[lo bux racer]

No that's crap. Oxygen doesn't explode! Oxygen makes other substances burn. Whether they explode or not depends on a lot of factors.

Oxygen injection has been tried, and it doesn't work because it melts the pistons. Just plain too much of a good thing.

BTW the standard oxygen concentration in the atmosphere is ~19%

N2O works because the oxygen is tightly bound to the nitrogen and it only released under high heat and pressure. The nitrogen (N2, the same thing as the bulk of the atmosphere) acts as a combustion damper in the cylinder and prevents the metal from being directly oxidized by the increased oxygen content in the cylinder.

There's a tremendous amount of misunderstanding and misinformation in this thread's previous posts.

 

[lo bux racer]

You say explode because you haven't taken a welding class and don't know gas cylinder safety basics. Any pressurized gas cylinder can explode in a fire, even Argon and Neon will cause their container to explode and they're completely inert gases. Simple physics. Add heat, pressure rises, container integrity is compromised because internal pressure exceeds the vessel's capacity to hold the gas in. Why do you think people pass gas?

Oxygen is NOT flammable. I can hold a match in a pure oxygen environment and NOTHING happens, it just burns faster and brighter because there is more oxygen available. It is an accelerant, NOT flammable, it DOES NOT burn by itself.
QUOTE

Oxidizing gases are non-flammable gases (e.g., oxygen chlorine, fluorine and nitrous oxide), but in the presence of an ignition source and fuel can support and vigorously accelerate combustion. Do not use oil in any apparatus where oxygen will
be used. Gauges and regulators for oxygen shall bear the warning "OXYGEN - USE NO OIL."[/b]

More gas cylinder safety.

ANY pressurized tank in your car is dangerous, including Nitrous. There is a rather famous Internet story of some idiot who improperly wired the heater blanket on his N2O bottle so it was on all the time. The tanks (there were two) ruptured and exploded and literally destroyed a major section of his house. ANY pressurized vessel is DANGEROUS.

 

[lo bux racer]

They put a restriction in the tank before the valve to prevent them from becoming missles these days. Otherwise, your experience would not have been so benign.

If it had been liquid oxygen, you would have had some fireworks. LOX promotes combustion like few things can. If you've ever played with liquid nitrogen, you know that spilling it on the floor sounds like rice krispies. Lots of snaps, crackles, and pops from the LN forming LOX (LN is colder than LOX) and the LOX causing the dust on the floor to ignite and make sounds from the ignition process. It's pretty fun.

BTW, I was the operations manager for a gas analysis lab. We went through about 6 tons of LN a week, so we had plenty of opportunity to play with LN.

 

[lo bux racer]

Propane is real popular with the Viper crowd. The heads in those things have really low flow numbers so they like to help things out with some propane. I've heard of some Supra guys using it too, it does help detonation resistance.

BTW, a film bottle and a few cc's of LN is a lot of fun too. Put the LN inside and toss it...I'll leave it to your imagine to figure out what happens next...