Jump to content

Nitrogen as a Fuel


pyroglycerine

Recommended Posts

Strictly speaking, the reaction between oxygen, water and nitrogen does give out heat.

It does not happen readily.

That's just as well for us. If it did, there would be no oxygen in the air and the sea would be full of dilute nitric acid.

Perhaps we shouldn't look into this

:)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Which chemical reaction you have in mind?

Heating liquid nitrogen in a heat exhanger, extracting heat from the ambient air and using the resulting pressurized gas to operate a piston or rotary engine.

Edited by pyroglycerine
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Heating liquid nitrogen in a heat exhanger, extracting heat from the ambient air and using the resulting pressurized gas to operate a piston or rotary engine.

 

If that was a quote, make sure to mention the source.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_nitrogen_vehicle

 

Most of the criticisms listed there are valid, but main issue are the losses that would be involved. You use electricity to liquify nitrogen, when you could have just left it as electricity and stored that instead. Each conversion step you suffer losses due to inefficiencies.

 

There are also the safety issues as Hypervalent Iodine mentions. I'm honestly surprised we don't have more incidents involving refrigerants. Suffocation, freezing, and the cause just floats away.

Edited by Endy0816
Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

Most of the criticisms listed there are valid, but main issue are the losses that would be involved. You use electricity to liquify nitrogen, when you could have just left it as electricity and stored that instead. Each conversion step you suffer losses due to inefficiencies.

 

 

Thanks

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

My air conditioner is a heat exchanger. The heat generated could in theory be used to drive the system, I guess. Old refrigerators used to operate on natural gas, which contrary to expectations and seems illogical. I've not heard of such a system that ran on nothing at all however. It would probably require a passive system maintained by an active one.


As for this liquid nitrogen. It sound to me like it is being used as highly compressed gas. You may have seen pressurized water expelled bottle rockets. They are impressive but do not achieve the same performance seen with chemical combustion rockets. Chemical combustion supplies the heat and the gas.

Edited by vampares
Link to comment
Share on other sites

You can actually still buy refrigerators that run on LP or NG.

 

This one at Ben's Supply runs on propane or 120v ac power. You're just trading one power source for another to run the compressor on the fridge. Propane based ones get used in off grid situations where electricity is either unavailable or considerably more expensive than other fuel types.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I live in an area where lots of diesel powered fishing boats ply the area every day and I've heard "tales" many times of diesel engines that run too fast and cannot be shut down even if the fuel is cut off, they claim the engine will run on the compression of nitrogen combustion with the oxygen in the atmosphere at a certain speed. I often wondered if an engine could run at high compression off of nitrogen and oxygen..


Is this possible or just an old "fisherman" tale?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Runaway engines are themselves real enough. I've always been told it is an issue of the engine getting "fuel" from somewhere else though. Lube oil is commonly mentioned.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_engine_runaway

 

Never heard of Nitrogen reactions mentioned in relation.

 

There are runaway engine videos out there if you want to check it out. Pretty cool looking.

Edited by Endy0816
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I had a gasoline engine run out of control on me once due to an electrical problem, it revved up till I thought it was going to explode so i pulled the wire off the distributor.. talk about fire works, movies don't even have electrical discharges like that..

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.