A Little Insight into Nitrous Oxide

[2_Liter_Turbo]

I was going through some old school reports, and found this one that I thought was kind cool, lol. Hope it's a good read!

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A Little Insight into Nitrous Oxide
By: 2_Liter_Turbo
02-23-2007

Nitrous Oxide (N2O) is a covalent compound that is used in the automotive racing world. Nitrous Oxide has to be manufactured because it does not naturally occur. A British Chemist, named Joseph Priestly, discovered Nitrous Oxide in 1772. N2O was not used in a piston engine until the Germans injected it into aircraft engines in 1942 (Davis, 2001, p. 98). Nitrous Oxide eventually found its way into automotive racing in the 1960’s as a means for increasing engine output.

To store enough Nitrous Oxide for practical use, it must be converted into a liquid. To do this it must be compressed. This is because it would very unpractical to keep N2O below its boiling point of –127 degrees Fahrenheit. To keep it in liquid form, it must be compressed to 1087.5 psi in 100 degree Fahrenheit weather, or 534.5 psi at 50 degrees. Converting Nitrous Oxide back to a gas is easy; just release it into the atmosphere.

Nitrous Oxide acts as an almost perfect catalyst for the combustion in an engine. A large amount of heat energy is absorbed by the N2O because of its rapid expansion from being released into the intake stream of an engine (goes from a liquid to a gas). This in turn cools down the intake charge significantly, which makes the air denser. This allows the injected gasoline to burn more completely. Which is great for not only power gains, but it also helps with emissions as well (Kaiser, 2001). Also, when converted into a gas from being released into the intake stream of an engine, Nitrous Oxide becomes suspended which in turn makes it mix with the injected fuel completely. This increases the probability of totally mixing with the fuel molecules (mostly made up of hydrocarbons). The complete mixture of the two prevents the fuel from “puddling”, which means that fuel will fall out of its suspended gaseous form into a liquid form. This is bad, because the liquid form of gasoline does not burn. The better the complete burn, the more power will be transferred to the engines crankshaft (on reciprocating engines).

Nitrous Oxide can be implemented into an engine via three different setups: Wet, Dry, and Direct Port Wet systems. The Dry System is setup to where the N2O Injector is placed into the intake stream right around the throttle body. This is an ideal setup for multi-port fuel injected gasoline engines due to the intake manifold’s “dry” design. That is that the intake manifold is designed only for dry fresh air to pass through it. If one were to install a wet system on this type of intake manifold the injected fuel would puddle due to the large cavities and separated intake runners. This would pose a safety problem, because the puddled fuel could eventually mix with oxygen and detonate inside the manifold and not in the engine itself.

A Wet System incorporates not only a N2O injector, but a fuel injector as well. This is ideal for “Port Tuned” injection or carburated vehicles. A wet setup suits these cars because their intake manifolds are designed to have the engines air and fuel already mixed. These manifolds are usually very short, high velocity units that prevent the fuel from “puddling” from the factory, thus a wet Nitrous Oxide system is ideal. A wet system allows for a higher output because the system can inject extra fuel to aid the complete combustion of a larger amount of N2O as compared to a “Dry” setup.

Direct Port Wet Nitrous Injection is the most efficient setup possible. It incorporates individual N2O and fuel injectors for each cylinder. The problem of this setup is the installation difficulties. You must drill holes into each intake runner and fabricate mounts for all of the injectors. This is a setup used mainly for fuel injected cars due to the intake manifold designs. The runners are designed to atomize the fuel so it will burn more completely in the combustion chamber. So the runners will take well to the extra fuel and N2O provided by the direct port system.

Nitrous Oxide, a man made compound, is very useful in the automotive world. While it can be fun to use, safety should be of the up-most concern to anyone using any setup. You want to mount the N2O tank in the trunk of the vehicle because if the safety valve starts to leak, the driver can suffocate due to the human body not being able to process the oxygen/nitrogen gas. Use only DOT approved mounting hardware, and make sure the entire system is working perfectly before using it while driving.




References:

Davis, Earl. (2001) Supercharging, Turbocharging, & Nitrous Oxide: Performance Handbook. St. Paul, Minnesota: MBI

Kaiser, C. (2001, April). Chemical Formula for Common Gasoline.
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