More Power?

[Ian Anderson]

Simple me here again.- please humour me

Now air as we know it has a number of elements of which Oxygen is about 20%

For an engine to work it needs to burn fuel with oxygen

So if you get a bottle of oxygen and run the end of the pipe into the inlet / air filter and give the car a good breath of fresh air would you get more power?

If so how much more power could be obtained by running an oxygen enhancement system?

How about fitting an LPG system but instead of LPG having it draw in oxygen?

Also in something like this what additional fuelling would be required as bor oxygen will allow more fuel - would EFI systems correct by sniffing the exhaust and upening the injectors longer?

Lastly would somewhere like the Santa Plod allow such system to run?

Cheers
Ian

[kiwicar]

What you are describing is exactly why people squitr in nitrous oxide, yes oxygen is a more extream version, and was used on WW11 aircraft a bit, but it is more difficult to handle than nitrous.
Best regards
Mike

[Ian Anderson]

Mike I thought as much but how much is a bottle of Oxygen forOvy acetylene compared to a bottle of nitros?

Also an LPG donut tank and evaporator feeding into an engine - sounds pretty simple to me

Chris - time to update your landy further before retro day?

Ian

[kiwicar]

Hi Ian
The boiling point of N2O is about 100C higher than oxygen and Propane (a majout component of LPG is about 230C higher than Oxygen, this means you have to store it at a much higher pressure than N20 and Lots higher than than LPG, put Liquid oxygen in an LPG doughnut tank and it won't stay there very long
Best regards
Mike

[ChrisJC]

N2O is a good source of oxygen, and it's mechanically unstable, so it releases the oxygen for combustion at just the right time. It's so much more manageable than pure oxygen. I think pure oxygen might set fire to the pistons or heads or stuff like that. I can imagine it being pretty dangerous!!!

Chris.

[unstable load]

Water-Methanol injection if you have an anti for Nitrous Oxide?? It's heavy, though.

[Ian Anderson]

Yes I hear you

BUT
Get your oxygen cylinder and pipe it into the air cleaner

More power just open the regulator - if the exhaust sniffer is doing it's job can EFi cope?

Hell if you get 30% oxygen instead of 20% that is a 50% power increase

Ian

[mgbv8]

Pure Oxygen in the presence of oil and high pressures= Bang!!

[Ian Anderson]

Pure Oxygen in the presence of oil and high pressures= Bang!!

A single stroke diesel engine!

Yes but we're not getting to 100% Oxygen
Purely getting a much higher oxygen content in the air going into the engine in the normal way.

Now Tom has done this with a supercharger - more oxygen but unfortuneately he has also pumped in more CO2, nitrogen etc.

So instead of this why not add o2 to allow a better burn?

Ian

[kiwicar]

Hi Ian
what you say is perfectly true pure oxygen injected into the inlet charge with extra fuel will give allot more combustible mixture than N2O and as I said it has been done on WW11 aero engines. however there are many very practical problems.
1 the pressure needed to keep it liquid
2 getting that pressure down to a level you can inject it into the manifold (probably using an oxy eseteleen reg).
3 in a pure oxygen anything hydrocarbon based will burn at a much lower temperature, oil vapour, paper air filter element, rubber piping)
4 you will have to mix it thoroughly with fuel before it gets into the cylinder
5 compression ignition, with pure oxygen you don't have to crack the oxygen off the nitrogen before it is available for combustion as with N20, this means there is no delay before it is available to oxidise the fuel, both compression ratio, ignition timing will be hyper critical also you will have to have a chamber free of hot spots.
You could probably stabilise the mixture burn with water injection , twin plug heads and very accurate ignition timing but you will have a big development project ahead of you and you will have to know what is going on in the inlet tract and the chamber and really understand the chemistry of combustion, this last area is really very poorly understood.
Best regards
Mike

[bigaldart]

Ian,

I think you would get an instant meltdown, one stroke would be all it ever did. The Nitrogen in the atmosphere and in N2O is what stabilizes the burn. N20 having less Nitrogen makes more power than air. However the stability of air is what ultimately allows a supercharged or turbocharged engine to make more power than Nitrous.

Alan

[badger]

Been watching this with interest, as I contemplated something similar some years back. It was discussed on a landrover newsgroup but I don't remember if I mentioned it here or not.
Basically, I was working in an aviation LOX (Liquid Oxygen) bay at the time, using 10ltr LOX Pots. A LOX Pot is designed to convert the LOX to Gaseous Oxygen (GOX) for pilot/crew breathing purposes when required.

I had a vehicle running closed-loop lambda at the time so I made a lash-up test rig (LOX Pot strapped down in boot, long hose feeding gas via a control valve to the air filter box inlet) and did some playing around, first at idle then whilst running. With the engine idling, the lambda could be seen to go immediately lean with just a small ammount of oxygen gas feeding into the airbox, then the fuel system would trim and everything came back into limits. Under load, it took an awful lot more gas to produce any effect and it was a bit "hit and miss" to say the least, but if enough gas was fed in at a constant throttle and rpm (holding a steady speed on a hill) then the vehicle accelerated. That was enough proof for me that increasing the oxygen percentage in the air entering the engine would, indeed produce more power.

As I say, the whole thing was a lash-up and I was conscious of doing engine damage due to it constantly going lean under load as I started to feed in the gas. I don't doubt that a system could be rigged up that would proportion gas flow to throttle position better, and that an ecu could be re-mapped to suit, but in all honesty the volume of gas required at high throttle openings was enormous and that was another reason why I didn't do any more with the idea. Plus, my employer may have been a touch upset if things went wrong and I damaged a £15K LOX Pot!

I reckoned that a 10% increase in oxygen flow at all throttle openings with a remapped ecu would give roughly 10% more power, but I don't think I'd have wanted to go much over that due to temp considerations, but as I said I felt it just wasn't feasible due to the sheer volume of oxygen gas required.

[jefferybond]

I bet it would work, but I wouldn't go anywhere near it! You'd ned to have a cryogenic liquid oxygen tank on board to have enough of the stuff, and the fact that some space rockets use LOX/Gasoline is enough to scare me!

Nitrous is a bit like an easier to store/safer version of liquid oxygen - that's why it's used.

Have you ever seen videos of stuff being set fire to after being dunked in liquid oxygen? It can turn BBQ briquettes into fireworks! Excellent stuff.

Jeff

[badger]

Ah, but I did have a cryogenic tank on board, that's what a LOX pot (or pack!) is. Designed specifically to store liquid oxygen and give a gaseous supply on demand.
I never said what I did was safe...... hehehe.

[Ian Anderson]

So with a LPG vapouriser you'd need what 14:1 air to gas??? fpr criuse mode - a lot more for acceleration

So take this vapouriser and instead of LPG add oxygen
at 14:1 you are adding at least 7% more oxygen

7% more power = abour 20 extra hp on my engine - worthwhile i'd say

Ian