everyone to leave the area before you try this.

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1991 Z28 Camaro L98
5.7L T.P.I
Blk ext/grey lthr int
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