Oxygen concentrators and Automotive applications

[Enola Straight]

Here is a medical site selling oxygen concentrators:
http://www.dmeonline.com/oxygen.html
It occurred to me such a device may improve automotive applications.
Lets suppose we have a turbodiesel: placing the air-in line attached to the pressurized intake manifold of the engine would alleviate the machine's power needs to draw in and pressurize its own air supply. Outputting the concentrated oxygen to the turbo intake would make enrich the intake manifold air all that more.

Increased oxygen reduces hydrocarbons and soot, and decreased nitrogen decreases NOx.

How well would this work?

[Gunhead]

Well a turbo already pumps more oxygen into the fuel mix so why add extra O into it?
Pumping pure oxygen into the air intake might work if you're looking for high rpm but otherwise I don't see the point.
A mechanically driven turbo draws power constantly from the engine, but I do believe the exhaust driven type is more common these days so this direct oxygen system wouldn't really alleviate power need if using an exhaust driven turbo.

A mechanical turbo rotates in relation to the engine and the more rpm in the engine the faster the turbo will go requiring more energy to operate.

Also to consider is the mix itself. More oxygen requires more fuel to keep the mix optimal. If the mix is too thin the engine won't run properly and if too rich you're just generating smoke.

If the idea is to replace the turbo all together, well, it could work.
But you'll need all sorts of equipment to control the flow of oxygen into the system and not to mention you'd have to store the oxygen in the vehicle.

Well I'm not an expert and maybe some of our engineers can put some light on this. I have to say I've sometimes thought about this myself.
But as a guy who works with diesel run vehicles, I just don't see the point.

-Gunhead

[Sea Skimmer]

How well would this work?

Not at all.

If you want to make your car run cleaner, forgot about it. If you add oxygen then cars with electric fuel injection will just respond by adding more fuel. If you don’t have fuel injection, then the car is going to run dirty as hell no matter what you do. If you fuck with those electronic systems to prevent the adding of more fuel, then you could get the same result by lowering the fuel flow to begin with! Screw things up BTW and the car will misfire all the time, and every time a cylinder misfires the fuel charge blows right into the atmosphere. You need some pretty expensive computer equipment, on the line of ten grand, to remap the ECU settings anyway.

Besides which, you will NOT reduce NOx emissions, you’ll increase them. Oxides of Nitrogen form the most with a lean fuel air mixture, while carbon monoxide and hydrocarbon emissions are worst with a rich fuel air mixture. This is why engines are designed to continuously adjust themselves to achieve the ideal stoichiometric air/fuel mixture. That, combined with good engine temperature control, is the best you can do inside the engine to control emissions.

Now if you want to make more power, then sure, oxygen enriched air will let you burn more fuel without increasing boost pressure, but then that’s what nitrous oxide injection is for, or a better intake manifold for that matter. In fact you can even have outright fuel which has increased oxygen content, such as nitro methane, commonly used in high performance drag cars. But of course, if you do any of this you vastly increase the stress on your engine and you’ll soon be blowing piston rings, if not something much worse.

I highly doubt an affordable oxygen concentrator is going to work fast enough for a car anyway. For every gallon of gasoline you burn you also consume 10,000 something gallons of air, not a small amount to enrich.

You certainly could not educe the power requirements of a turbocharger, which are the result of backpressure and not direct draw off the crankshaft, using any kind of air injector. This is because running that electrical air compressor and oxygen concentrator is going to draw far more power then the turbo ever did for the results you get. Don’t fool yourself into thinking the alternator on a car isn’t a significant mechanical power drain when it’s operating at a high output.

[aerius]

It wouldn't. A car engine goes through thousands to tens of thousands of litres of air every minute. The largest unit I saw on that page puts out 10 litres a minute, it's a piddling amount of O2 which'll have practically no effect on the engine.

[Starglider]

The only possible use I can think of for this is the equivalent of a nitrous oxide injection system that can recharge itself anywhere; the oxygen would be compressed and stored in a bottle, and injected in short concentrated bursts when a boost is needed. But really, unless you're Max the Road Warrior, simply carting around spare nitrous oxide bottles is going to be easier (and safer).