The internal combustionenginein most cars burnsgasoline . To do the combustion , an locomotive needs O , and the oxygen comes from the air all around us . But what if cars carried their own and pumpedpure oxygeninto the locomotive engine or else ?
The air travel around us is about 21 per centum oxygen . Almost all the residuum is atomic number 7 , which is inert when it runs through the engine . The atomic number 8 controls how much gasoline an railway locomotive can combust . The ratio of gas to oxygen is about 1:14 – for each gram of petrol that burns , the engine needs about 14 gram of O . The engine can burn no more gasoline than the amount of oxygen allows . Any extra fuel would amount out of the exhaust pipework unburned .
So if thecarused pure oxygen , it would be inhale 100 percent atomic number 8 rather of 21 pct oxygen , or about five times more atomic number 8 . This would mean that it could burn about five times more fuel . And that would imply about five times morehorsepower . So a 100 - H.P. engine would become a 500 - horsepower engine !
The problem with oxygen
So why do n’t cars hold around double-dyed oxygen ? The job is that O is pretty bulky , even when you compress it , and an railway locomotive use a LOT of O . A gal of gasolene weigh 6.2 pounds , so the locomotive needs 86.8 pounds of oxygen ( 6.2 x 14 ) per gallon of gasoline . Oxygen is a gas , so it is passing clear . One quid of O fills 11.2 cubic feet of blank space , so a gallon of gasolene needs 972.16 three-dimensional feet of oxygen to go with it . If your flatulency armored combat vehicle holds 20 gallons of gasoline , you would have to carry almost 20,000 cubic fundament of oxygen with it ! This is a lot of O - so much that it would fill a 2,500 straightforward foot house .
Even if you compress the oxygen to 3,000 pounds per square inch ( British pound per square inch ) , it will still take 100 three-dimensional feet to store it . To put that into view , a standardscubatank holds about 80 three-dimensional feet of petrol , so it would take 250 scuba tanks to book all that atomic number 8 .
Because O is so bulky , what people apply instead isnitrous oxide . In the engine , azotic oxide turns into N and O , and it ’s the O that people are after . Nitrous oxide well liquefies under pressure , so you may stash away a pile more of it in a bottle than you may gaseous atomic number 8 , which does not liquidize . Even so , a typical system will supply only one to three min of nitrous to the engine . In the process , it append about 100 horsepower to a distinctive vainglorious engine block engine . The boastful trouble is that the superfluous petrol that the nitrous allows in thecylinderincreases imperativeness in the railway locomotive so much that it can do some actual damage , unless the engine is designed to handle it . That would be the same problem you would have with an engine breathing pure O – it would have to be quite strapping to handle the load .
