Tractor pullers

When you turn up the fuel on a diesel ,you get more power but also more smoke. Has anyone added an oxygen bottle with a regulator and valve to the air stream to burn the fuel better instead of making all that smoke?

Dont know a thing about this, but couldn't help comment. Man, you would think that would sure soup it up. You would think someone has thought of that before.

One time we were going to have a BBQ for a bunch of people and I didn't get the fire started in time. I took the torch and started putting pure oxygen to it. Did it ever take off!!!


Gene

I would really be hesitant to add an oxygen injection to any engine. Nitrous oxide is N20. The two molecules of nitrogen are in the mix as a cushion. Oxygen combusts much too harshly to be used on it's own. Then there's the downside of having an oxygen tank bomb mounted on your tractor.

"oxygen tank bomb"???

If it were me, I'd hate to have an oxygen tank anywhere on my tractor.

Ever operated a cutting torch? First you heat the metal, then to get the cutting going, you add...[altogether now, class] OXYGEN.

There's such a thing as "too much of a good thing."

On the average, outside air is about 20 percent oxygen by volume. Racers began experimenting in years back with nitrous oxide because it's 36% oxygen by volume. And the racers who melted down pistons by not adding additional fuel to the N2O learned that even 36% oxygen is enough to get the "cutting torch" effect.

So maybe what those overly-rich pullers need is a shot of nitrous oxide, rather than pure oxygen.

Not sure at what point, combustion-pressure-wise, you have to start worrying about stretching head studs and blowing head gaskets.

I haul one around in my Yukon most of the time due to a family member that needs a little extra O2 from time to time.

Ain't killed me (yet), nor do I expect it to!

(quoted from post at 08:12:25 12/08/08) When you turn up the fuel on a diesel ,you get more power but also more smoke. Has anyone added an oxygen bottle with a regulator and valve to the air stream to burn the fuel better instead of making all that smoke?

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That's why they put turbochargers on diesel engines. Rather than deal with cumbersome expensive oxygen bottles that need to be changed and refilled, a turbo gives a continuous supply of "free" air to the engine.

If you're smoking, you need more "boost" from the turbo. Most older tractor turbos don't have wastegates or variable vanes that I'm aware of; what you get is what you get. The only way to get more boost is to put on a bigger turbocharger.

I'm sure this has been done, probably in labs and maybe on the pulling track. The vast quantities of bottled oxygen required for field work would make it prohibitively expensive and impractical.

Oxygen doesn't burn. It has to have something to combine with to burn. In other words it supports combustion.

The smoke has to do with the diesel combustion process. Diesel combustion is diffusion burning, where the challenge is to burn to the center of a fuel droplet...however when this can't be done, a black soot particle is left over and exhausted. The smaller the droplet, the more likely that the fuel droplet will be consumed. Smaller droplets are related to higher injection pressures and better atomization which is why we have 650 ft-lb x 300 hp duallies running around within the last few years.

Pure oxygen or NO would both theoretically work. The heat of combustion causes N and O to separate which acts like a turbocharger with a "denser" atmosphere, or more burnable air-fuel mix in the chamber.

However, as has been suggested the practical limitation is that where the piston will melt down. It is possible to "cool with fuel" to compensate, but such a strategy has to be carefully developed by people with expensive measurement technologies on dynamometer cells. One can of course pursue their own path of internal combustion engine development but the costs measured in broken hardware can add up quickly.

I think you'd be amazed at how fast the oxygen bottle would be consumed...gas bottles are measured in cubic feet and engines in cubic feet *per minute*...as suggested a turbo is ultimately a lower cost solution.

Ive injected it into gas engines right out the torch tip into the carb. Got lean real quick!! Id look at LP injection more than oxygen. Could good for a 7-15 hp jump on a N/A diesil with a BBQ tank and a hand valve up on the fender. Put a setup like this on a 3010 JD diesil, got a 10 hp jump from stock when the regulator was dialed in.

Tell that to the families of Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee.

It wasn't the oxygen that killed them. It was a flamable material with an endless supply of oxygen. You need three things for a fire. Heat, a burning source, and oxygen. Take any one of the three away and you have no fire. Purple K and fire retardant foam eliminate/reduce the oxygen. Water cools the fire.