srsnow

There may be more to come, maybe even with some propane...

David@TNT

By compression I dont mean it has to be at an expact psi, and are you saying that it is completely releasing the oxygen the second the stick is in the can? Cause it is not, to completely release all the oxygen present in the can it must be contained to force the heat into the mixture, ie compression.. Sure you can burn away the nitrous over a period of time but for it to be really dangerous it would need to be released faster in my oppinion.. I watched a car with 2 full bottles burn and the nitrous did not amplifiy the fire, so by your theory it would have nuked the car? You can had little oxygen present, very very very little.. And not to be a smart *** but the paper towel burned the wooden board beneath it, hmm go figure.. Who would have guessed that would happen..

srsnow

I am saying that nitrous can not partially break down, meaning that it cannot only release a portion of the oxygen atom that is attached to the two nitrogen atoms. Now if you are saying that a certain amount of the nitrous will not be used then yes that is true. But it wouldn't be 100% used in an engine either when it is under compression. The point of this whole discussion was that nitrous can cause a fire to be worse than if no nitrous was present not that it always would. And about the paper towel burning the wood, I should have been clearer in what I said. The side that had no nitrous did not burn the wood, it never got hot enough to. However the side with the nitrous even though it burned for less time generated significantly more heat, enough heat in fact to scorch the wood under it in a matter of seconds. I am confused a little I guess. Are you suggesting that nitrous doesn't have the ability to aid a fire at all or that it wouldn't be able to in an open environment such as a car fire?

gun5l1ng3r

If Nitrous Oxide could be cooled to a solid state, it would sublimate, turn straight from a solid to a gas.

IgnoranceKills

As I had mentioned in an earlier post, the efficiency of the disassociation isn't as important as the volume introduced. Just like the fuel side of things, you'll never attain 100% conversion in real-life, there will be some small % that isn't used and will go out the tail pipe or into the air. If you are referring to how quickly the oxygen is released, then you are correct, there is quite a lot of oxygen remaining in the in-tact nitrous as you can see by the frosty bottom of the can. If all (or every a large portion) of the nitrous gave up it's oxygen as soon as the stick went in the can, I wouldn't have a hand left! The rate of disassociation would be accelerated by way of confinement, as will happen inside the engine’s cylinders, but is not necessary to demonstrate the effects of nitrous on combustion. We could do a demonstration of what happens when nitrous and a fuel are combusted in a container to illustrate, but I don't think the AFT would appreciate that kind of a demo! Besides, the purpose of that demonstration was to safely illustrate that nitrous does indeed aid in combustion, even if not in motion (coming out of a hose, etc) or under pressure.

As for the car you saw burn, just because it had nitrous aboard wouldn’t guarantee fireworks. I will tell you that when a car does have a fire bad enough to involve an unrestricted flow of nitrous, it WILL get crazy if the bottles are not shut down. I’ve seen a chassis tube burnt though in one such incident. When you see one of there unfortunate events you’ll notice that the fire will normally start smallish, and then suddenly turn into a raging inferno, until the nitrous is expended and then it’ll die down. This is enough of a concern that a device was designed to shut off the nitrous line and kill the fuel pump when the fire system is activated, it’s called a Pro Stop and was designed after a close friend of the designer almost died due to a similar incident. I don’t mean to put the fear of God into anyone about this; it’s an extremely rare thing. But, I think we can all agree that a busted nitrous hose and a full nitrous bottle going berserk isn’t going to be a safe and sane thing, even more so if it’s in the middle of an engine fire. As for Shaun’s mentioning the wood being burnt, at first glance, it does sound a bit obvious, the significant detail he should have mentioned was that the wood where the paper towel didn’t have nitrous was barely touched, but the side that was soaked in N2O burnt so hot and intensely, that it charred the wood as you might expect after holding a torch to it for a minute or so in just the few seconds it was burning, and that it left virtually no ash at all, compared to the non-nitrous side with the typical paper ash. Hope this helps clear up any confusion.

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Mike

red90cobra

iTrader: (36)

point is if you have a nitrous backfire attemp to turn the bottle off if you think it's safe to do so. if not run. and watch from a distance.

FootLbs

iTrader: (7)

I checked out that link and i'm confused, not about the flamabilty but about the health hazards. Correct me if i'm wrong but isn't n20 what they give me in the densist office to make me happy? I know in some areas they mix sulfer in the n20 to keep junkies from inhailing automotive grade n20. It seems that the health hazards of short term are pretty radical.