Quote:
Originally Posted by RedDevil
Hmm. Pure oxygen, atmospheric pressure, iron and heat equals Thermal lance.
It would allow lean burn without nitrous oxide, but the unused oxygen would be a risk for the engine.
If you reduce the pressure to near-vacuum then it could work, but you'd have massive pumping loss. And you will have to store the oxygen at very low temperature or very high pressure, turning your car into a potentially explosive device.
It is pressure, not heat, that makes your engine work. 80% of the air entering is inert, but will raise in volume when heated up. Without it the mixture would need to be 5 times as hot to provide the same pressure.
Even with air as it is there are heat issues, that's why water injection, adding inert matter to trade heat for volume, can be effective. |
. . . needed to make this work. One of the Xprize teams was looking into this avenue of thinking to make a high power, low emissions engine. Pure bottled oxygen was direct injected along with a stiochiometric mix of a hydrocarbon fuel along with a measured amount of water for the expansion/working fluid.
High strength/temperature materials would have been needed for such an engine, but it would have been plausible. Low emissions would have been possible as no NOx would have been formed and only fuel/lubricant slip would have to be accounted for.
The oxygen/water replenishment would have been a critical issue. The Xprize requirement to provide a plausible way to provide widespread infrastructure pretty much killed the idea.