Okay so we fogged 100% pure oxygen into a lawnmower and it pushed the Rpms up higher than it would normally rev to. Now the air we breath and the air our cars run on typically has around 28% oxygen. I did this at my old work with guys that were into racing back in the days. They said it's an old racing thing or something. My question is does it work? Now I don't want to do that to my car but I wanna know if it's a true performance gain or if it would mess up our a/f ratios and our engines. I'm not sure this is crazy and I figured all of you were the people to ask.

 

Yes it will lean your afr's and can give a boost in power. It's a similar principle to using nitrous (to an extent). It adds dense, cold oxygenated air into the air stream, and when mixed with additional fuel, will result in a power increase.

 

Pure oxygen burns far too aggressively for useful applications in automotive engines.

Outside air is about 18% O2
Nitrous Oxide, N2O, is 33% O2
The remaining Nitrogen atoms act as a buffer to prevent too rapid of a burn and the pre-ignition you would suffer as a result.

A nitrous kit can add far more horsepower than the engines components can handle using 33% oxygen in the air and the required additional fuel. Pure O2 would be unnecessary and dangerous.

 

Why don't people use it then? Oxygen tanks are legal and it's cheaper than nos. is it unsafe?

 

just saw your post after my latest. Thanks for clearing that up. We did this quite some time ago and it's been a lingering question of mine. Knowing that oxygen is highly combustible I thought it would be damaging but I wasn't sure.

 

dude that would explode like instantly lol. 100% oxygen is insanely volatile

 

I was just asking. I mean we did it to a lawnmower and it has 0 problems with doing it that's why I posted this along with the title "ridiculous question"

 

Sorry but oxygen itself is far from a flammable gas.

 

Oxygen isn't flammable, but it's basically a perfect oxidizer.

 

Peter Atkins' Reactions is a great chemistry book that goes into detail of combustion and oxidizing, in an hour you could solve all of your questions

 

Oxygen can make iron burn. Look up what a thermal lance is.

 

I wish outside air was 28 percent oxygen lol

 

In theory oxygen makes everything that is burnable, burn.

 

I could've swore I read that somewhere but idk whatever.

 

if air was 28% oxygen we would just have smaller engines

 

that man wrote my Physical Chemistry book, some folks it would take more than an hour.