Science

Liquid Oxygen Dieseling

Hi,

This question might be totally stupid however i'm going to ask it anyway.

In a diesel engine, The diesel fuel combusts due to the increase in pressure compressing the fuel then making the combustion.

If i was to swap this with liquid oxygen, the increase in pressure would heat this up possibly past its boiling point thus causing it to change back into a gas, as this happens would it combust due to the increase in pressure. or after the gas expands would it then cool and essentially seize? Another idea is that if it combusted the oxygen that just combusted would then sustain its own combustion. I also am thinking the same idea with nitrogen, however im not entirely sure about the whole combusting of it.

I'd appreciate any pointers

Dom

dom_e Mon 05/05/08 19:24

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Teddio
Mon 05/05/08
20:12

In a diesel engine a hydrocarbon oil is injected at high pressure into hot, high pressure air. The resulting explosion produces very high pressure carbon dioxide and steam which produce a downwards force on the piston.
Oxygen can't "self combust" neither can nitrogen. Why would you want to use cryogenic liquids anyway? Latent heat of vaporisation would be needed to produce the liquid-to-gas phase change so you wouldn't have any net release of energy for useful work.
Why not look at liquid fluorine injected into hot, compressed hydrogen? Lots of energy but the exhaust emissions would be something of a problem, especially here in California!

gen2
Mon 05/05/08
20:14

Here are a couple of facts for you to ponder.

A
Hydrocarbons will not react wit nitrogen (liquid or otherwise) and liguid nitrogen would cool the whole engine down.

B
A hydrocarbon (diesel) burning in a pure oxygen environment would produce intense heat (compare an oxy-acetylene torch) which would melt the engine block.

So, Back to square one.

heathfield
Tue 06/05/08
09:40

It wouldn't work for the same reason that you can't use water with the diesel principle to obtain steam. As the pressure increases, the temperature at which it boils also increases. It's a self defeating exercise.

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