Name: Daniel R.
Status: Student
Age: 16
Location: N/A
Country: N/A
Date: 2002
Question:
Would ozone be more efficient in a car engine than oxygen gas?
Replies:
Yes from simply a thermochemical point of view, but practically it is not.
It takes energy to form ozone. Ozone is very corrosive to metals ( steel
wool detonates if you throw it into liquid ozone; if you spilled ozone on a
tar covered road, the road would catch fire, ozone is extremely toxic, ozone
is an air pollutant ) so it has a lot of things going against it from a
practicality point of view. N2O would also be a good oxidant, but it too has
practical problems. For example:
CH4 + 4N2O = CO2 + 4 N2 + 2 H2O
still makes CO2, and the high flame temperature would probably cause the
formation of other noxious nitrogen oxides.
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